Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 210: Flame of Islam (1953)

Ed Wood's Flame of Islam has apparently been located under the name Cleopatra Follies.

For a raging alcoholic with an unpredictable-at-best career, Ed Wood did an admirable job of keeping track of his numerous film and writing credits. From at least the early 1950s to the late 1970s, the optimistic Eddie kept updating his résumé in the hopes of scoring future work. Happily, some of his résumés have survived and have made it into the hands of fans and scholars. Bob Blackburn, for instance, has used these documents to track down various short stories and magazine articles Eddie wrote in the 1960s and '70s.

An article mentioning Flame of Islam.

One title that has long intrigued me is a film called Flame of Islam (1953) that Eddie claimed to have written, but not directed, when he was still fairly new to the motion picture industry. What could such a film be about? Would it have anything to do with the Islamic faith? Would it be controversial by today's standards? I despaired of ever finding this incredibly obscure movie until January 2015, when reader Douglas North informed me that Islam was likely an early '50s burlesque short featuring dancer Shirley "The Pussycat Girl" Hayes. According to a Billboard article from 1953, Islam was just one of two "three-dimension pix" that Shirley had made, along with something called Murder in Paris.

It's now January 2025, a full decade later, and I can now report that I have finally seen Flame of Islam under the admittedly-less-intriguing title Cleopatra Follies. The film is indeed a three-dimensional burlesque short featuring Shirley Hayes, along with Zabuda and Paula French, and it has been preserved shockingly well over the course of 70-plus years. My opportunity to see this strange film came through a Kickstarter-backed Blu-ray of Arch Oboler's Domo Arigato (1973), a movie I'd never even heard of. Cleopatra is included as a bonus feature on the disc.

So what do we get here? Well, as presented on this Blu-ray, the film starts with a lengthy, somber onscreen caption describing its provenance and current condition:

FLAME OF ISLAM was the first of five burlesque shorts presented in anaglyphic 3-D by Oakland and San Francisco burlesque theater magnate, Harry A. Farros. Photographed in Los Angeles circa May 1953, the title was changed to CLEOPATRA FOLLIES shortly before release on August 8, 1953. While working with George Weiss at Screen Classics in the spring of 1953, Edward D. Wood, Jr. wrote the script for this 3-D film under the title FLAME OF ISLAM. Wood lists it in a resume that he circulated around that time and we are grateful to Brendon Sibley for providing this information. 

3-D Film archive founder Bob Furmanek discovered the original left/right 35mm elements for CLEOPATRA FOLLIES at the shuttered Movielab Film Laboratories in Hollywood circa 1985. Despite our best efforts, we were not able to secure the material and it's likely they were junked with other orphaned film elements. Fortunately, we recently acquired a very faded 35mm anaglyphic print. Thanks to advanced digital techniques developed by 3DFA Technical Director Greg Kintz, we have been able to extract the original left/right data. Due to this severe fade, some baked-in ghosting on the left eye element remains.

Despite all this hand-wringing and disclaiming, the film actually looks quite good, probably sharper and clearer than it did in 1953. 

What stands out here, literally and figuratively, are the three-dimensional effects. After the opening disclaimer ends, Cleopatra Follies runs about ten minutes and showcases three separate dancers, each performing in what looks like the spacious courtyard of a large California home. There are vases in the foreground and archways in the background, and these objects really lend a sense of depth to the image. The dancers themselves occasionally add to the effect by extending their arms toward the audience. And when they walk around, it's almost as if they're walking off the screen into your lap. Imagine Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) watching that fateful hologram of Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) in Star Wars (1977).

The film's opening credits are simplicity itself: "Harry A. Farros presents Cleopatra Follies. Copyright MCMIII. Broadway Roadshow Productions." No surprises there. Ed Wood's involvement in this project was limited to the film's script. Apparently, he was given some already-completed footage of the three dancers and asked to write some narration for it. In retrospect, this assignment was not unlike his later work for Bernie and Noel Bloom, writing photo captions for adult magazines and subtitles for porno loops. Only here, the women keep their clothes on.

Burlesque dancer Zabuda.

The first dancer to appear in the film is the raven-haired Zabuda (aka Gloria Robles), clad in the kind of scanty, diaphanous costume that we might imagine a harem girl wearing in an old movie set in the desert. Here's what the narration says about her: "May we present Zabuda in an Oriental specialty entitled Slave to the Sultan!" That's it. These exotic dance routines were Zabuda's specialty in the 1950s, and she took particular pride in her graceful arm movements. It is her routine, vaguely evocative of the Middle East, that gives this film its now-startling title. It's my guess that the name Flame of Islam was meant to suggest the mystery and intrigue of a faraway land, not to refer to any religion. I know that seems weird to us now, but keep in mind that this movie was made over 70 years ago. Anyway, Zabuda's routine, like those of the other two dancers, is underscored with generic jazz.

Next up is a slim brunette named Paula French. I suppose she was a West Coast burlesque star of the era, too, but almost everything I can find about her online is related to this specific film. When I searched through an archive of vintage newspapers, I found a few ads for Paula's nightclub appearances in North Hollywood and Van Nuys, dating from about 1954 to 1957. Someone named Paula French turns up in Sacramento in 1967, selling "home furnishings," but I don't know if its our gal. Here's what our narrator tells us about her in Cleopatra Follies: "The Gold Coast of California is the natural habitat of pretty girls, and one of the tops is Paula French in her interpretation of Exotic Mood." (It might be "Exotic Moon" or "Exotic Moods," but the audio cuts off. The narrator also pronounces "habitat" as "habi-tot.") Paula has shorter hair than Zabuda, and her dance is filmed in a different part of the same courtyard.

The third and final performer in Cleopatra Follies is the aforementioned Shirley Hayes, the red-headed dancer that Douglas North mentioned to me ten years ago. If Zabuda's gimmick was evoking the Middle East, Shirley's gimmick was imitating a cat by wearing a whiskered mask and prowling the stage in a feline sort of way. "And now for your pleasure," says our deep-voiced narrator (not Ed, by the way), "we bring you the firebrand from New Orleans, Shirley Hayes, in an unusual creation, The Pussycat Girl." Shirley then does her signature routine for a few minutes, still accompanied by anonymous jazz. She does remove her mask before the short ends, allowing us to see her entire face. The "Pussycat Girl" sequence has the same backdrop as the "Slave to the Sultan" sequence, including the same vases.

With its lengthy wordless passages and its bevy of sexy dancing girls writhing for our enjoyment, Cleopatra Follies reminded me a great deal of Orgy of the Dead (1965) and the burlesque sequences in Glen or Glenda (1953). The Wood content amounts to a mere 61 words of narration. Is this film essential to our understanding of Edward D. Wood, Jr.? Hardly. But it's a neat curio and a valuable souvenir of a long-gone era of "adult" entertainment.

Some images related to the film have been posted here.