The setting for the killing of Prince Fahmy Bey must rank among the most cinematic and opulent of any real life killing in the past three hundred years. Yet, apparently, this is the only attempt to tell the story of this perplexing domestic violence tragedy that made it to any size screen.
If you are a believer in the curse of "King Tut", Prince Fahmy Bey, a leading society figure in the Egyptian court of King Fuad, was one of the first to visit the camp of Howard Carter and Lord Caernavon in 1922, to see the remarkable treasure of the young Pharoah. His death by violence is one of the few that are memorable from the list that is usually given for the curse - although he was not bitten by a mysterious asp or poisoned serpent or an ancient scarab. Instead he was shot by his French wife, Madame Fahmy, when they were in a suite at London's poshest hotel, The Savoy (built by Richard D'Oyly Carte, of Gilbert and Sullivan fame). To add to the fascination of the killing, it was in the midst of one of the most violent and memorable thunderstorms of the 1920s in London. I told you this was a story worthy of cinematic treatment.
Madame Fahmy was arrested, and was smart enough to have her solicitor hire England's premier criminal trial lawyer Sir Edward Marshall Hall to defend her. Hall's career in the London criminal courts is a litany of memorable (to criminal historians) trials: Herbert Bennett (the "Yarmouth Beach Murder"), Robin Wood (the "Camden Town Murder"), Frederick Seddon, George Joseph Smith ("the Brides in the Bath Case"), Ronald Light ("The Green Bicycle" Case), Alphonso Smith ("The Stella Maris" Shooting), and Madame Fahmy. As Ernest Lustgarten pointed out, he was not the world's best legal expert, nor the first man in cross-examination, but he was extraordinary in dramatizing critical pieces of evidence to sway juries. If he did not always succeed, his ratio was pretty high.
Madame Fahmy, Sir Edward insisted, was the victim of a hellish marriage to a brute - one of these hideous foreign types. Fahmy Bey had married her to have a trophy wife - a beautiful French woman to grace his home. But they had disgusting sex. Not manful sex (Sir Edward insisted that the Prince was a bi-sexual). The Prince only practiced sodomy on his wife. And medical evidence was produced to prove this.
Looked at today, even in the post "9/11" atmosphere towards types of Arabs and Moslems, the defense of Sir Edward has to be regarded as brilliant for it's time, but absolutely appalling. The Egyptian Ambassador to Great Britain later publicly protested about it. It's impossible to say he was wrong. Yet the medical evidence did show damage to Madame Fahmy's rectum and severe bleeding hemorrhoids. Possibly the Prince got carried away. Or was the lady telling something like the truth (without Sir Edward's embellishments).
Marshall-Hall demonstrated the ease that the murder weapon could be fired. The gun expert from the police said that the pistol could only be shot deliberately because of the trigger being so stiff. Like Johnny Cochran's success with a glove in the O. J. Simpson trial seven decades later, Marshall-Hall (something of an expert on guns himself) held up the gun and with the slightest movement of his finger pushed the trigger four or five times. So much for the difficulty of firing the gun.
It was Marshall-Hall's (amd Madame Fahmy's) argument that things had gotten so out of hand that she shot the Prince in self-defense when he attempted to kill her. Sir Edward, in his closing arguments, in describing Prince Fahmy's movements spoke of him as a strange, dangerous foreigner, and physically pretended to be the Prince creeping in a threatening manner for the jury. This too was criticized by the Egyptian Ambassador.
The jury acquitted Madame Fahmy, adding another laurel to Sir Edward's reputation. Whether she was defending herself, or getting rid of an unwanted husband remains a question to this day.
If you are a believer in the curse of "King Tut", Prince Fahmy Bey, a leading society figure in the Egyptian court of King Fuad, was one of the first to visit the camp of Howard Carter and Lord Caernavon in 1922, to see the remarkable treasure of the young Pharoah. His death by violence is one of the few that are memorable from the list that is usually given for the curse - although he was not bitten by a mysterious asp or poisoned serpent or an ancient scarab. Instead he was shot by his French wife, Madame Fahmy, when they were in a suite at London's poshest hotel, The Savoy (built by Richard D'Oyly Carte, of Gilbert and Sullivan fame). To add to the fascination of the killing, it was in the midst of one of the most violent and memorable thunderstorms of the 1920s in London. I told you this was a story worthy of cinematic treatment.
Madame Fahmy was arrested, and was smart enough to have her solicitor hire England's premier criminal trial lawyer Sir Edward Marshall Hall to defend her. Hall's career in the London criminal courts is a litany of memorable (to criminal historians) trials: Herbert Bennett (the "Yarmouth Beach Murder"), Robin Wood (the "Camden Town Murder"), Frederick Seddon, George Joseph Smith ("the Brides in the Bath Case"), Ronald Light ("The Green Bicycle" Case), Alphonso Smith ("The Stella Maris" Shooting), and Madame Fahmy. As Ernest Lustgarten pointed out, he was not the world's best legal expert, nor the first man in cross-examination, but he was extraordinary in dramatizing critical pieces of evidence to sway juries. If he did not always succeed, his ratio was pretty high.
Madame Fahmy, Sir Edward insisted, was the victim of a hellish marriage to a brute - one of these hideous foreign types. Fahmy Bey had married her to have a trophy wife - a beautiful French woman to grace his home. But they had disgusting sex. Not manful sex (Sir Edward insisted that the Prince was a bi-sexual). The Prince only practiced sodomy on his wife. And medical evidence was produced to prove this.
Looked at today, even in the post "9/11" atmosphere towards types of Arabs and Moslems, the defense of Sir Edward has to be regarded as brilliant for it's time, but absolutely appalling. The Egyptian Ambassador to Great Britain later publicly protested about it. It's impossible to say he was wrong. Yet the medical evidence did show damage to Madame Fahmy's rectum and severe bleeding hemorrhoids. Possibly the Prince got carried away. Or was the lady telling something like the truth (without Sir Edward's embellishments).
Marshall-Hall demonstrated the ease that the murder weapon could be fired. The gun expert from the police said that the pistol could only be shot deliberately because of the trigger being so stiff. Like Johnny Cochran's success with a glove in the O. J. Simpson trial seven decades later, Marshall-Hall (something of an expert on guns himself) held up the gun and with the slightest movement of his finger pushed the trigger four or five times. So much for the difficulty of firing the gun.
It was Marshall-Hall's (amd Madame Fahmy's) argument that things had gotten so out of hand that she shot the Prince in self-defense when he attempted to kill her. Sir Edward, in his closing arguments, in describing Prince Fahmy's movements spoke of him as a strange, dangerous foreigner, and physically pretended to be the Prince creeping in a threatening manner for the jury. This too was criticized by the Egyptian Ambassador.
The jury acquitted Madame Fahmy, adding another laurel to Sir Edward's reputation. Whether she was defending herself, or getting rid of an unwanted husband remains a question to this day.