She (1935)

My Review

“She” is a science fiction film about an expedition to the North Pole looking for the Flame of Life, another name for the Fountain of Youth. The film has two directors, Lancing C. Holden and Irving Pichel, who put together a project with terrible production values, bad acting, and an atrocious screenplay with corny dialogue. It was “written” by Dudley Nichols and Ruth Rose, adapted from “She: A History of Adventure,” an 1887 novel by H. Rider Haggard.

The cast includes Helen Gahagan, Helen Mack, Nigel Bruce, Noble Johnson, Jim Thorpe, and Randolph Scott, a distinguished actor who had a career which lasted from 1928-1962. In contrast, this was the only feature film for Helen Gahagan, who later served in the House of Representatives from the Los Angeles area (1945-1951). She was defeated in a U. S. Senate race in 1950 against Rep. Richard M. Nixon, who later became the 37th President of the U. S. She was married to fellow movie star Melvyn Douglas. Helen Gahagan Douglas was reportedly the first to popularize the term “Tricky Dick” in this race.

Another interesting footnote to our story is that the title role of “She” featuring Gahagan was the inspiration for Walt Disney in his creation of the evil queen character in “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” (1937). The unwatchable “She” was a flop at the box office for RKO Radio Pictures.