None of these fascinating women should be called “Scream Queens”. (You won’t find Fay Wray here.) Each captured my imagination in one way or another, even at a young age. Perhaps they only starred in ONE horror movie yet that role would linger in my memory long after I’d seen the film. Some I EQUATED with a particular movie. The one thing they all have in common? They’re all bewitchingly beautiful.
Zita Johann
Although she lacked the fiery intensity of Barbara Steele, I was still captivated by her as Helen Grosvenor in The Mummy (1932). Zita Johann was exotic and mysterious. Watching the movie as a kid, I lamented that I was not born with Egyptian blood – or Romanian for that matter, as Ms. Johann was of Romanian descent.
Though Johann made only eight films, she attained cinematic immortality with this one role.
I have always been interested in the occult,
but during the filming of The Mummy I had to keep such things private, especially in those days.
– Zita Johann
Ah, now where getting somewhere. In the documentary Mummy Dearest: A Horror Tradition Unearthed, Ms. Johann stated she was a practitioner of the “occult sciences” and believed in reincarnation. Inspired by the teachings of Madame Helena Blavatsky, Zita was a believer in the power of the occult and spirit. According to her obituary in The Independent, Johann, a self-confessed mystic, had a ritualistic, spiritual approach to the roles she played, revealing “To me, the theatre was related to the spirit. Before every performance I sat alone in my dressing-room, said my prayers, died unto myself and became my character.” She was also quite independently-minded…
Plus, don’t you just love the dress:
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House M - 