The She You Know

Every now and then, it's worth remembering that there's more in the library than you can find on the internet. Yesterday I was at SDSU's library, reading about film adaptations of H Rider Haggard's She. A book called Rudyard Kipling and Sir Henry Rider Haggard on Screen, Stage, Radio, and Television by Philip Leibfried had all kinds of information you can't find on Wikipedia. I was finally able to get more information on the lost adaptations of She from the late 1910s. I also learned that Helen Gahagan, who starred in the 1935 version, attempted to have all copies of it destroyed when she ran for the United States Senate in 1950. I suppose some people prefer not to look like a despot when running for office. Or they used to. She lost to Richard Nixon.

The 1935 version is the one that most portrays She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed as a villian. The Hays Code essentially forbade moral ambiguity, though talented filmmakers found a way around that, most famously with film noir. But it's no surprise that the story wasn't adapted again in the west until the 1965 Hammer/Seven Arts adaptation. Though there was an Indian version made in the early '40s that Wikipedia evidently doesn't know about. I'd love to get my hands on it. The actress playing Ayesha is one of the most beautiful I've seen.

Google's AI seems to be of two minds about the existence of such a film. First, it gave me this answer:

Then, when I switched to "AI Mode", I got this answer:

I don't remember the name of the movie mentioned in the book but it was not Aayiram Thalai Vaangi Apoorva Chinthamani, which bears no resemblence to She.

I asked the AI again and received yet another answer:

Remembering the massive collections of vintage books I see whenever I'm at the library, I'm sure this Indian adaptation of She is just the tip of an iceberg of shit AI doesn't know.

I wanted to see what the "P.S. Rukmani" named by the AI looked like but now Google is telling me no such person ever existed. I wonder what corner of the Twilight Zone she's trapped in.