Jim--

I've never heard this story, but it has all the earmarks of a fabrication.  Your recollection that he was ill when visiting Chicago is correct.  He was here (Chicago's my current home) to negotiate with Paige on separating his interests on the typesetter.  In addition to the letters, David Fears Mark Twain Day-By-Day gives the details of his movements--or lack of them, he was laid up in the the Blackstone hotel, if I remember correctly.  Clemens recovered enough from his illness to visit the fair on the afternoon of the last day he was in the city.  As for him shooting a film of Little Egypt,  I don't know of any accounts of him ever taking a photograph (though certainly more were taken of him than perhaps any other living person).  We know about his interest in the typewriter and the dictaphone.  I suspect if he'd actually used a movie camera, we'd know about it.  

I've long been curious about whether he had ever seen a film.  It's widely known that the Edison crew made one of him at Stormfield, but I know of no reference from him of ever having seen one.  In "Italian Without a Grammar" (1903) he includes some newspaper clippings that feature two ads for films being shown in Florence, and they were adaptations of classic stories--Quixote was one, if I recall correctly.  It's hard to imagine that he wouldn't have been interested in a new way of telling stories.  But nothing has turned up.  So the idea that he actually shot a film of an exotic dancer is fascinating, though it seems unlikely.  If you learn anything about the source of this story, I'd be interested.

--LH


Larry Howe
Professor of English
Chair, Department of Literature and Languages
Roosevelt University
________________________________________
From: Mark Twain Forum [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of James Edstrom [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, March 05, 2014 5:22 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Mark Twain, the World's Columbian Exposition, and belly dancing

In the course of reading an item on Salon today with the arresting
title, "Why I Can't Stand White Belly Dancers" (
http://www.salon.com/2014/03/04/why_i_cant_stand_white_belly_dancers/),
this sentence caught my eye:  "(fun trivia: Mark Twain made a short film
of a belly dancer at the 1893 fair)."  This was a new one to me.
Although he was in Chicago during the Fair, I don't think Twain had a
chance to visit, as he was ill (if my recollection is correct).  As for
the story that he filmed Little Egypt--I'd be curious to learn the
source of that myth.  Another source--a book titled "Looking for Little
Egypt," which is excerpted at
http://www.allaboutbellydance.com/book.html --claims that Little Egypt
"supposedly caused Mark Twain to suffer a coronary and starred in one of
the first motion pictures, filmed at the fairgrounds by Mark Twain
himself."  Wikipedia repeats the story as well and cites a 1965
documentary titled The Love Goddesses as its source.  Has anybody ever
heard this story before?

Jim Edstrom