#Lost but not forgotten

[hibikiloserl]

quick doodle!

[fibula-rasa]

Lost, but Not Forgotten: The Dancer of the Nile (1923)

Alternate Titles: Tut-ankh-amen, Tutankhamen of Luxor

Direction: William P.S. Earle

Scenario: William P.S. Earle

Original Story: Blanche Taylor Earle

Production Manager: Dick L’Estrange

Camera: Jules Cronjager & Joe Goodrich (assistant)

Scenic Artist: Xavier Mochado

Set Designer: Paul Dodge

Technical Advisor: Capt. Dudley S. Corlette

Studio: William P.S. Earle Pictures Corporation (Production) & Film Booking Offices of America (F.B.O.) (Distribution)

Performers: Carmel Myers, Bertram Thomas Grassby, Malcolm McGregor, Anthony Merlo, Sam de Grasse, Iris Ashton, June Elvidge, Paul Weigel, Howard Gaye, Mother/Nellie Anderson, Beatrice Marsh, & Earle Marsh

Premiere: 12 October 1923, Loew’s New York, New York, NY

Status: presumed entirely lost

Length: 6 reels,  5,787 feet

Synopsis (synthesized from magazine summaries of the plot):

Princess Ankhnespaton [sic] (June Elvidge), daughter of King Akhnaton [sic] (Howard Gaye), has a run in with a band of thieves while traveling. Prince Karmit (Malcolm McGregor) of Syria arrives, disguised as a merchant, and saves the princess. The princess becomes enamored with Karmit and invites him back to the royal residence in Thebes. 

While visiting the royal gardens, Karmit encounters a dancer, Arvia (Carmel Myers). He is instantly smitten. The princess is furious that Karmit has rebuffed her for a mere dancer.

Meanwhile, tension between those loyal to the king and those loyal to the old gods erupt when the seasonal flooding of the Nile river doesn’t occur. The princess finds in this situation an opportunity to get her revenge on Arvia. 

The princess decrees that Arvia will be offered as a human sacrifice to the god Sobek, in order that the Nile will rise as expected. Arvia is adorned with a poisoned amulet to knock her out while she is fed to the crocodiles.

In an unexpected turn of events, the high priest Pasheri (Sam De Grasse) discovers that the intended sacrifice is his own daughter. Pasheri sneaks into the chamber where Arvia is to be sacrificed and saves her at the last moment. 

With Pasheri’s aid, Karmit whisks Arvia away. As the Nile rises, the new couple sail away to Karmit’s kingdom to live happily ever after.

The princess goes on to marry Prince Tutankhamen (Bertram Grassby). And, after the death of her father Prince Tut will become King Tut.

Additional sequence(s) featured in the film (but I’m not sure where they fit in the continuity):

The Temple of Amun-Re is also depicted in the film.

Points of Interest:

While many contemporary reviewers of The Dancer of the Nile (DotN) didn’t mark it as an especially good film, props were given for the artistic effects achieved by Director Earle. Earle and his brother, Ferdinand Pinney Earle, were both pioneers of the era in special effects. 

Ferdinand was a painter who contributed matte paintings and art titles to many films of the 1910s and 1920s. While William was primarily a director, both brothers ambitiously created films that were on the cutting edge in regard to techniques of incorporating matte paintings with live actors/studio-shot footage. 

For William, it was DotN, and for Ferdinand it was A Lover’s Oath (1920/1925, presumed lost save for a few fragments), which was an adaptation of Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat. (ATM, I’m planning on doing the next installment of this series on this film!)

(Explanatory note: One technique at use here involves double exposure. Part of the frame is obscured while filming, leaving the obscured part of the film unexposed. The film is then rewound, with the exposed part of the film obscured, to film another element. The final result is, hopefully, a cohesive sequence. 

Another technique is shooting through painted glass, which, if painted and lit correctly, results in the painting and the scene occurring behind it appearing as a singular space. 

For example, a fully painted environment with live actors moving across the scene. In DotN, there is at least one scene where a live actress ascends a set of stairs, which is a painting. These techniques require an amazing amount of precision, but when done right they can be really dazzling. The double-exposure matting technique has persisted through most of film history, albeit rarely at the scale the Earle brothers were using it! 

Below is an illustration of how a moving version of matte photography works from a 1926 issue of Photoplay, followed by some stills from DotN that used the multiple-exposure technique.

I have a few posts coming up that go into more detail on how special effects were executed in films of the 1920s!)

William P.S. Earle’s focus on the artistic elements without much regard for story or characterization may have left many critics cold, but DotN did prove to be a lasting attraction, running in theatres around the world for years following its release.  DotN was produced hot on the heels of the discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb in 1922 in Luxor, which launched a new wave of Egyptomania. On one hand, Earle was cashing in on a trend, but on the other, he took the opportunity offered by assured profitability to experiment. In addition to the special effects discussed above, Earle attempted to capture as much period accuracy as possible in the painted settings, props, and costumes. Balancing historical accuracy with perceived “authenticity” in period art is exceedingly difficult—Earle seemingly had mixed success. However, one contemporary review in the magazine Art and Archaeology by Dudley S. Corlett (also the film’s technical advisor) is highly complementary of DotN’s attention to historical and artistic detail. [You can find the review in the transcription section!]

After Earle had more or less finished DotN, F.B.O. bought “Tut-ankh-amen” for distribution. F.B.O. financed reshoots that shifted the narrative away from Tut and towards Arvia, the dancer—hence the title change. I guess F.B.O. believed that cashing in on the trend of movies about dancers would be more lucrative than cashing in on Tut-mania!

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Transcribed Sources & Annotations over on the WMM Blog!

[calamity-on-crack]

a little bit of my female rage is showing

[ltsaint020735]

The voices are not mine or my fathers, but it fit so well. Happy Memorial Day everyone. To those we got back and those we lost along way. You are never forgotten

[mischievousblade]

Lord Enghearst

I hunted down that pale bloodsucker yesterday. He stands around disguised as Mayong Mistmoore himself. Only to mock anyone coming close:

Lord Enghearst shouts, 'I am one of his eldest children, but only an idiot would think that I am Mayong Mistmoore. It amuses me to allow him to believe that I am the patriarch, though. Ha ha! And now... I shall now amuse myself with you!'

Lord Enghearst can be found in the 19th Anniversary mission Lost but Not Forgotten which required a 12 people mini-raid in 2018.

[jeongtokkie]

abcdefghi__lmnopqrstuvwxyz would’ve been one year old today ㅠㅠ

[dtafm]

KODABOLU BROS. // Unused Art

This is old as heck and never saw the light of day. It’s always fun to mimic styles. Especially video game stuff! The show went in a different direction, but this one is still fun.

[palaodice]

Here at this calm waters I’ll wait…

#myart

[hinamie]

surprise it's yuri!!!in 2024

[thecosmoswhispers]

i can turn you into poetry but i cannot make you love me.

(creds will be added in a hot sec! my bad y'all ;p)

[hibikiloserl]

i did not feel like lining all of that so y’all are just gonna have to take this

prev | next

[fibula-rasa]

from the surviving fragments of A Lover's Oath (1925)  / Omar Khayyam (1923)

[letterboxd | imdb | youtube]

Director: Ferdinand Pinney Earle

Cinematographer: Georges Benoit

Performers: Kathleen Key, Ramon Novarro, & Edwin Stevens

This next installment of Lost, but Not Forgotten about A Lover's Oath has turned out to be a real whopper! This one is taking me a bit longer than usual because of its fascinating and complicated production and release history. So, for now, I hope you'll all accept some gifs of the few surviving minutes of tinted footage in anticipation of the full profile!

[onceetarget]

1st September 2001, first time I had to attend a funeral in a school uniform and the first time I laid a friend to rest.

Sammy "Coolman" Masiteng, continue resting in peace.

Now you have Mandla "Sabrina aka Spaceboy" and Thabiso "Dwebz" for company.

[goddidntdothis]

YOUR FATHER || A PATHOLOGIC FAN COMIC

[mischievousblade]

Lost but Not Forgotten

With the start of the actual Anniversary month, the old Anniversary quests are back in game. As I am still missing some, I looked into those and found this gem: Lost but Not Forgotten is from the 19th Anniversary and was desiged as a super hard mission for two groups (12 player/mercs). Some time has passed, so I thought I give it a try with my scooby gang and the game let me in with just 3 characters + 3 mercs.

The mission happens in the lovely dungeon Mistmoore's Chambers of Eternal Affliction from the good old LDoN expansion - with mobs beefed up to level 115. While those mobs are thankfully green/lighblue to me by now, the setting is challenging. Packed rooms, traps and tricky named mobs with variety of skills make me work for my (virtual) money.

I am actually giving up my first try to beat this. I guess the whole dungeon will take me 4 or 5 hours to get through (time limit is 6 hours). But now it's Monday 1:30 am and I only got like 1/3 in.

Better start earlier next time 😸