1/18/23
Newsletter #223
The Crack of Dawn
One of my earliest memories is my mom, dad and elder sister all dressed up and ready to go out to the movies, and I was not invited because I was too young. The reason that they were dressed up is because they were going downtown to see the roadshow screening of Lawrence of Arabia (1962). Even though I was only 5 years old, I so desperately wanted to see the movie that I pitched a fit, managing to knock over a glass of milk and really pissing off my father. Anyway, I didn’t get to go.
In the interim, I’ve seen the film at least 100 times. I know great swaths of the dialogue by heart. As I believe I mentioned at some earlier point, the first day I had Anthony Quinn on the set of Hercules I recited his big speech to him, which he seemed to find amusing, if pathetic. In the film Quinn plays Auda Abu Tayi, leader of the Howeitat tribe. When Lawrence conceives his plan to attack the town of Akaba from behind, Ali (Omar Sharif) says that they don’t have enough men. Lawrence says that he’s heard that Auda and the Howeitat are great warriors, and he’ll recruit them, then others will follow.
Who did he hear this from? It’s not in the movie, but Lawrence heard about all the tribes in Arabia from a British woman named Gertrude Bell, who was the functional head of the British Arab Bureau in Cairo, an incredible position for a woman to hold in 1914.
When Lawrence first meets Prince Faisal (Alec Guiness), in one of the greatest scenes in movies, with the wind causing the tent to creak, Faisal says to Lawrence, “I think you are one of those desert-loving British, like Doughty and Gordon of Khartoum.” Charles Montagu Doughty was a British historian who wrote Travels in Arabia Deserta (1888). Charles Gordon was a British Major-General who was killed in Khartoum, Sudan, in 1885. There is a big-budget movie about him called Khartoum (1966), with Charlton Heston as Gordon that’s just terrible. Heston was certainly a movie star, but he couldn’t do accents to save his life, and his attempt at British in the movie is embarrassing. However, in an absolutely outrageous performance, in blackface, Laurence Olivier plays the leader of the Muslim revolt, the Mahdi, and he’s spectacular. Olivier’s performance is so good that it’s worth sitting through the rest of the otherwise crummy movie to see it.
Gertrude Bell, another of those desert-loving British, was one of the first female students at Oxford University in the 1880s. She began going to the middle-east in 1892 (using her wealthy family’s money), and spent 20 years exploring Arabia and befriending the most powerful tribal chieftains, including Auda Abu Tayi, but more importantly, ibn Rashid.
The two most powerful tribal leaders in Arabia were ibn Rashid and ibn Saud. The Rashids were considered the mightier warriors, but they were outnumbered by the Sauds. The two tribes were at war for many, many years. Gertrude Bell became great friends with ibn Rashid, whom she described as the most amazing person she ever met. Few photographs exist of him, but he was a handsome and dashing young man (young Omar Sharif with the mustache would be good casting). Ibn Rashid became the King of Arabia in 1908 when he was 11 years old and ruled until 1920 when he was 21. Ibn Rashid was murdered by his uncle, who was then murdered. All of ibn Rashid’s male relatives above the age of 16 had managed to murder each other. There were no male Rashids left.
So, without a fight, the King of Arabia became ibn Saud, the second most powerful tribal leader. The country then became the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. In 1938 they discovered oil, just in time for World War II. King ibn Saud made a deal with American President Franklin Roosevelt to supply the U.S. with oil, and that deal has remained in place with the royal Saudi family ever since.
One of my favorite filmmakers, Werner Herzog, made a big, expensive movie about the fascinating life of Gertrude Bell called Queen of the Desert (2015). Bell is portrayed by Nicole Kidman. Gertrude Bell was not beautiful, but all right, whatever. This was the last movie I honestly looked forward to seeing. But it never came out. Eventually it appeared on TV and I saw it. Well, folks, I cannot express to you how bad of movie it is. If Herzog had been given the express order to fuck up the movie about the astounding life of Gertrude Bell, he couldn’t have done a better job.
Which is a real shame. Gertrude Bell deserves a really good movie; she was an astounding person, and a female hero. As a final note, and this is true, in 1919 Gertrude Bell basically got stuck with the job of putting in all of the borderlines on the map for the entire middle-east. Her boss at the Arab Bureau told her to do it, so she did it. She knew at the time that these lines would eventually cause problems – like say the border between Iran and Iraq – but somebody had to do it and she was the most qualified person to do the job. And this is the map of the middle-east we still use today.
And there you have it.