Cairo - "Do not cry and do not be in pain, I lived my life hating seeing tears in your eyes, and I do not like to leave you while you are sad," said the late artist Salah Mansour to his son and wife, who quoted this phrase from him, while he was on his death bed with cancer, The artist was admonishing his family members, who kept shedding their tears of grief for him, before he bid farewell to life on this day in 1979.
The late artist's journey began with his artistic birth on the school stage in 1938 when he was 15 years old, then he graduated from the class of the Acting Institute in 1947, which included the most prominent stars of the fifties and sixties, such as Farid Shawqi and Shukri Sarhan.
A number of his classmates became famous, but Salah Mansour, a colleague of these stars, remained unknown, offering secondary roles that did not highlight his true talent, although he preceded them while he was still a student to play a small role in the movie "Gram and Revenge" in 1944.
He waited a long time for the talent to shine in a suitable role, even before he played the role of extras behind big stars for a period of time, and even these roles drew attention to him, especially when he played the role of a madman behind the late comedy star Ismail Yassin in the scene of his famous song in the Madhouse , then played minor roles before the first opportunity arose to put him on the first steps of the big launch.
A colleague of his class, Farid Shawqi, plays a small but important role in the movie “A Beginning and an End”, the role of a grocer who deceives the heroine of the film, the late star Sana Jamil. Mansour excels in the role, drawing attention to him strongly, but after that he continues to participate in small secondary roles , until the most important station in his artistic career comes, which made him a different artist from his generation.
Shukry Sarhan, another classmate who became a star in the sixties films, is participating in one of his most important films, The Second Wife.
Despite the appearance of the film's social tendency, it was political par excellence, and critics argued that it was a reference to the crisis of the late President Gamal Abdel Nasser's regime, where the sterile, tyrannical mayor's regime, which must suffer a shameful defeat in the end, as Happened to the Nasser regime with the defeat of June 1967.
As happened to the tyrannical mayor, when an ordinary woman from among the people defeated him, and she kept preserving the legitimacy of the relationship with the man who has real legitimacy, the original husband. There is no value for the official paper here, no matter how connived the policeman, clergyman, guards, and false witnesses, in order to make it a support for the usurpation of power - The husband's authority over the wife - in the interest of those who have influence and money, which is the mayor Atman or "Salah Mansour".
A role that Mansour performed at a level that some critics considered tiring for those who will play him after him, with this amazing mixture of funny evil to the point of comic, but it remains a harmful and destructive evil based on compelling authority.
Critics and observers believed that the explosion of Salah Mansour's enormous abilities needed only a director from the model of the pioneer of cinematic realism, Salah Abu Seif, who used the late artist in two of the 100 most important films in the history of Egyptian cinema in the 20th century: "The Beginning and the End" and " second wife".
The great artist Salah Mansour distributed sweets to his neighbors and passers-by in the street of his house when he heard the news of his son's death in the October 1973 war, and he embraced President Sadat and wept in his lap, and donated a reward and pension for his martyr son to arm the Egyptian army until he passed away in 1979 #Nasr_October pic.twitter.com/ UQUrc1YnYY
— Mahmoud Al-Bazawi (@albezzawy) October 6, 2019
Just as Abu Saif ignited the glow in "Mansour", he succeeded in highlighting other abilities of him in the movie Case 68, in the role of a good man seeking reform and goodness; Another area in his distinguished performance was not used by Mansour to embody it later, and the directors remained convinced of him as an exploitative villain, as he convinced everyone of that in his two previous films.
Salah Mansour returns to play new roles, in which his explosive talent does not stand out, even in important films such as Qandil Um Hashem, Anf wa Three Eyes, and he also presents a number of series and plays. The directors keep confining him to the roles of the villain, which prompted Shukri Sarhan, his study companion and his most important film, to be amazed as he talks about how light-hearted Mansour is and how funny his style is in his ordinary life in a way that calls for laughter, asking with disapproval in one of the television interviews why he was not used in comedic roles.
One of the beautiful artistic stories that tells about the great artist, the great mayor of Egyptian cinema, #Salah_Mansour, is that he was so infatuated with hearing the voice of Sheikh Mustafa Ismail that people used to consider Salah Mansour Majzoub as one of the attractions of Sheikh Mustafa Ismail..
The great writer Mahmoud Al-Saadani says in His book
"The Road to Zamish" pic.twitter.com/TrxRanP1j6
— Salama (SALAMA) (@FattahFattah62) January 6, 2021
The late artist Shukri Sarhan told a funny story in the meeting, as they were attending a funeral to listen to the voice of the reciter Mustafa Ismail, when Mansour’s wail reached the extent of recitation of the sheikh in condolence, so the family of the deceased rebuked him, reminding him that it was the condolence of two young brothers who died in an accident. Salah Mansour leaned on Shukri Sarhan's ear, mentioning a sarcastic phrase he used to perform in a play, and had it not been for the sheikh's intervention, he would have been expelled.
Apart from the funnyness of the story, it indicates a prominent spiritual aspect in the personality of Salah Mansour. If he was known about him, the directors might have chosen him for him, as those close to the late artist knew Sheikh Mustafa Ismail specifically, so he used to go to him daily to Abdeen Palace, where he read the Qur’an throughout The month of Ramadan, and he used to call the sheikh at his home to find out the place and time of his next recitation, whether in mourning or any occasion, to follow him in the country.
The artist gets excited by the recitation to the point of uttering what is not appropriate for the sad occasion sometimes, and among those phrases are “Say, honey, say… Say violin and the Prophet,” and also “Oh, how did this come… How did you do that?”, according to what the late writer saw Mahmoud Al-Saadani in his book "The Road to Zamash".
As stated in the book "Naguib Mahfouz's Nights in Shepherd" by the writer Ibrahim Abdel Aziz, who quoted Mahfouz as saying that he once attended a recitation of Sheikh Mustafa Ismail, and Salah Mansour agreed until he called, "What is this sweetness, my brother?" Despite this spiritual aspect, his religious works were rare, such as his role in the series "On the Sidelines of the Seerah".
Journalist who loves art
There are other aspects in his personality that are hidden behind the character of the mayor of evil in Egyptian cinema. Al-Horr, who presented several plays that did not gain the appropriate fame, in addition to a group of works that he directed for television and radio.
In parallel with all of this, he kept his government position, executing the commandment of popular proverbs that stress joining the government's "Miri" work soil in order to ensure financial security. Until his death, he remained in the Ministry of Education, as an advisor in the Ministry's Theater Education Department.
The deceased won several awards that confirmed his distinguished position in acting, which he concluded by obtaining the State Appreciation Award from the Academy of Arts in October of 1978, in celebration of Art Day.
This award comes after the death of his second son, and after many years in which the artist struggled to save the son from illness, he spent all his savings on treatment, and the treatment allocations ran out at the state’s expense, and he had arrived on the long treatment journey to London, and agreed with the presence of the president The late Anwar Sadat was there at that time, so Salah Mansour met him and appealed to him to continue treating his son at the expense of the state, so Sadat accepted and signed the request in front of him, in honor of him, as he is the father of the martyr of the October War of 1973, who donated his son’s pension to the benefit of the armed forces.
The death of the second son, a new tragedy in the family, left the artist on a journey of physical troubles. The son's separation took place differently this time, unlike what happened when his first son was martyred, who was so happy when seeing him off that he distributed sweets to neighbors and passers-by, repeating, "My son is a hero...my son is a hero."
The artist buries his two sons, whom he used to save in order to say goodbye to him at his end, then he begins the journey of the end, and he falls ill.
Tragedies devoured the proceeds of his government work and artistic works. He did not leave any wealth for his family, so his widow was forced to request an exceptional pension from the state, which was approved, in appreciation of the late.