Today’s the anniversary of the opening of King Tut’s burial
chamber by Howard Carter and George Herbert in 1923, and there’s no better way
to celebrate random historical events than with thematically appropriate episodes
of The Twilight Zone!
This time, we’re checking out a Season Five number called
“Queen of the Nile,” with a script attributed to Charles Beaumont. Beaumont was
a tragic, fascinating figure who helped shape the elements that are often best
remembered about the series. Though Rod Serling tends to take up most of the
conversations about TZ, many of the strongest episodes were penned by Beaumont.
But this is an episode from 1964, and by then the illness that would kill him at age 38 had begun to manifest. It’s widely known
that while Beaumont was still pitching ideas for The Twilight Zone, as well as other anthology shows, he was
beginning to rely on his writer friends to ghost the scripts and get them done
in time for production. The general consensus is that the heavy lifting for
this one was done by Jerry Sohl.
“He was, and remains in his work today, a writer of ideas,
notions, fancies. You can tell his ideas to your friends in a few crisp lines,”
Ray Bradbury said of Beaumont. “He is a storyteller who weaves his stories out
of those ideas, some large, or, you may claim, predominantly small.”
We begin with entertainment reporter (get a real job, you
bum!) Jordy Herrick arriving at the home of movie star Pamela Morris. It’s a
large home. Stately, the narrator from Batman might call it. There’s a circle
drive, a somewhat wild garden full of large shady trees, and some… unique
statuary about.
A large onyx representation of Wadjet-Bast seems to be
watching Jordy. She is flanked by two white stone pharaohs. A quirky take on
garden gnomes.
The Wadjet-Bast is an enigmatic figure, a woman with the
head of a lioness and a sun disc for her crown. Around her neck is wrapped a
snake that raises its head just above hers. Jordy is amused by it, as he hops
out of his convertible and heads up to the house.
A maid lets him in and leads him through a large marble foyer,
decorated with a pair of golden sphinxes.
It bears mentioning that this was made a year after
Elizabeth Taylor’s Cleopatra changed eyeliner and home décor in a significant
way. If this episode had been made a few years earlier, these objects would
have looked more occult than on-trend, but in 1964 the immediate instinct is to
associate them with a fad that a lot of people were indulging in.
Jordy heads into the living room to wait for Pamela Morris.
He finds that it’s also decorated to the hilt with Egyptian-looking artefacts,
though it doesn’t seem to bother him. What does
pique his interest is an enormous portrait of a beautiful woman with raven
black hair, and a dignified but somehow patronizing smile. She’s very
beautiful. In the corner of the portrait is a signature that Jordy takes
special note of. Bersonne 1940.
A splashing sound catches his attention, and he heads out a
set of open French doors that lead to the backyard pool. There – in a sequence
no doubt calculated to evoke Elizabeth Taylor’s famous milk bath – the lovely
Pamela Morris, played by Ann Blyth, swims for the steps. She’s wearing a white
swimsuit with a little skirt that looks particularly Grecian. She smiles as the
maid wraps her in a towel and points out Jordy, lurking voyeuristically by the
doors.
Pamela is on her way to greet her new acquaintance when
she’s stopped by an old woman who doesn’t look too pleased. In fact, she looks
full of bitterness and resentment. She’s being played by Celia Lovsky, who was
married to Peter Lorre in real life, and played T’Pau on Star Trek!
“I’m not going to stand by and watch it happen this time,”
the old woman says to Pamela.
But Pamela doesn’t have time for dire warnings or vague
threats. She brushes the old woman off and waves a coy, regal greeting to
Jordy.
Jordy, who is already smitten with the bathing beauty, waves
back.
There’s a good chance that his… fondness for beauty is going
to result in a very bad thing happening to him. In the Twilight Zone.
Oh, wait, damn, that’s Rod’s job.
Here he is:
“Jordan Herrick, syndicated columnist whose work appears in
more than 100 newspapers. By nature a cynic, a disbeliever, caught for the
moment by a lovely vision. He knows the vision he’s seen is no dream. She is
Pamela Morris, renowned movie star, whose name is a household word and whose
face is known to millions. What Mr. Herrick does not know is that he has also just looked into the face of the
Twilight Zone.”
Thanks, Rod!
(Rod’s the best.)
While Pamela has been upstairs changing into her next glorious
outfit, Jordy has been snooping around in his plaid sport jacket, staring at
that portrait again. Jordy isn’t horrible or anything, he’s just easily
beguiled and a little doofy, and it has a bad habit of skewing just a touch sleazy.
Pamela, for her part, is playful and just the right amount
of seductive to bamboozle the easily bamboozled Jordy. She confesses to loving a
good swim, and apologizes for keeping him waiting. Ann Blyth started her career
playing a teenage femme fatale in 1945’s Mildred
Pierce, so this sort of scene comes very easily to her, and it works well.
But it’s time to get down to brass tacks. Jordy has a very
specific angle for his next article, and that’s Pamela’s age.
How old, exactly, is timeless beauty Pamela Morris?
To her credit, Pamela laughs and says she understands. She
has producers and directors, and reporters have editors. All of them are
looking for the best story as quickly as possible. It’s the nature of these
things. Besides, a woman as famous as she is can’t afford to have any secrets.
Jordy is impressed with her humour, and confesses he was
afraid the question would offend her.
Pamela replies that he has nothing to fear from her.
“Now, why don’t you tell me how old you think I am?” She
asks, standing up and twirling like a model at the end of a runway.
“You don’t look any older now than you did in that painting
over there.” Jordy hedges, nodding at the portrait he has developed a
Dana-Andrews-in-Laura type obsession with.
Ah, the portrait. Pamela says she was only a young teenager
when she posed for it, and it was Bersonne’s vision to paint her as a woman
grown into her beauty. Pamela says he wanted to “project the flowering of a
fragile blossom” and that he was a wild, intense personality. Her first taste
of the real world.
The maid brings in a tray of coffee, and begins to serve
Pamela and Jordy while the old woman from before watches them from a doorway.
With a sort of grim determination, the old woman strides into the room, and
Pamela’s face becomes an icy mask.
She introduces the old woman as Viola Draper. Her mother.
Jordy says that Viola must be very proud to have so famous a
daughter, and Pamela quickly asserts – with a gleaming white smile – that her
mother has never approved of her career. Viola says coldly that she had absolutely
no say in the matter, and Pamela jokes about being headstrong.
“Was she always as beautiful as she is right now?” Jordy
asks.
“Always.” Viola answers.
But when Jordy starts to try and get Pamela’s date of birth
out of Viola, Pamela quickly sends the older woman to the kitchen to check on
the staff. She tells Jordy that Viola’s mind is going, she’s getting too old to
hang onto her marbles, and it’s sad.
To cheer things up, Pamela suggests they head out onto the
terrace.
She lounges on a wide upholstered deckchair, reclining like
an Ancient goddess, and tells Jordy that this is where she spends most of her
time. Looking at the stars at night. She pulls him gently towards her, and he
curls up next to her on the chair. He’s easier to catch than a cold. But, to
his credit, he at least tries to
stick to his mission of figuring out Pamela’s age – and he explains to us why
people might be wondering about it.
“I’m 38, Jordan. May I call you Jordan?” Pamela is all wide
eyes and soft lips. “Is 38 terribly old?”
“The years have never been kinder to anyone,” Jordy waxes
poetically.
Keep it together, Jordy! You’re a journalist!
Man, this guy’s no Carl Kolchak.
He does, however, have some notes and a list of dates that
he wants to clear up, but before he can start citing them, Pamela goes on the
defensive. She asks if he’s been reading columns by “stupid, jealous women.”
Geeze, Pamela, show some solidarity. There’s no need to get
catty and throw the whole gender under the bus just because some showbiz
reporter is getting dangerously close to your sinister secret. Ovaries before
brovaries, Pam.
Anyway, Viola is listening to their conversation from a
nearby doorway, and she looks resigned and horrified as Jordy asks how it was
possible for Pamela to have starred in a film made in 1935.
Twenty-nine years ago.
This was prior to the internet, which as innovations go has
done probably the most for record-keeping in terms of films, images, credits –
all the stuff that it’s Jordy’s job to keep track of. It’s not so simple for
him to find all of these connections, and even trickier to verify them.
Pamela explains that there was another actress with the same
name in that film, and it’s a problem that’s come up before. This should be a
red flag for Jordy, since he ought to know it’s against union rules for two
actors to use the same name. But he lets that one go.
The one he’s not going to let go is a film from 1940 called
Queen of the Nile, Pamela made it with an actor named Charles Danforth.
According to her story, she would have been 15 years old. She replies that
Juliet was 12. Then she laughs it off and explains that she matured early, and
nobody involved in the film knew she was only 15, because she’d lied to get the
job.
It’s not totally implausible for the era. Veronica Lake was
only 17 when she was the leading lady in Sullivan’s Travels, and Sandra Dee was
claimed to be two years older than she was so that she could find more work as
a teenage model. More recently, Mila Kunis hid her age when she auditioned for That 70’s Show, being only 14 and
heavily implying (without outright saying) she was 17 or 18. So, it’s a thing
that happens.
Jordy believes her, and asks if the film inspired her choice
of décor. She says it did, and that she calls the style Early Egyptian. Then
she jokes that if her first big break had been in a horror film, she might have
a house decorated with caskets.
“I do still feel 15, I really do!” She smirks, then changes
her mind. “No. With you sitting there, I feel new and breathless and just 21.”
She wants to savour everything in life, to have as much of
life as possible. She tells him that she so rarely gets to speak her mind and
share her dreams. And she wants to share his
dreams.
She pulls him in for a sudden, passionate kiss.
He doesn’t do anything to stop her.
I get the impression that there’s a part of Jordy that’s
always sort of fantasized about one of the elegant stars he interviews falling
in love with him. Devoting herself to his life, the way he’s devoted so much of
himself to writing about silver screen goddesses and queens. He’s letting it happen
because he wants it to happen.
Pamela pulls away and does the old: “What must you think of
me? Kissing you so intensely?”
It’s obviously manipulative, but Jordy is the last person
to care. Watching from the shadows, Viola clenches her eyes closed and
retreats, temporarily defeated.
Jordy makes a date to
see Pamela again for dinner that night, and begins to leave.
Pamela watches him go, the girlishness falling away from
her. When she turns to walk back into the house, she’s as cold and glittering
as a gemstone.
But Viola has decided that she’s going to stick to her guns,
and this time things are going to go down differently. She makes her way down a
shortcut in the front garden, and calls to Jordy as he heads for his car.
There’s a sense of warning in her voice when she begins by telling Jordy that
she thinks he’s a nice young man. Jordy is a little confused, and to be fair he
hasn’t figured out Pamela’s super obvious secret yet, even though I’m pretty
sure the rest of us know what the deal is. To him, this super intense old woman
just called him over for a secret conversation in the bushes so that she could
give him grandmotherly compliments.
Of course, her real reason was to tell him to never come
back to the house. (Surprise! He’s not going to listen!) He should never even see Pamela Morris again,
if he can at all avoid it. Pamela is older than he thinks.
Jordy says that Pamela told him her age.
“Yes. 38.” Viola smiles cynically.
“Well, isn’t that true?”
“Mr. Herrick, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you how old
I think she is.”
Uh… think? Don’t
mothers generally know the age of
their own children? I mean, Jordy’s not a mother, but he’s pretty sure that
would be the case.
Viola tells him that he’s absolutely right. But she’s not
Pamela’s mother – she’s her daughter!
We get a commercial break from the good people at The Twilight Zone to help us absorb this
shock. And it would be more of a shock if they hadn’t already done a Beaumont
episode back in Season One called “Long Live Walter Jameson” that had a pretty
similar premise.
Non-monstrous immortals were kind of a hot topic in
speculative fiction around this time, especially on television. Most of them –
like Star Trek’s Flint – were
meditations on the responsibilities and the burden of loneliness an immortal
might face. But Beaumont was generally of the opinion that even if you weren’t
a horrible person at the beginning of your immortal journey, by the time you’d
lived a few hundred years, you would become one. In his books, there really was
no such thing as a non-monstrous
immortal.
As for our old pal Jordy, he’s basically ignored every
single thing Viola said to him, and when next we see him, he’s pulling into the
circle drive with Pamela in the front seat. It’s at the end of a wonderful
evening, or at least Pamela says she enjoyed it. Jordy seems a little weirded
out. Not weirded out enough to stop himself from trying to get some, but that’s
Jordy for you.
After he seems a little less into a kiss than she was
expecting, she asks the intrepid young reporter if anything’s bothering him. He
says that Viola told him that she was Pamela’s daughter and that Pamela is pretty old. He’s not clear on how old,
but the implication was that it was old.
Pamela brings up the Viola-is-suffering-from-dementia cover
story again, but this time throws in a new twist. According to her, Viola has
been totally unhinged since she caused the auto accident that killed Pamela’s
father about ten years ago. Since then it’s been unholy immortality this, I’m
not your mother I’m your daughter that, it’s really quite upsetting. Thanks for
bringing it up and ruining Pamela’s nice evening on the town Jordy, you’re a
great date.
Jordy apologizes and changes the subject by talking about
his whirlwind life as an entertainment reporter based in Chicago. Pamela says
she played Chicago once, at the Wells Theater.
The Wells Theater? This sparks an idea in Jordy’s mind, and
he’s clearly mulling some stuff over as he makes out with Pamela a second time.
His lips say “kissing time” but his eyes say “I’m onto you, immortal witch!”
Later, once he’s done crossing the boundaries between
journalist and subject, his gives Reuter’s man Krueger a call. Back before
anyone had access to Google, being Google was a person’s job. Krueger does
everything from looking up images and photographs to researching dates and
scanning old newspaper articles for mentions of specific subjects. Everything
is carefully filed and made of paper – if the office were to catch fire, some
of those records would be lost forever. (It’s kind of a fascinating job, and if
you’d like to see a story that features a Human Google more prominently, you
should check out Desk Set, a romantic
comedy starring Katherine Hepburn as Google.)
Krue is happy to hear from Jordy, and asks if he wants to
chase down a new story for him. Jordy explains that he’s still working on the
Pamela Morris one.
“Listen, I want you to do something for me,” Jordy asks, “look
up the file on a picture called Queen of the Nile.”
No problem. Which one does he want? Krueger tells Jordy that
there were two versions, a silent film made around 1920, and a talkie in 1940.
Jordy says he’d like him to pull both.
It’s hard to tell if Jordy believes that Pamela is hiding some supernatural secret. He looks
amused here, bouncing on the balls of his feet, and you can tell that if it
comes together enough, he thinks it’ll make a great story. But is it a great
story because it’s true, or because it’s so fantastic and there’s enough
evidence to make people wonder if it’s true? I don’t think even Jordy knows yet.
Krueger quickly grabs what Jordy’s looking for and returns
to the phone. The first question is what the actress who starred in the silent
version was named. The answer is Constance Taylor, as a nod to Hollywood’s most
recent Cleopatra. Actually, Krueger tells us, back before he was a one-man
search engine, he had interviewed Taylor when he was a fresh new face on the
journalism scene.
He recalls that on the last day of shooting Queen of the
Nile, there was an accident. A cave-in in a tomb in Egypt – they were filming
on location, which is kind of ridiculous for a film from 1920 – and poor
Constance Taylor didn’t make it out in time. But they never actually found the
body.
It was the end of a promising career, according to Krueger.
Constance Taylor had been something extraordinary, an ageless beauty. He
remembers that she’d been a big hit back in the days of the Floradora girls.
Back in the 1900’s, a musical sensation started in Britain
and soon took Broadway by storm. It was called Floradora, and it was about a perfume company, a fake hypnotist,
and the undying but untidy love of three couples who all get married at the
end. The women of the chorus were called Floradora girls, and were sources of
great speculation and admiration. The most famous of them was Evelyn Nesbit,
who married money and found herself mixed up in a notorious murder scandal.
In 1930, a film starring Marion Davies was made called The Floradora Girl. Marion Davies was
also mixed up in a notorious murder scandal.
So, with all that in mind, we learn that Krueger has taken
this timeline back all the way to 1900, if Constance Taylor and Pamela Morris
are one and the same. Krueger also remembers that Constance Taylor had been
married about six times before the accident, though he can’t quite recall the
fates of her husbands.
Jordy asks him if he’s got a photo of this Constance Taylor,
and Krueger says he does. It’s time to compare the two women and see if any of
this holds water.
Krueger lays the two photos side by side, and it’s obvious
that it’s the same woman. Krueger doesn’t commit to the answer though, saying
that the makeup and costuming are so distinct, it’s really hard to say for
sure. If you dress a woman up like Cleopatra, she looks dressed up like
Cleopatra.
I’m cutting him some slack because he has gigantic glasses
and seems like a good guy, but the resemblance goes well beyond “they’re both
wearing heavy eyeliner.”
This maybe is more than enough for Jordy. He asks
Krueger to send along the photos, as well as any clippings about Pamela Morris’s
romantic entanglements. And anything Krueger can find about either Taylor or
Morris playing the Wells Theater in Chicago.
Speaking of, off the top of his head, does Krueger happen to
remember what year the Wells Theater got torn down?
“Oh, sometime back in the 20’s. Why, Jordy?”
Jordy says he’s not going to tell anybody until he’s 100%
sure… always a good sign for a character in a dangerous situation.
A few days later, we see that Pamela is having another swim
in her pool, distracting her from the secret meeting going on in the house.
Jordy has come to speak with Viola.
Viola is going through the clippings and evidence he’s
brought, while he stands by the windows and watches Pamela swim. The first time
he’d done that, he was filled with admiration and desire. Now he’s filled with
disgust and fear.
“It’s true,” Viola nods, closing up the file of clippings
and handing it to him. “It’s all true. But don’t show it to her, take it and
leave.”
Do what the lady says, Jordy. You can get a statement from
Pamela over the phone.
Instead of leaving, he flips the file open to a specific
clipping from the 1920’s that shows an advertisement for a play at the Wells
Theater. There's a photograph of a very familiar raven-haired bombshell.
“Is this Pamela?” Jordy demands.
Yes! God! She just told you all of it’s true, now go Jordy!
Viola says that Pamela has had many different names and identities over the
years.
“But she herself hasn’t changed for forty years?”
Obviously longer than that, Jordy. You’re terrible at this.
Take your clippings and leave. Now.
“At least 70 years. The total sum of my life,” Viola
explains. “She’s ageless. Perhaps eternal.”
Jordy wants to know how Pamela does it. What the secret is.
Pond’s Cold Cream, Jordy. Now get the hell out of the house!
Viola takes him to one of the Egyptian statues. A sun disc
with a scarab on it. She explains that she doesn’t know the secret, and if she
did, she’d probably use it for herself. But she suspects it has something to do
with the beetle, with Egypt.
Jordy notes that the scarab is the symbol of everlasting
life, which is wrong. The scarab is a symbol of regeneration and rebirth. Still fits for Pamela.
He asks Viola why she stays.
Well, Jordy, nobody else has the secret of eternal youth, so
if you want to have it, you’ve got to stick around.
But there’s a little more to the story. Viola hints at
something having happened between her husband and her mother, but we don’t get
any details. Which is a bummer because it sounds slightly more interesting than
the Jordy angle.
Still not leaving despite the existence of the telephone,
Jordy begins to ask what happened to some of the men that mysteriously
disappeared out of Pamela’s life.
It’s then that Pamela comes back into the house.
This time, she wearing the greatest outfit ever.
Sandals, loose black trousers, a golden top with tassels and the structure of a
breastplate, and a black robe with golden trim. The costumes for Pamela are
really on point, which is great because this is not the most expensive looking
episode. The lighting is very sitcom, and there are some painted backgrounds,
and (unfortunately) the ancient artefacts all look super fake. Ann Blyth keeps everything going, not only with a delicately menacing performance, but with her parade of fab looks.
She looks annoyed as the maid brings in the cart of tea and
coffee. Has Viola been telling Jordy wild stories again?
Jordy doesn’t think they’re wild. In fact, he has a whole
briefcase full of evidence.
Well. That won’t do.
Pamela tells the maid to take Viola upstairs and serve her
tea in her room so that she can talk to Jordy alone. She drops two drugged
sugar cubes in a cup of coffee while Jordy’s back is turned.
Jordy drinks the coffee.
“What is it you want? Money?” Pamela asks.
“No. Just the truth.”
“Then you shall have it.”
She glides to a nearby plant, where she has nestled a small
glass box beneath the leaves. She comes back and sits on the arm of the sofa
next to Jordy. He’s not looking so great. He’s already sweating buckets, and he
might barf. He looks barfy.
Pamela shows him that the glass box contains a scarab.
A very rare scarab, gifted to her a very long time ago by a
pharaoh.
“Pharaoh?” Jordy confirms deliriously.
“You said so yourself, Mr. Herrick. I was once Queen of the
Nile.”
“Wha… baaa?” Jordy kind of belches out in horror as the
poison overwhelms him and he collapses in a sweaty, unconscious heap on the
floor.
Pamela moves swiftly to his side and unbuttons his shirt.
She places the scarab on his bare chest, and watches as
Jordy’s youth is steadily drained from him.
His hair greys, his face becomes lined, then wrinkled, his
skin becomes grey and sallow, the hair turns white. Then, all too quickly,
there his body has become bones. Cracking bones. And soon, nothing but dust.
He should have left the house when Viola told him to.
Pamela Morris or Constance Taylor or whatever her name
really is carefully plucks the scarab from the dried out bones and places it on
her own chest. She absorbs the life of Jordan Herrick with a look of relief and
satisfaction on her face.
Once the process is complete, she quickly slips the scarab
back into its glass box and returns it to the plant. As she does, Viola returns
– perhaps trying to save Jordy one last time – only to find a suit full of bone powder on the living room floor.
Viola is devastated. Pamela scolds her for coming in before
she was called, and tells her to clean up what’s left of Jordy.
How many men have passed through their vacuum cleaner? A
dozen? Two dozen? How often does Pamela need to do this, and how often does she
choose to do this?
The doorbell rings.
Pamela hurries to the front hall, where the maid introduces
another handsome young reporter. Pamela is breathless and beguiling as usual,
as she takes his arm and leads him to a chair.
Will his fate be the same as Jordy’s? Or will he manage to
make it out thanks to a twist of timing, like old Krueger had? It’s hard to
say.
But the next time you see a YouTube sensation who looks an
awful lot like a long-ago beauty queen who came to a mysterious end, spare a
thought for Pamela and her little friend the scarab.
Take it away, Rod:
“Everybody knows Pamela Morris, the beautiful and
eternally-young movie star. Or does she have another name even more famous, an
Egyptian name from centuries past? It’s best not to be too curious, left you
wind up like Jordan Herrick, a pile of dust and old clothing discarded in the
eternity of the Twilight Zone.”
OMG this was hysterical! You had me laughing with "A cave-in in a tomb in Egypt – they were filming on location, which is kind of ridiculous for a film from 1920".
ReplyDeleteI was obsessed with all things Egyptian as a child, and I love this episode, this post made my day!
Summer
Thank you so much, Summer! I'm so glad you enjoyed it!
ReplyDelete