Mummy Dearest: A Horror Tradition Unearthed Page #4

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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

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