American Cinematographer - June 1995 - 101

She:

Empire of the Imagination

Epic adventure tale has it all: reincarnation, arcane rituals,
cannibalism and a domineering female monarch.
by George Turner
"My empire is of the imagination," says the cruel process off the ground. The Whitneys and Cooper also
as
"She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed," in formed Pioneer Pictures specifically to produce pic¬
Merian C. Cooper's production, She. The truth of these
tures in Technicolor. To finish his contract, Cooper
made a deal to produce two epics independently for
words was uppermost in the mind of that gutsiest of
producers when he decided to make a modern - RKO, She and The Last Days of Pompeii. It was his in¬
tention to make these films in Technicolor. RKO
1935, that is - talkie version of H. Rider Haggard's
granted him a budget of $2,000,000 to cover both pro¬
popular 1887 novel.
Haggard named his story after a rag doll he ductions, with about $100,000 allowed for the use of
Technicolor.
had as a small child, and thus stumbled upon the per¬
fect title for a fantasy about a beautiful 2,000The Producer of "King Kong" Startles the World Anew!
year-old queen who rules her subjects by terror.
Ayesha, a young Egyptian woman, attains
seemingly eternal youth when she discovers the
"flame of life" deep in the African jungle. She
impetuously murders her lover, Kallikrates,
gigantic productio
monarch known

MERIAN C. COOPER'S

when he tries to leave her for another woman,
and mourns him through the centuries, certain
in her belief that he will be reincarnated and
turn to

re¬

her. So he does, she believes, after 2,000

the young English explorer, Leo
Vincey. When Leo admits his love for Ustane,
a native
girl, Ayesha steps into the flame and
years, as

tries to induce him to do the same,

but this time

she shrivels into an ancient mummy.
Several silent movie versions of the tale
had been filmed, the last being an Anglo-Ger¬

production by G. B. Samuelson, with Betty
Blythe and Carlyle Blackwell, which was made
in 1925, the year Haggard died. Universal had
bought rights to the novel in 1932 and hired
playwright John L. Balderston to adapt it for the
screen as a proposed vehicle for Boris Karloff
and Tala Birell. The Balderston script is a grim
horror story in which all the principals die. The
gloomy ending upset genial Carl Laemmle,
president of Universal, and the property went
into turnaround. Cooper, who in 1933 suc¬
ceeded David O. Selznick as vice president in
charge of production at the financially troubled
RKO-Radio Pictures, bought the script from
Universal and tried unsuccessfully to borrow
man

James Whale to direct it. Whale had directed
Frankenstein, The Old Dark House, and The Invis¬
ible Man for Universal, and Cooper at that time
intended to

produce She

as an

all-out horror

show.

Cooper had wanted both pictures to be di¬

Cooper suffered a near-fatal heart attack in
September 1933 and resigned his job at RKO the fol¬
lowing May. In the meantime, he and his multimil¬
lionaire friends, John and Cornelius Whitney, had
become financially interested in the Technicolor Cor¬
poration, which was trying to get its new three-color

Dangerous Game, King Kong, Blind Adventure, Long
Lost Father and The Son of Kong. He also wanted
Schoedsack's wife, Ruth Rose, scenarist of both Kong

June 1995

American

rected by Ernest B. Schoedsack, his co-producer and
director of Grass, Chang, The Four Feathers, The Most

Cinematographer

103

American Cinematographer - June 1995

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