June 6, 1983 was a very hot summer day, but at the end of its day the weather allowed for a succulent hour session, which the great actor Mahmoud El-Meligy took advantage of to take a quick break between filming his last scenes in the movie "Ayoub" starring Omar Sharif.

He prepared his coffee as he used to, and sat with his friend Omar Sharif, film producer Mamdouh El-Leithi and director Hani Lashin, telling them about his impressions of life and the world and its strangeness, before holding his heart and dying of a heart attack. He died while working, in a scene worthy of his love and passion for the work that he loved throughout his life.

consecutive frustrations

The “art of diagnosis” was not the first art that Mahmoud El-Meligy tried with. Because of his upbringing in a house that appreciates the art of music, chanting and singing, the boy loved music, and was encouraged by his father, a horse dealer in the Maghribin neighborhood in Cairo, who was fond of art and singing as a hobby of music.

Teenager Mahmoud tried to join his school's singing team, where he met the artist Mohamed Abdel Wahab, who was a music teacher at the time. Abdel Wahab confronted him with the shocking fact that he was not fit to sing, with his dry, rough voice and clear dissonance.

After that shocking confrontation, El-Meligy turned to music and actually learned to play the violin, but in his first tests in front of Badia Masabni, he became tense and dealt with strings roughly, so he tore them away, to stay away from art in favor of sports.

He began practicing boxing, in which he excelled, and achieved limited school championships, which moved him to the ranks of the superior, which was a new outlet for the return of the arts, but through the school theater at the Khedive School, which he joined, and there he met the great theatrical artist Aziz Eid, who was assigned to train the theater team at the school.

Aziz Eid added a new frustration to El-Meligy when he told him that "it is not suitable for acting and that he should look for another hobby." So El-Meligy took it to himself to run crying before another colleague followed him to tell him that Aziz Eid deliberately frustrated him to break his ego no more, but in fact he sees him A strong representative to start a long career in art was its hero, Mahmoud El-Meligy.

Egyptian cinema villain

In one of the performances of the Khedive theatrical troupe, the play “Al-Dhahab” was shown, in which El-Meligy played the role of “Microbin”, and the artist Fatima Rushdie was present in the audience. 4 pounds per month.

El-Meligy joined her and presented with her a number of tragic and comedic plays, including the play "667 Zaitoon" and the play "Majnoun Laila", as was his first cinematic appearance in front of Fatima Rushdi in the movie (The Marriage - 1933), which she produced and directed, but the film failed.

After him, Fatima Rushdi’s troupe was dissolved, so El-Meligy worked as a teleprompter in Youssef Wehbe’s theater group, before he went up to the stage to start offering small roles, until director “Ibrahim Lama” chose him to play the role of “Ward” Grim “Qais” in a movie in 1939, To be his beginning with the roles of evil, which lasted in the cinema for nearly 30 years.

forced evil

In a press interview conducted by El-Meligy in 1977, he divided his film career into phases, the first being the phase of forced evil with Youssef Wehbe, the second phase of class struggle with Anwar Wagdy, and the third phase of clowning and criminality with Farid Shawky. Together, they formed a successful artistic duo, with a total of 400 films. .

These films were typical in the duality of the hero and his opposite, the good and the bad, and of course the villain here is Al-Meligy, as was the stereotypical villain with Youssef Wehbe, or the arrogant villain with Anwar Wagdy, but the turning point in Al-Meligy’s life to break the pattern set for him was with the director Youssef Chahine, who saw In El-Meligy what no one else saw, he chose him to embody the role of "Mohamed Abu Swailem" in the movie "The Land" in 1970, to be the jewel in the crown of El-Meligy's acting career.

Anthony Quinn Arab

When Mahmoud El-Meligy played the same role as the international actor Anthony Quinn in the movie "Al-Qadisiyah", critics and journalists rushed to call him "Anthony Quinn" the Arabs, but the artist Rushdi Abaza had a different opinion. To violence in movement, word and pronunciation, while El-Meligy performs the required calmly and without excessive emotion and without sharpness, and about El-Meligy, Abaza said that despite their friendship, he rejoices and feels proud every time he shakes hands with El-Meligy, a joy equal to the joy of winning a million pounds.

fluent eyes

Mahmoud El-Meligy has two eyes that speak with rare sincerity. They are eloquent eyes that are able to speak without a tongue, and to convey various emotions and move between them smoothly.

He also has an outstanding ability to translate the idea into emotion in moments. In 1970, his eyes served him greatly.

This year, El-Meligy presented two roles that are the best in his history, the first in the movie “Sunset and Sunrise” and the second in “The Land.” Youssef Chahine says about this role, in particular, one of his international roles, and specifically a strong emotional scene “when a tear heavy in the eyes of Muhammad Abu Swailem after Feeling humiliated and compelled to accept an advance of money.

Shaheen continues that El-Meligy repeated the scene 7 times with the same ability and with the same details. In this role, El-Meligy was able to move between several different emotions in a few seconds, from anger to humiliation to sadness to sarcasm. Perhaps it was a difficult process for some actors, but it was an easy trick for El-Meligy, who was able to Easily from kidnapping the camera and attracting attention, the choice was closest to the heart of Youssef Chahine, who worked with him in several films, namely: The Choice, The Bird, The Return of the Prodigal Son, Alexandria Les, and His Shoe is Egyptian.

And in every film, you will find this ability and skill strongly present.

Not only with Youssef Chahine, but with Kamal Al-Sheikh as well. In the last scene of the movie “Sunset and Sunrise,” El-Meligy moved in about 20 seconds from power, authority and arrogance to surprise, astonishment, then ridicule, and then great refraction, when he was arrested after two seconds ago threatening his daughter-in-law with torture. And extracting confessions, he is forced to bid farewell to his daughter and his home after his arrest, with a glimpse of solemn refraction in his eyes.

It is reported that director Kamal al-Sheikh decided to delete the end scene from “Sunset and Sunrise” 1970, fearing that his film would face censorship intransigence, because of what the scene might provoke from sympathy with the character of Azmi Pasha, the leader of the political police and his time, the era of the monarchy.

Perfume smells until the last breath

What El-Meligy feared most was old age, and the consequent disruption and destitution. In an article he wrote himself, in which he was talking about art, he likened the artist to a flower that retains its esteem as long as it retains its scent and when it withers, it is run over by feet.

Journalist Bilal Fadl conveys what El-Meligy wrote in the article, saying, "A strange thought attacked me today without occasion. What will be your fate when withered? The artist, in my opinion, is like a rose as long as people smell it in it. Will the society that instigate us offer us our vitality on its stage, will it insure our lives against old age, will we soon see a pension fund that provides us with pensions that protect our humanity from humiliation? Will we soon see a house called the House of Art that opens its doors to the elderly artists who have given something to their country? Where are the guarantees? I do not believe that the time will come to invite whatever association to hold a party to help me, Mahmoud El-Meligy, the helpless artist.”

It seems that this fear remained with El-Meligy until his death, as he continued to spread his perfume for fear of fading and continued to work and participate in series, television nights and even films until he died in the filming studio of the movie "Ayoub" 39 years ago.