Portraits of
She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed
part VIII

Here's the video box for the 1925 silent film version of She starring Betty Blythe. It survives as a 77 minute black & white feature. Because the dialogue cards written by Haggard himself, it is regarded as the truest to his novel. Though this subserviant posture for She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed is certainly not the chracter of the novel.

While on the subject of silent films, here's a studio portrait of super-vamp Velaska Surratt, who certainly had the right look to play Ayesha. The 1917 silent film, alas, is not known to survive. Contemporary reviews reveal that it had quite an original climax, in that Ayesha, entering the eternal flame, is transformed into an ape.

This is a studio portrait of another beauty, with such a powerful profile she is perfectly suited to play She. The 1911 two-reel version does survive, & is available on the video market. Snow also played the titular character in the 1912 film Jess based on the H. Rider Haggard novel of the same name.

This paperback Spanish language edition of Haggard's Ayesha: The Return of She was issued in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1975. The scowly look on Ayesha's face as the eternal flame bares up around her is good enough to please me.