Zeinat Sidqi (1913-1978) (right)

The queen of Egyptian comediennes. I love her hyper-garrulousness and busybody demeanour in all of her films, that ringing zaghrouta, and those classic Egyptian features and perpetually rouged mouth, so de rigueur in that era. One of my favorite scenes is when she spills a tisht of mulukhiyya from her balcony on Abdel al-Salam al-Nabulsi in Sharia al-Hubb (1959). And how she cloyingly wooed him in that film, he the over-serious band leader named Hasaballa the 16th! I also love her maternal role as a kind landlady in the tragic Ayamna al-Hilwa (1955).