| General Abdul Nasser, the dashing leader of the free officer corps that seized the palace and drove Farouk from power, was a movie fan. He saw Viva Zapata, the tale of the Mexican peasant uprising starring Marlon Brando, time and again, and adored Marilyn Monroe. Cinemas, first to burn, were among the last to be nationalized. The Metro was rebuilt and thrived, the remnant of the upper class flocking to the theaters to be swept away in dazzling epics like Ben-Hur, Cleopatra, and The Ten Commandments -- Charlton Heston’s parting of the Red Sea especially uncanny for the audience’s Jews
who after the Suez Crisis in 1956 were fleeing in droves, 50,000 ship-bound for Marseille and
Athens, a Second Exodus .. | 
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