The uproar raised by Iraqi broadcaster Nizar Al-Fares and Egyptian actress Houria Farghali about their engagement was not the first of its kind in the history of the relationship between media and art. Since the inception of the means of communication, the artistic field appeared as if it was moving in parallel with the press, but life in the space between them was going differently.
The press pushed a great artist and critic the size of Salah Mansour to the world of acting, leaving an imprint that is difficult to erase. Perhaps his most prominent role is the role of “the mayor” in the movie “The Second Wife” in 1959, and the late writer and journalist Saeed Abdel Ghani combined his journalistic work in the Egyptian newspaper “Al-Ahram”. And between acting in a huge number of artworks.
Just as one person combined the two fields in his life, art and media combined an artist and a journalist, or vice versa, in one love story, and in one marital home. Perhaps the most famous of these cases is the story of the late journalist Hamdi Qandil and the artist Najla Fathi, and the story of the great actor Mamdouh Abdel-Aleem and his wife, the broadcaster Shafki Al-Muniri. And also the young actress Donia Samir Ghanem and broadcaster Ramy Radwan.
It is not possible to deny the large number of cases and the huge differences that occurred between artists and journalists for reasons related to criticizing one of the works, or publishing news of what the owner liked to publish. However, until recently, the matter did not reach a state of debate in videos and media interviews with the two parties regarding the story.
Although there are many questions that remained unanswered in the uproar about Houriya’s association with Nizar, they refer us to the history of media and art, and the traditions that govern the relationship between them, even if the two parties crossed the boundaries, and this was represented in the presence of a state of love or closeness.
The story is summed up in a broadcaster who conducts a television interview with an actress, then publishes videos to celebrate their engagement, while the actress denies and angrily announces that she was flattering him when she showed no objection to his sympathy for her, so the broadcaster replies that he proposed to her, addressing him out of pity for her, and thus turns The debate is a defamation that transcends many of the traditions that linked the two fields throughout their previous history.
The broadcaster, Nizar Al-Fares, previously clashed with actress Rania Youssef about her statements about the veil, which she denied after he broadcasted them on his personal page on a social networking site and was not shown on the channel in which he works.
Here we review some of the stories that linked media professionals and artists, starting with the recent era of the region in art and media, and not ending with massive behavioral and value changes.
Faraj and Sabah
Ahmed Farag is a journalist who is famous for presenting a religious program and writing in some newspapers irregularly. The man was highly respected and weighted in Egyptian society at the end of the fifties, but the announcement of his marriage to the artist Sabah, with all that she symbolized in those years, constituted a real shock in Egyptian society.
The story was told in two ways, the first by the producer, Muhammad Ashoub, who confirmed that Faraj wrote an article in which he attacked Sabah and her acting and singing. When I read the article, I called him and asked to meet him, and they left the meeting and they agreed to marry.
Sabah was not satisfied with marrying Farag while preserving the right to divorce herself, but rather introduced him to the world of acting through the movie “A Woman and Three Men” directed by Helmy Halim after many battles she fought to be accepted in the starring role alongside her, and 3 of his directors refused and withdrew from work while they were Atef Salem, Hassan Imam, and Izz al-Din Zulfiqar.
Sabah succeeded in turning the man who criticized her submission into an actor, and then she said her last word in the story, as the infallibility was in her hand, so she divorced herself.
The second novel by the leading artistic journalist Abd al-Jalil al-Bandari, who interviewed Sabah and then came out denying the marriage, stressing that she believed in him as an actor and fought the battle of “a woman and three men” for her belief in his talent. Al-Bandari’s meetings with Faraj and Sabah took place in 1959, but the beginnings of 1960 witnessed the announcement of marriage by both parties, and it soon ended.
Al-Tabi’i and Asmahan
In his book “Asmahan Tells Her Story,” the prince of the Egyptian press, writer Muhammad al-Tabe’i, confessed his love for Asmahan, saying, “The only woman I loved in my life and still love and will continue to love is Amal al-Atrash (Asmahan)”, and despite that he did not marry her, and he married his cousin Hoda al-Tabe’i.
Al-Tabei was famous for his battles with the ministries before the July Revolution, and for being imprisoned more than once. He founded the “Akher Sa’a” magazine, and co-founded the “Al-Masry” newspaper.
Mrs. Hoda Al-Tabei described the relationship between her husband and Asmahan as a “strong friendship”, but one of the daughters of the late writer revealed on a television program in 2015 that the relationship almost turned into marriage after they got engaged, and then the engagement was broken off, and she exploded a surprise by saying that the accident during which she died The late singer, after her car overturned, was supposed to travel to the “Ras El Bar” beach in the Egyptian coastal governorate of Damietta to meet Al-Tabei and appease him because he was angry with her.
Mustafa Amin
The late writer Mustafa Amin was not an ordinary man, but rather an institution of social relations, starting from the top of the political hierarchy and not ending with a new face making his way into the world of art, and just as he combined the cunning of politicians and the fluctuations of artists in his relations, he combined two peaks of art in his life, as He married both Umm Kulthum and the artist, Shadia.
The music historian, Dr. Ratiba al-Hefni, had revealed in a symposium held at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in 2005 about the marriage, which had been kept secret for a long time. Ratiba said that the marriage lasted 11 years and that its contract was kept in a private safe with President Gamal Abdel Nasser at the time.
Ratiba said that Umm Kulthum preferred to keep the marriage secret because she wanted to be the property of her fans, and it is known that Mustafa Amin was one of the journalists closest to Umm Kulthum, so that he was the first to lead in her artistic and private news.
And as she revealed the secret of Mustafa Amin’s marriage to Kawkab al-Sharq after his death, she revealed the secret of his marriage to the late artist Shadia after his death through a marriage contract, confirmed by Nahed Shaker, the daughter of the late artist’s brother, and confirmed that Shadia married 4 men, the last of whom was Mustafa Amin, who loved them to her.
The most prominent was the relationship between journalist Mustafa Amin and each of the two artists, Umm Kulthum and Shadia, that friendship that built a wall of trust, which continued after the divorce and until the departure of all parties.
Tim and Wafa
The Egyptian broadcaster, Wafaa Al-Kilani, pushed media behavior to the extreme limits of what is prohibited, as she mixed the personal with the public, and declared on the air her private feelings while she was on the screen in her media capacity.
It happened in 2014 when the followers of the “Al-Hakam” program were surprised by the introduction to an episode of a meeting with Tim Hassan, and it came as a clear flirtation that ranged between describing the guest’s elegance and the girls’ love for him, and then it remained for more than 35 minutes during the episode besieging him with personal questions about his life and his opinion of women.
Tim had come out of a marriage experience with actress Dima Bayaa, as well as Wafa, who asked for the handsome actor’s hand on the air, and viewers considered his approval a kind of courtesy because of the television filming, but the pioneers of social networking sites were surprised, after two years, by the seriousness of the matter.
