“What do you know of immortal dreams, immortal memories? I am yesterday, today and tomorrow. I am sorrow, and longing and hope unfulfilled. I am Hasha-Mo-Tep– She, She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed. I am… I… It’s not enough that I should hope and wait unending years in pain…” ~ She (Helen Gahagan)
The year 2025 marks both the 100th anniversary of the death of writer H. Rider Haggard and the 90th anniversary of She (1935), which was based on one of Haggard’s novels. As a fan of both the author and this film version, I thought now would be the perfect time to look back at the making of one of the greatest adventure films from the 1930s.
It’s a film I’ve shown both at the former LaSalle Bank Theatre in Chicago (a 16mm print containing eight minutes of previously lost footage) and at the Park Ridge Public Library as part of my “Screen Deco” film series. It does not appear to be available in the DCP format needed for a possible Pickwick Theatre screening, though one wonders how many patrons would actually attend. Admittedly, it’s not a film for all tastes, particularly for those attuned to the sensibilities of modern cinema, but She is nonetheless a fascinating work worth rediscovering.
She is one of the most exotic screen adventures from a time when there were still “lost civilizations” in the world. But it’s a film that almost became lost itself. If not for comedy legend Buster Keaton, prints of She might not exist at all. After its re-issue in the late 1940s, the film was out of circulation for many years. Disaster struck when the RKO studio vault, which housed the original negative, suffered a major fire in the 1950s. She was feared lost until a 35mm print of the film turned up in Keaton’s garage. Along with Buster Keaton’s own films, She was turned over to preservationist Raymond Rohauer. In the book Screen Deco, Howard Mandelbaum and Eric Myers write that the film was “revived during Radio City Music Hall’s 1976 Art Deco Week, and during its Los Angeles engagement the following year, the Los Angeles Times complimented its ‘monumental sets designed in a kind of Art Deco Barbaric.'” Decades later, She was restored for the digital medium of dvd and blu-ray.
I mention the various dvd versions of the film that are available through Kino and Legend Films, but nothing can ever surpass the thrill of actually owning a print of a movie you love. For a number of years, I had a 16mm print of She which contained scenes deleted from the film when it was re-released in 1949 (in order to fit on a double bill with 1935’s The Last Days of Pompeii). It wasn’t an original print, just a dupe, but I opened one of my film programs at the LaSalle Bank Theatre with it. Of course, today few people collect film prints anymore. Even dvds and other physical media are being replaced in our age of streaming.
The great doors from King Kong were later re-used for She.
The 1935 film was based on the outstanding 1887 adventure novel, She: A History of Adventure, by H. Rider Haggard. The story was part of the lost world romance genre. Filmmakers early on took advantage of the book’s success. It was filmed four times in the silent era–most notably in 1925– and would be remade again in the 1960s by Hammer Studios. She is the story of a centuries-old queen who awaits the return of her reincarnated dead lover. It’s an allegorical tale about the quest for eternal life. The Fountain of Youth of historical legend becomes the Flame of Life within She’s hidden empire of Kor.
She was produced by Merian C. Cooper, the visionary filmmaker who gave the world King Kong (1933) two years before. Cooper had grown up as a boy reading the “Lost Civilization” literature of the Victorian period and was inspired to bring Haggard’s novel to the screen. Cooper himself was an adventurer whose real-life exploits brought an authenticity to his films. With She, he wanted to create a large-scale fantasy along the lines of King Kong. Both films were made by RKO. As with everything else he did in life, Cooper was determined to do it big.
There are no real comparisons between the two films in terms of impact, though there are obvious elements of Kong in She. A viewer will immediately recognize the gates that lead into She’s mountain palace as part of the Great Wall that held Kong back on Skull Island. There is certainly a trace of the Jack Driscoll/Ann Darrow relationship from King Kong in She with Leo and Tanya. And like Kong, Cooper structured the movie around the title character who doesn’t make an appearance until Act II. But when She does finally appear, it’s a grand entrance and one of the most cinematic moments in the film.
Stage actress Helen Gahagan portrays She– Hasha-Mo-Tep, as she is also known. By all accounts, Gahagan was an exceptional talent in the theatre who never received a bad notice. The wife of actor Melvyn Douglas, whom she had married in 1931, Gahagan was also an opera soprano. She would be her only film credit before leaving Hollywood for politics. She served two terms as a California congresswoman before running against Richard Nixon in 1950 in a heated senate race. Gahagan was red-baited by Nixon, who labelled her the “Pink Lady.” She would lose the election, but the nickname she coined for Nixon would remain with him for the rest of his life: “Tricky Dick.” Though there is scant mention of She in it, there is a biography on Helen Gahagan called The Pink Lady by Sally Denton. This year being the 125th anniversary of her birth, I’d recommend the book to anyone interested in Gahagan’s political career and how she became inspired by the plight of Americans during the Depression.
Merian Cooper originally wanted Greta Garbo for the role, who would’ve been perfect. However, Cooper was unable to convince MGM into releasing her for his picture. It’s one of the intriguing “what ifs” of Hollywood casting because Garbo had the natural mystery that the part cried for. In more recent viewings, though, I’ve come to appreciate Gahagan’s performance. Her acting has been called mannered and very much of the theatre, but I think it fits her ageless character. She is the lone survivor from antiquity, and that hangs over her like a veil. I’d go so far as to call it a great performance because she conveys so many emotions equally well: longing, rage, jealousy, melancholy, connivance.
I love her look of annoyance (or rather, crafty reticence) when Leo Vincey (Randolph Scott) asks She if the sacrificial woman at the Sacred Well is a dancer. She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed is an authoritative presence but also a tortured soul and a tragic figure. The Ceremony of Sacrifice, in particular, stands out as a remarkable piece of acting because she never comes across as triumphant even though she is having her way in this scene. It’s almost as though she can feel her own humanity slipping away.
Gahagan possessed a wonderful speaking voice. This only adds to the memorable entrance in which she is first introduced from behind the rising vapor at the top of the palace staircase. At that very moment, Gahagan immediately brings a different kind of energy to the film. Prior to her introduction, the storyline had skirted pulp fiction. Though she lacks the blinding beauty of the literary She, Gahagan makes you feel she is indeed older than her years. It is as though the aged and decrepit lie just below the surface of her character– even before it manifests in her final scene. (Gahagan was in fact 34 at the time of filming.) Additionally, other writers have commented on her appearance and wardrobe and its influence on Walt Disney when he envisioned the evil queen from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937).
Randolph Scott
Merian Cooper had sought Joel McCrea for the role of explorer Leo Vincey– as well as McCrea’s wife, Frances Dee, as another candidate for She. Joel McCrea had starred in an earlier Cooper production, The Most Dangerous Game (1932). But Paramount offered to give Cooper Randolph Scott instead. Though he would become a better actor in the years ahead, Scott was, at this stage of his career, nowhere near as good as McCrea. He was a stoic, rugged actor best known for his later Westerns, such as Ride the High Country (1962)– with Joel McCrea.
In She, Scott isn’t the most dynamic of action heroes nor, at some moments, the quickest thinking. Despite this, Scott’s Leo is actually a stronger character in the film than his counterpart in the novel. The literary Leo is weak in terms of reader interest, and he is intellectually dull. (By contrast, the character of Holly in the Haggard tale is more the hero since, after all, he is the narrator.) Nevertheless, Scott has a presence in the movie and brings two of the most important qualities needed for Leo Vincey: he’s heroic and handsome. In that, Randolph Scott fit the bill.
Randolph Scott and Helen Mack
Randolph Scott, Samuel Hinds and Nigel Bruce
Supporting Scott is Nigel Bruce as Vincey’s assistant, Holly. Bruce is best known for playing Dr. Watson in the Sherlock Holmes film series at Universal, which starred Basil Rathbone. Whereas Bruce was more of a bumbler in the detective series, here he at least helps the hero in a more substantial way. But perhaps his Holly is a little too trusting of the tribes of Kor, notably in the “Nagoda” sequence in which he’s diligently taking down observations before nearly being ‘hot-potted’ by the Cave People. Also starring is RKO ingénue Helen Mack, who had appeared in Son of Kong (1933). Mack was born in Rock Island, Illinois, and would go on to have a long career on stage and in film before eventually turning to radio as a writer. Her performance in She is very expressive and sincere, and she makes a good foil for Helen Gahagan. Some commentators have suggested it is Mack’s Tanya character who is the most sympathetic and that it is Mack who holds the drama together emotionally. (The only idiosyncrasy of her performance: she calls Leo “Lay-o”!)
Three other actors who give noteworthy performances are Samuel Hinds as Leo Vincey’s dying uncle; Lumsden Hare as the Arctic trader, Dugmore; and the German-born Gustav von Seyffertitz, who plays She’s calculating servant, High Priest Billali. The latter is an interesting character whose jealousies and motivations could’ve easily been developed into a subplot. One of his best lines of dialogue comes when our hero, Leo, is allowed to visit the throne room and Billali is left to reflect, “There are marvels to be seen today. A stranger shares the throne where I may scarce approach.”
The deeper elements of the story are expressed through the words of She, and there is something beautiful in her melancholic reflection on the endless flow of time. She is a haunted figure, and her florid dialogue and delivery captures that. The screenplay was written by Ruth Rose and Dudley Nichols. Rose was an important contributor to the films of Merian Cooper, having penned many of his greatest adventures. She gave King Kong its fairy tale quality, and she brought a verbal poetry to She. Rose, who wrote seven drafts of the screenplay, maintained the essence of an epic novel containing vast themes and subtleties.
Those familiar with the book decry the decision to move the story from Africa to the Arctic, but by the mid-1930s, so many films had already been set in Africa. Perhaps Cooper and Rose were looking for a more remote locale that could be equally mysterious. It’s also been suggested that the filmmakers might’ve wanted to avoid the miscegenation aspects from the novel, but this could’ve easily been written out while still maintaining the African setting. What developed in the story conferences certainly went beyond the realm of Haggard. “Is there anything else we can put in there to make it more exciting?” Cooper had asked Ruth Rose. “It already has everything but a saber-toothed tiger.” Ruth replied. “Great!” exclaimed Cooper. “Why didn’t I think of that? A saber-toothed tiger. Write it in!”
Ruth Rose was that rarest kind of woman– a gifted writer who had lived adventure in her own life. But she was not the only talent contributing to the story. Dudley Nichols was the more prestigious name attached to the project. He would work on several films for John Ford. He won an Academy Award for his work on Ford’s The Informer (1935). In addition, he wrote the screenplay for arguably the greatest adventure film that classic Hollywood ever produced, 1939’s Gunga Din, which was directed by George Stevens. His dialogue contributions for She, however, were drastically cut down. Ruth Rose came closer to the Victorian style of Haggard’s writing– chiefly in She’s dialogue. More modern, natural banter– the kind one might hear in a Howard Hawks movie– would be out of place here.
One of the deleted scenes. Photo courtesy of the Matthew C. Hoffman collection.
In 1933, when Merian Cooper first bought the She property from Carl Laemmle at Universal, he reportedly wanted James Whale to direct it. (Cooper was clearly an astute judge of talent.) That didn’t pan out and Whale would go on to direct Bride of Frankenstein in 1935. Cooper later asked his old friend Ernest Schoedsack to direct it. Schoedsack had co-directed King Kong with Cooper. This also fell through because Schoedsack did not feel the material could be filmed. This actually sounds more like a comment from a reader in the story department– not a statement from the man who shot a movie about a 50-foot gorilla terrorizing New York City. Schoedsack did, however, direct Cooper’s The Last Days of Pompeii.
She was ultimately directed by actor-turned-director Irving Pichel, who had co-directed The Most Dangerous Game with Schoedsack and would go on to make other films like Destination Moon (1950). Here, Pichel shares screen credit with Lansing C. Holden, an architect and former set designer. Holden was also a former pilot that Cooper had known, and this friendship led to his introduction to Hollywood. The physical look of She can be credited to Holden.
Two directors were needed to supervise the film’s visual look, but it was always Cooper who was the driving force behind the production. It was his imagination, as well as his values, that shaped the film’s creation. She was conceived by Cooper as a color film in three-strip Technicolor. RKO initially allocated a million dollar budget for the film with a hundred thousand dollars for the Technicolor process. However, before the cameras could roll, the studio executives, lacking Cooper’s vision, pulled the plug on shooting the film in color. In fact, the two million dollars that had been planned by the studio for both She and The Last Days of Pompeii was cut in half. (Another Cooper production, 1935’s Becky Sharp, would go on to become the first feature film shot in three-strip Technicolor.)
She has been colorized in recent years under the supervision of special effects pioneer Ray Harryhausen. Though he had nothing to do with the making of the original film, this was Harryhausen’s way of paying homage to Merian C. Cooper. However, as much as Harryhausen is to be commended as a master of stop-motion animation, I couldn’t disagree more with his decision to support the colorization. Regardless of Cooper’s intentions to film it in color, the fact is the film was not made in Technicolor. Colorizing it with a computerized paint gun only detracts from the richness of its black and white cinematography by J. Roy Hunt. Efforts to modernize it negate the creative decisions of those who designed its original mise-en-scene in black and white. On the dvd commentary, Harryhausen discusses how the color version will create a whole new audience by updating the film.
Though the color was never realized, a great film score was. One of She’s greatest strengths is Max Steiner’s music. Steiner was a brilliant Hollywood composer, the best in my opinion, and his score for She imbues the film with a scope and depth it might not otherwise have had. Film scoring was still in its early days then, but Steiner’s King Kong had been one of the major breakthroughs for film music. No longer did feature films use incidental music only for the opening and closing credits. By 1930s standards, She‘s orchestrations were quite modern. Steiner’s haunting compositions give She its mystery and grandeur. Interestingly, the three-note motif for She was in fact a variation of Kong’s three notes. The score was one of his best, in fact, and Steiner himself was very proud of it.
The complete recording was preserved and released on cd by retired film curator James D’Arc at Brigham Young University. It’s a recording as powerful and dramatic as anything written by the great classical composers. It has been described as “an opera without the arias.” One of Steiner’s more evocative cues, with a heavy use of percussion instruments, comes during the Festival of the Sacred Well– a dance number in the Hall of Kings that goes on for ten minutes. This entire sequence, reminiscent of Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring ballet, is one of the transcendent highlights of She, fusing together the film’s two greatest strengths: the music and the Art Deco decor. Though Steiner did win his first Academy Award in 1935 for The Informer, a more traditional film score, it is She that really deserved the award. His scoring for fantasy pictures was inspired. Unfortunately, when Steiner joined Warner Brothers in 1936, this genre of music would become a thing of the past for him.
The production design was by Van Nest Polglase. Polglase was the art director at RKO best known for his work on the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musicals. Over 1500 conceptual drawings were made. She’s “Barbaric Moderne” visual style recalls Egyptian and Mayan influences. Add the Caligari-like Expressionism seen in the hall of the Eternal Flame and you have one of the more visually-striking films RKO ever made in terms of set design. Lansing Holden, the co-director, was also an uncredited illustrator for the production. The set designs as well as the matte paintings and special effects work succeed in creating the unforgettable look of Kor, a world we can easily escape into.
“This doesn’t look so good to me.” ~Leo Vincey (Randolph Scott)
At the time of its initial release in July 1935, She lost money– $180,000 to be exact. Some critics were not very kind. Frank S. Nugent, later a screenwriter himself, wrote of the film in the New York Times, “If it belongs anywhere, it is in the children’s branch of the film library.” For Depression-era audiences, this fantasy remained something of an enigma. Its disappointing box office eliminated any chance of filming Haggard’s sequel, Ayesha, the Return of She. Theatre-goers might have expected more non-stop thrills. She didn’t make any money until 1949 when it was re-issued.
Merian Cooper himself called She his worst movie, but Cooper never made a bad one. Modern reviews of She are all over the map. I’m amused by many of the critiques I have read on IMDB. But to be clear, She is not camp or kitsch. Those are terms viewers use to describe what they don’t understand. Some people call She a laughably bad movie or refer to its stilted acting. Or it’s badly dated. “Dated” is a term some film historians lazily throw around for movies that can’t be appreciated in the era in which they were made. By that reasoning, every film becomes dated in some sense.
As stated, Merian Cooper had grander ideas for the final film under his RKO contract. You have the feeling that there were set pieces Cooper was forced to cut because of the budget. These were ideas that were put on ice like the inanimate saber-toothed tiger—frozen ideas thawed out now in the realm of what could’ve been. Reportedly, Cooper wanted a scene involving woolly mammoths to be animated through stop-motion by Willis O’Brien. But that, too, was excised from the script when the studio cut the budget in half. (Instead, we get a painted saber-toothed tiger.)
We can only imagine what She might’ve been had a visionary like Cooper been given a blank check– and the cast he originally wanted. All these years later, we can only judge by what is there on the screen. She is a cerebral fantasy with moments of solemn beauty. It has an other-worldly quality unlike any other film of its time. A lot of this atmosphere can be attributed to Max Steiner. She‘s more poetic interludes recall Universal’s The Mummy (1932), which was another film about lost love and reincarnation.
She’s story resonates now when society is still looking for age-defying ways to preserve itself. Our eyes are still on the grandfather clock as the pendulum swings back and forth. And in the face of man’s greatest enemy, Time, we still dream of recapturing or holding onto our fleeting youth. Artificial methods like Botox and plastic surgery are unnatural and have ugly consequences down the road. What we think will preserve us will only advance our decline, like Hasha-Mo-Tep after her over-exposure to the Eternal Flame. In 2025, there are scientific advancements in age-reversal. Synthetic human genomes and gene editing are no longer science fiction for the millionaires who think they can live forever.
The subtext of She suggests an appreciation for growing old naturally with the love of those closest to us– not the seductive, fantasy love on the other side of the mountain rim. Happiness and true wisdom come from accepting our mortality and not trying to hold it back. The flames of the hearth give more warmth and a longer glow than the cold flame of things not meant for man. This is what makes us human, and that is the humanity at the heart of She.
~MCH
For more on screenwriter Ruth Rose and the making of the Cooper-Schoedsack films, please check out this video I made a number of years back based on some rare audio recordings in my possession.
A 1979 television interview with Helen Gahagan.
Helen Gahagan, co-director Irving Pichel and Randolph Scott read through the script.
