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I felt somewhat self-conscious about arriving at this woman’s home in such an outlandish mode of transportation but I would soon discover that very little could ever faze the mystical Zita Johann. As I made my way up to her front porch I noticed a woman’s red silk high heel shoe (what happened to it’s mate?) lying on the ground. Immediately I conjured up visions of some terrified debutante running for her life past this haunted dwelling of our founding fathers.

It took some doing to get the lady of the house to answer the door but soon I was face-to- face with the Princess Anck-es-en- Amon from my youthful days glued in front of late night television waiting until all hours to watch THE MUMMY for the umpteenth time.
Zita Johann took one look at what I arrived in and said ‘You must be very rich or a terrific spendthrift.” With that she allowed me to enter the darkness of her hallway and then into her large living room complete with a fireplace. As my eyes adjusted to the half-light, a youthful Zita stared down at me from the mantle where a striking oil painting hung as a reminder of things past but not yet forgotten.

Once the pleasantries had been exchanged we sat by her fireplace, which was roaring as they say in Gothic novels. Over drinks Zita began to explain her philosophy of life and her interest in the occult. “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. I used the occult auto-suggestively…I mean, before I would play a scene I would get into the spirit, so to speak, with certain prayers. As a child my father gave me an Ouija board and soon I started to get messages, then I moved towards the Tarot. By the time I was in Basil Sidney’s company I was asked to read cards all the time for the other players, and Basil himself depended on what I saw in those cards.”

Zita had long ago abandoned acting, yet she had much wisdom to impart to others and that is precisely what she did with her time. She taught acting to students from the village, and devoted much time and energy to working with handicapped children. Her greatest joy was helping a student who was a deaf mute with an I.Q. of 20 learn to hear and speak. “I build a bridge with love and expect you to meet me halfway across.”

After what seemed like a suspension in time for me, our visit was at an end, and I asked her if I could have a photo with her. She was very determined that no pictures of her be printed as she looked then, and I could not understand why, although a lady has the right to remain mysterious, so she allowed me to take pictures instead of her portrait over the mantle, which I did, as well as the front of her house. Two years later when she looked even less like her old self she went out and made her first film in fifty years! The project she allowed to bear her name and forever be known as her final film, RAIDERS OF THE LIVING DEAD, was a dreadful student film with a zero budget. This from the woman who would not let me snap a photo? All I can say is that producer Sam Sherman must have been some kind of genius to coax her into such a shabby affair as that one turned out to be, and now it is out on DVD from Image Entertainment in a “deluxe” director’s cut edition.

We kept in touch over the next few years and she had moments of regret over the film that could have launched her career. “I wrote to Junior Laemmle just before we met in 1979, just before his death, and made peace with him about THE MUMMY. I apologized for not getting along with him. I told him he was a fair and just man and I would have been well-advised to have taken his contract and gone with it, but other things were meant to happen in my life.”

Zita Johann passed from this life on my birthday, September 24th 1993

Zita believed so strongly in the spirit, we must remember she would say “that all Art and beauty comes from the spirit, and that spirit is forever a part of all of us”

I will always remember what Karloff said to her in THE MUMMY over half a century ago: “OUR LOVE HAS OUTLASTED THE TEMPLES OF OUR GODS.” Her legacy will surely do the same.

THE ROAD TO YUCCA LOMA

AROUND 1924, while Zita Johann was learning her craft performing in Basil Sidney’s theatrical company, she crossed paths for the first time with a handsome young actor named David Manners. By 1932 they would be toiling away at Universal as star-crossed lovers in the horror classic, THE MUMMY. Zita recalled nearly half a century later that “David was just the nicest young man you could ever hope to meet.” The production itself was such a nightmare that it was just one more reason a few years later that David Manners would also close the door on stardom, rather than in Zita’s case having the door slammed shut for you.

I still marvel at the fact that I got to know TWO of the leads from such a classic film as THE MUMMY. Knowing David Manners also included DRACULA (1931), THE BLACK CAT (1934), and many other classics from the early thirties, yet he was not the easiest person to interview. Like Zita, he had no interest whatsoever in Hollywood nor his participation in what he liked to call “that old tinsel town.” By now his reluctance regarding his film work is well documented and a few accounts have already been published in the horror journals and specialty books on horror film history.

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