Mummy Dearest: A Horror Tradition Unearthed Page #2

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Pierce didn't even consider the fact

that Boris might have to relieve himself

some time during the day,

and that became a bit of a problem.

And when they completed it, he said

"You've done a wonderful job,

but you've forgotten to give me a fly."

For the exotic dual role

of Princess Anck-es-en-Amon

and her modern-day counterpart,

Universal cast the Hungarian-born

New York stage actress Zita Johann.

Zita Johann had been a powerhouse

Broadway dramatic actress of the 1920s.

She had played in Machinal,

in which she played a murderess who

goes screaming to the electric chair.

Terrific dramatic actress. She believed in

what she called "the theatre of the spirit".

She sat in her dressing room

before performing, said her prayers,

"died unto herself", as she put it,

and became her character.

There's death there for me.

And life for something else

inside me that isn't me.

But it's alive too, and fghting for life.

Save me from it, Frank. Save me.

With this almost sacred

approach to acting,

at the same time she had a very

enormous disrespect for Hollywood.

As she told me in her richly theatrical

way, "I had more respect

for the whores on 42nd Street

than I did for the stars in Hollywood."

When I met her in 1979,

at her pre-Revolutionary War house

by the Hudson River,

she was still drama incarnate.

She gave the interview

by sitting on a chaise lounge

and adjusting her lighting

before she began to talk.

And we weren't filming anything.

That was just her.

Zita Johann was a remarkable actress,

and when I first got to know her

it was rather guarded that she told me

about her interest in the occult.

But the more we got into the making

of The Mummy and the more she relaxed,

she actually began to discuss

her interest in the occult sciences.

I am Anck-es-en-Amon, but I...

I'm somebody else too.

I want to live,

even in a strange new world.

She was a devout believer

in reincarnation.

She told me that at one point in the 1920s

she had gone on a spiritual retreat

in the Adirondacks and had levitated.

Then she added

"Coming down was rotten."

So she was really a perfect choice

for Princess Anck-es-en-Amon.

She was absolutely

in spiritual key with the character.

- Look and wonder.

- A fgure of myself.

It is my coffn,

made by my father against my death.

What mummy has usurped

my eternal resting place?

It is thy dead shell.

I tried then to raise this body.

I could raise it now, but it would be

a mere thing that moved at my will,

without a soul.

Now, when I got to know her and visited

her in this wonderful old spooky house,

she had diagrams on the table

of cabbalistic symbols,

and she did yoga, and she would

teach acting courses as well.

But she incorporated all of this spirituality

and mysticism into her acting.

She'd say "All right,

if you're going to play Medea,

let's call upon Medea

to come into the circle."

She was a very headstrong woman

in the Katharine Hepburn mould.

And the irony of that

is that Katharine Hepburn,

had she not left for the East Coast

when she did,

would have screen-tested

for The Mummy.

Zita had a very headstrong,

determined kind of spirit,

and in 1932

that must have been a disaster,

because she was butting heads

with everyone.

She told me she walked

into Irving Thalberg's office

and said "Irving,

why do you make such rubbish?"

Even men didn't talk

to Irving Thalberg that way.

But he actually said "For the money,

Zita, for the money."

And she behaved in a way

that suited her character.

She was a stage actress,

and she was a very fine stage actress.

She had talent, breeding, looks,

and I think that she felt

that she was too good for Hollywood.

But the money was phenomenal.

And in 1931 and '32,

to make $7500 a week was something

you just couldn't turn down.

But the actress's handsome salary

was small compensation

for the legendary difficulties

she endured with her director.

Zita remembered that one day

on the Universal lot "a huge monster" -

the huge monster being Karl Freund, who

weighed 300lbs and was not a tall man -

came up to her and said "In one scene

you must play it from the waist up nude."

And she said "Why do I have to play it

from the waist up nude?"

And he said "The scene in The Mummy,

you must play from the waist up nude."

Well, what she soon realised was that

this was his first picture as a director.

He was looking for a scapegoat,

and he wanted to antagonise her

so he could say to the front office "I'm

working with this temperamental actress

and she refuses to do what I want."

So she said to Karl Freund

"I'll be happy to play it from the waist up

nude if you can get it past the censors."

And she said "And I had him there."

So it was a very unhappy working

relationship, Zita Johann and Karl Freund.

At one point she was debating

about the way to play a certain scene,

and here was Zita

with her "theatre of the spirit" approach

and Karl Freund,

who was a genius at cinematography

but had a very mechanical way

of shooting a picture.

She said

"I want to play it a different way."

And he said "Well, this is where

the camera is. You will play it here."

And Zita responded "Well, then move

the goddamn camera - it's on wheels."

So this was the relationship.

Karl Freund did not give her a chair

on the set with her name on it.

He made her stand

against a board for two days

so she wouldn't get a crease

in the skirt she was wearing.

His most remarkable atrocity was that

he saved for the last day of shooting

a reincarnation scene in which

Zita played a Christian martyr

who was to be fed to the lions.

The cameraman was in a cage of his own,

Freund was in a cage of his own -

as she said, "a very large cage" -

everybody was protected, and here

she had to walk in among these lions.

And, as she put it,

she was "exhausted beyond fear".

So she walked in among the lions

and thought "Who cares?"

She said "Those lions

looked at me and thought

'That's just a sack of exhausted bones.

Who cares?"'

And they didn't bother her.

My love has lasted longer

than the temples of our gods.

No man ever suffered as I did for you.

She adored Boris Karloff.

But she said something

very interesting about Karloff -

remember, this is probably after

Frankenstein, his greatest performance.

She said "When I first met him,

I felt this incredible wave of sadness."

She said "His eyes

were like shattered mirrors."

"Whatever his pain was, it was very deep

and very much a part of his soul."

And she said "I never intruded."

"He was always a perfect gentleman,

he always knew his lines."

He never complained about, possibly, one

of the most arduous make-up experiences

he would ever have at Universal,

under the hands of Jack Pierce.

Back in those days

they did not have 12-hour work days,

and they would sometimes

work until dawn.

And The Mummy

was an exhausting picture.

But Zita relied on the occult powers

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