Monthly Archives: March 2018

March 24, 2018 · 3:42 pm

Holiday at the Nile Hilton

Toward the end of last year I posted some thoughts on revisiting the old Nile Hilton on Tahrir Square, now the Ritz-Carlton (here). I wrote a little about the hotel’s heritage as the first modern international hotel in Cairo. Well, just recently I came across a fascinating piece written by someone who was at the hotel’s launch back in early 1959. He was part of a press junket organised by the Hilton group composed of prominent columnists, journalists, and famous actors and actresses, all flown out from New York to Cairo for the big glitzy opening bash. Also in attendance was President Nasser and his special guest Marshal Josip Broz Tito, president of what was then Yugoslavia.

The piece, which I include in full below (it’s long but it’s an interesting read), originally ran in the July 1959 issue of Holiday. This was a sumptuous and glamorous magazine that in the immediate post-World War II-era did for travel what Vogue did for fashion. It was big, glossy, packed with gorgeous photography and noted for using serious literary talent, names like Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck and Jack Kerouac, packing them off on all-expenses vacation with a brief to file a lengthy report to the editors. You can read more about the background to the magazine in this 2013 Vanity Fair piece.

Anyway, here’s the Nile Hilton story, which was written by Ted Patrick, the editor of Holiday. Incidentally, the photos do not come from the magazine – the clipping I saw was text only, no images – but were found tucked away in dusty corners of the internet. The pic at the top of the post is supposedly taken from the balcony of the Nile Hilton but do the Pyramids really loom that large seen from the east bank of the Nile?

The cover of the July 1959 issue of Holiday

ONE AFTERNOON SEVERAL MONTHS AGO, a group of writers, columnists, editors, actors, actresses, society people, celebrity and celebrity-fringe characters gathered in the Sert Room of New York’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. We were lavishly entertained at a buffet luncheon by a tall, broad, handsome, Texas-type gentleman who was singled out for very special attention by Sert Room captains and guests. The Texas-like gentleman happened to own the hotel. He was Conrad N. Hilton. He had invited us to take part in the opening ceremonies and festivities for the newest hotel in his rapidly growing empire, the Nile Hilton in Cairo, and the luncheon was our send-off party. The group was cleverly chosen to give a nice balance of glamour, substance, beauty, gaiety and dignity to the affair, and included such prominent names as Hedda Hopper [Hollywood gossip columnist], Mrs. Earl Warren and her daughter Virginia [wife and daughter of the Chief Justice of the United States]; Jane Russell [Hollywood royalty], Cobina Wright [former model and actress], Van Johnson [film and TV actor], Earl Wilson [gossip columnist], Jeanne Crain [actress], Leonard Lyons [newspaper columnist], Hugh O’Brian [actor], Leo Carrillo [actor], Martha Hyer [actress], Robert Cummings [actor], Robert Sterling [actor] and his wife Anne Jeffreys, and Diahann Carroll [actress].

At four o’clock the show was ready and put on the road. To the popping of flash bulbs and scratching of pens signing autographs, we piled on buses and were driven to Idlewild. Every last shred of responsibility—baggage, passports, tickets—was daintily removed from our shoulders. I was given seat 15B. Next to me, in 15A, sat Hedda Hopper who, hats and all, was to be my seat companion for the trip. It turned out to be a most happy arrangement, and even gave me a conversational ploy for future cocktail or dinner parties. If Miss Hopper’s name should come up, I can say, offhandedly, “Interesting thing—Hedda never snores or mumbles in her sleep, and she never sleeps with her mouth open. Very attractive qualities.”

The atmosphere on the plane was nice and relaxed. Everyone knew everyone else, and everyone had something to contribute. Rarely has such beauty been assembled on a plane, and those air travelers of us who had been accustomed to a pulchritude ration of exactly two stewardesses beamed, and sighed, and dreamed.

The plane put down at Madrid late next morning, and again magic, unseen and efficient hands protected us from all the bedevilments customs and immigration officials can dream up. At the hotel there was a large crowd of autograph seekers and gapers in the lobby, friendly and well-behaved. Here, too, the tall, broad, handsome, Texas-type gentleman was singled out for very special attention, for here, too, he owned the hotel, which happened to be the plush Castellana Hilton.

We went to our rooms to freshen up, then were escorted to a Castilian luncheon outside Madrid. Here Leo Carillo appeared for the first time in his Spanish cowboy outfit. He was well accepted by the crowd as obviously his costume groped toward the Spanish.

The lunch was very fine indeed and we were suitably lulled into a siesta mood by an orchestra which played appropriate Spanish songs from an overhanging balcony. That evening our group took over, or more accurately, had given over to us, the entire Rendez Vous, the night club of the Hotel Castellana Hilton.

A flawless dinner was followed by night-club entertainment of rare quality. The flamenco singing and dancing were as good as you’d hear and see anywhere, the orchestra was first-rate, the Spanish dancers were seductive in the Spanish tradition, and the whole was one big, happy, family party. And there was no check.

Our next stop was Cairo, the principal destination of the trip. On approaching Cairo, Tex Butler, the very special pilot, received permission to circle the Pyramids and Sphinx, and the city before landing. The usual mob at the airport enthusiastically greeted the members of the group as they descended the stairs. Leo Carillo had on his third Spanish cowboy outfit (he had worn a white one in the daytime in Madrid, and a black one in the evening) but the Arabs, whose superb horsemen have probably the most dazzling riding costumes in the world, were not impressed. Having invented geometry, they have, I am sure, a word for square. Jane Russell, who is known to have an effect on even sluggish western blood, was just too overwhelming for the fiery Arab blood. They mobbed her, enveloped her, and it took a squad of cops to get her to the bus, where she landed shaken and ashen but still fully robed.

Jane Russell arriving at Cairo Airport, 28 Feb 1959

The approach to the Nile Hilton through the main square of Cairo was spectacular. The hotel is an outstanding example of modern architecture but designed to blend beautifully with the part of the city which surrounds it. The first sight was something of a shock as the hotel definitely was still in the process of being built. Workmen were all over the lobby, plaster and plaster dust all over the floor, and the song of hammers, planes and riveting machines filled the air. But the elevators worked and each guest was ushered into a completely finished, attractive room.

Jane Russell signing autographs at the Nile Hilton

The official opening of the hotel took place on a Sunday. At 11:00 A.M. there were ceremonies in the hotel plaza facing the huge square, ribbons were cut and speeches were made, movie and TV cameras ground and flash bulbs popped, a crowd surged and cheered and Colonel Nasser, with his guest. Marshal Tito, appeared to add an official note to the event.

Lunch was stag, attended by the masculine members of the junket group, hotel officials, Cairo business leaders and members of the press. Speeches followed luncheon as inexorably as the main course followed soup. The head man of the Misr Hotels Company of Egypt, which is deeply involved in the Nile Hilton, spoke eloquently and inspiringly in Egyptian. At least, I assume it was eloquent and inspiring. Two other Egyptian gentlemen followed suit—so did the translations. The preliminaries were finished and the time came for the main event, Conrad Hilton.

Mr. Hilton, having the size, presence, voice, and writer for it, gave forth in true oratorical style. It being George Washington’s Birthday, he and his writer naturally felt they should play with the-father-of-his-country theme. They did. And whom does this indicate, or what juxtaposition does it indicate, February twenty-second and Cairo? Exactly. George Washington and Colonel Nasser. In Mr. Hilton’s speech the two were made as one. George Washington, the liberator of his country. Colonel Nasser, the liberator of his country. George Washington, the father of his people. Colonel Nasser, the father of his people. Some Americans shuddered visibly. Most Egyptians cheered lustily. Oratorically, it was a good ploy. Historically, it might even turn out to be moderately true.

Nasser and Tito in the lobby of the Nile Hilton – the frieze is still there

That night there was an informal dinner in the Belvedere Room, high up in the hotel, its huge windowed front looking out on the silver-flowing Nile. There was an incomparable buffet. There was also a Cuban orchestra with a jumping-jack leader, raised strictly on corn in his native land, and if by now he isn’t right back there I’m a poor reader of yawns and Conrad Hilton’s facial expressions.

On Tuesday night was the Grand Ball, formal, attended by the Hilton guests and the social elite of Cairo. The social elite of Cairo is a most remarkable assemblage. The men were magnificent. The women, with their Mideast sultry complexion and beauty, held their own superbly with the lovelies of Hollywood. They were exquisitely gowned, maybe with oil money, maybe with dough from trinkets they’d got from Tutankhamen’s tomb, maybe from just Cairo-earned gold.

Lining the majestic grand stairway to the Jewel of the Nile Room were early-teenage girls with torches exuding light and incense. Special costumes had been designed for them—long black stockings, black wigs, bright orange short shorts and tight bodices. Both girls and costumes were extremely well chosen; and walking up between them and their lighted torches I could understand the aging Caesar’s infatuation for the child Cleopatra, as well as the thesis dwelt on in Lolita. There was a lovely buffet, there was dancing to good music, and there was the inescapable belly dancing, in solo and in multiple. You probably have heard a lot about the entrancing and aphrodisiacal quality of belly dancing. I’ll tell you the truth about it. It’s a bore. You can get a bellyful of belly dancing very early and easily—I’d say twenty-four hours’ normal exposure would do it nicely. Along about 2:30 a.m., as the last strains of music faded, and the last beautiful gown trailed down the stairs, the Nile Hilton was officially open.

Nasser and Tito on the roof of the Nile Hilton, between them, Leo ‘Cowboy’ Carillo

The Nile Hilton is an ingenious international setup. Although American knowledge put it up, the hotel is actually owned by the Egyptians. The Americans get a comfortable chunk for running it, and the Egyptians take the lion’s share of the profits. Consequently, everybody is happy.

Art Buchwald summed it up pretty well in a talk he was asked to give to the Arab students at the American University of Cairo. Art explained the setup, and why we were there. Then he said, “Look, the next time you feel the urge to do a little rioting, and to bust out with a bit of anti-American feeling, don’t smash up the Nile Hilton, because it’s yours!” They loved it.

Thieves Fall Out (in Cairo)

The versatile Gore Vidal wrote 25 novels, two volumes of memoirs, countless essays, plus numerous plays and screenplays, including for the films Ben Hur and Suddenly Last Summer. But he is probably best remembered for simply being Gore Vidal, originator of such fine aphorisms as ‘Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little’ and ‘The four most beautiful words in our common language: “I told you so”’. He also suggested that ‘Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically by definition be disqualified from ever doing so’ – an idea whose time came and went in 2016. What Gore Vidal certainly will never be remembered for is a book he wrote in 1952 called Thieves Fall Out.

In the early 1950s, the high-living Vidal found himself short of cash. Still only in his twenties, he had already written several serious novels but they had failed to provide any sort of decent income. So he turned to pulp fiction, knocking out a short novel of two-fisted adventure in the space of a few weeks for a $3,000 paycheque. This was Thieves Fall Out, which was published under the pseudonym of Cameron Kay and was all but ignored by the book-buying public and quickly forgotten until over 60 years later it was rediscovered and republished in the spring of 2015 by an imprint specialising in reviving lost works of pulp crime fiction. There’s good reason this book was out of print for so long: it’s bad. It’s a B-movie take on Casablanca, a tale of a young American drifter who finds himself broke in foreign lands and in order to earn some money becomes entangled with a femme fatale who entices him into a scheme to smuggle a valuable antique necklace out of the country. There’s a piano-playing, brothel-running hunchback named La Mouche and the beautiful daughter of a high-ranking Nazi as the love interest. What it doesn’t have is a topless dancer wielding a wickedly curving dagger as depicted on the cover of the 2015 reprint at the top of this post but, still, you are never quite sure whether it is meant to be a parody or not. But you will understand what makes the book fascinating to me when I tell you that the story’s setting is Egypt and, more specifically for large parts, Shepheard’s hotel.

Vidal spent two or three weeks in Egypt in spring 1948. According to his biographer, Fred Kaplan, the writer stayed at ‘El Mint Hotel’, a modest place out near the Pyramids but spent his days hanging out at Shepheard’s, where he wrote in one of the public rooms, and it shows:

Shepheard’s was a long building, several stories high, with big shuttered windows and a porch on the side street, where, at numerous tables, foreigners and rich Egyptians sat at the end of the day, watching the street and drinking aperitifs; but at this time of day the porch was deserted.

With a show of confidence, he walked up the steps to the main door, glad to be rid at last of the beggars, who now fell into position against the terrace wall, waiting for American and European victims.

The lobby of the hotel was blissfully cool after the heat outside. Negro servants in hotel livery moved silently about the great room, carrying bags, doing errands for the guests. Though it was out of season, there were still quite a few guests here, he saw to his relief. Help would come from them, though he was not sure how.

He sauntered from the main lobby into a vast room with a high domed ceiling, like the interior of a mosque, much decorated, ornate, Turkish in style. It was cool and mysterious with dark alcoves in which people sat doing business: fat stolid Europeans and lean, red-faced British, exchanging papers, peering at small type, murmuring their deals in low voices.

At the end of the room, to the left, was the famous bar, a wood-panelled room with an oval-shaped bar at which stood a dozen men in white suits, drinking, their feet resting on the shining brass rail.

It’s in Shepheard’s bar that the American Pete Wells encounters the shifty Brit who introduces him to the world of antiquities smuggling.

One evening at L’Auberge des Pyramides nightclub Vidal saw King Farouk with a blonde European girl on his arm: ‘Like a mafia don, with dark glasses, he was surrounded by plainclothesmen, also in dark glasses.’ This finds its way into Thieves Fall Out (where Vidal cattily remarks that Farouk ‘looks more like a dentist than a king’), as does Luxor, which Vidal visited, and where he must have stayed at the Karnak hotel on the Corniche because he makes it the setting for a series of encounters in the book.

Vidal was always interested in politics and maybe the most interesting thing about Thieves Fall Out is that it is set against the backdrop of the 1952 Revolution. Like the recently released film The Nile Hilton Incident (which I saw again last week and which is even better on second viewing) the chaos of the revolution swarms around the final scenes of the story.

If you can overlook the clichés – Arabs are reliably ‘swarthy’ and women are prostitutes, double-crossing sirens or nightclub singers in need of rescue – then Thieves Fall Out is a breezy time-travelling trip to a more innocent Cairo, in which waking up to find you’ve been drugged and robbed by the girl you met last night, and deciding to smuggle antiquities to raise money for a ticket home is just all part of the visitor experience.

The Egyptian opera

Verdi’s opera Aida is being performed at the Pyramids next week, on Friday 9 March. There were originally to have been three performances on successive nights but, apparently, ticket sales were so poor that it has been cut back to just the one. It seems like Aida is always being performed at the Pyramids but actually this year’s production is the first at Giza since 2010. Before that, there were performances at the Pyramids in 1987, 1998, 1999 and 2000 (as well as at Luxor Temple in 1987, the Temple of Hatshepsut in 1994 and Deir al-Bahri in 1997). More shows at the Pyramids were planned but after the downturn in tourism following 911 and the subsequent war in Iraq, the annual stagings of the opera were moved to the less financially risky setting of the new Cairo Opera House.

The greatest cultural event of the 20th century!

The idea of putting on Aida every year dates back to the days of the old Opera House on Midan Opera, where Verdi’s grandest opera was staged every year until the building burned down in October 1971. This was the venue, of course, for Aida’s premiere, which took place exactly a century earlier in 1871. The popular belief that Aida was composed for the opening of the old Opera House and/or the opening of the Suez Canal is false. Cairo’s original Opera House opened on 1 November 1869 with Rigoletto and the Suez Canal opened 15 days later, both before Verdi had ever been agreed to compose an Egyptian opera. The opera that became Aida was commissioned by Khedive Ismail of Egypt but the commission was not accepted until some time in 1870. Verdi actually declined twice until a reading of the proposed scenario – attributed to Egyptologist Auguste Mariette – changed his mind. That and the Khedive threatening to go to Charles Gounod or Richard Wagner instead.

The Opera House (left) seen from the roof of the Grand Continental

Mariette, who opened the first antiquities museum in Cairo, in 1863, and who was the country’s chief Inspector of Monuments, remained intimately involved with the opera. It was he, for example, who signed the contract with Verdi on behalf of Ismail. (The composer was paid 150,000 French francs and retained rights to the opera in all countries except Egypt.) And it was Mariette who supervised the designs for the opera’s scenery and costumes.

Aida was originally scheduled to premiere in January 1871 but it was delayed by the Prussian siege of Paris, which trapped Mariette in the city with all his designs. It wasn’t until 24 December that the curtain finally went up, eleven months later than planned. The opera, with its cast of 300, was a huge success but Verdi did not attend. He was, apparently, angered by the negative publicity that surrounded the Egyptian premiere and so instead he reserved his attendance for the first performance of Aida at La Scala in Milan (the model for the Cairo Opera House), the following February, which he considered the real premiere.

The above two images are Mariette’s original sketches for set designs

Anyway, in honour of next week’s performance, here’s a selection of Aida posters from performances around the world (with acknowledgement to CairoScene, who did this first).