Page 13 - Art First: Simon Morley: Lost Horizon
P. 13
Fast forward to Europe in the 1930s and Shangri-La. James Hilton’s best-selling
novel, Lost Horizon (1932), written as the dark clouds of war gathered over the
world, was made into a marvelous Frank Capra movie starring Ronald Cole man
in 1938 (and into an execrable musical version in the 1970s). It brings a West-
meets-East dimension to the ancient myth.
e first shots of the movie are of a book. e pages turn to reveal this text:
In these days of wars and
rumors of wars—haven’t
you ever dreamed of a
place where there was
peace and security, where
living was not a struggle
but a lasting delight?
Of course you have.
So has every man since Time
began. Always the same
dream. Sometime he calls it
Utopia—Sometimes the Fount-
ain of Youth—Sometimes
merely ‘that little chicken farm’.
e name of Hilton’s now famous kingdom derives from the Tibetan paradise
Shambala—and Lost Horizon up-dates the dream of Mount Penglai and the
