Fantômas in America
Currently reading David White’s Fantômas in America (Black Coat Press, 2007), a novel based on a lost Hollywood movie serial which reintroduced the “Lord of Terror” to American audiences in 1921. David White’s scholarly article on the lost serial is here and a video trailer for his novel can be found here.
George Hodel soujourned in Paris as child in 1912-1913, when Louis Feuillade’s highly successful series of film adaptations of the original Fantômas pulp novels arrived in movie theaters. While in Paris, young “Master George” attended one of the first Montessori schools and lived with Prince Paolo Petrovich Troubetzkoy, one of the world’s most sought-after sculptors, at his home near the Eiffel Tower.
In addition to being a massive hit with the general public, Fantômas exerted a great influence on avant garde artists, especially the Surrealists. Poet-critic Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918) started a fan club, “La Société des Amis de Fantômas,” saying “from the imaginative standpoint Fantômas is one of the richest works that exist.” Interestingly, an homage to Apollinaire is suggested by the calligrammes with which Zodiac decorated his October 1970 Halloween Card.
Apollinaire is also responsible for reviving literary interest in the Marquis de Sade, and was the inspiration for George Hodel’s good friend Man Ray’s idolization of the man he called “The Divine Marquis.”
We also find a likely shout-out to the Marquis de Sade in the Zodiac’s “paradice slaves” mythos, which is heralded exactly in Juliette, or Vice Amply Rewarded.
The American Fantômas serial is a lost film for us, but I wonder if its appearance in movie theaters in the months leading up to the Father Heslin case fired young Master George’s ambition to be a criminal mastermind. If so, mission accomplished.
FURTHER READING (04/06/24)
I highly recommend historian Robin Walz’s book, Pulp Surrealism: Insolent Popular Culture in Early Twentieth-Century Paris for its exploration of the criminal-obsessed high and low culture of late Belle Epoque Paris. Here is an article by Walz that deals specifically with the enduring legacy of Fantômas.
For more on George Hodel’s host in Paris, Prince Paul Troubetzkoy, see the new Troubetskoy Archive Project. Troubetzkoy was a celebrity in his own lifetime — as a quick survey at newspapers.com will confirm — but is not well-known today. The Archive makes the case that this once-famous artist deserves to be better remembered.