THE LOST DZUNUQUA

Whenever I am offered a contract in the entertainment industry, I buy myself a gift. A memento. The very first gift I gave myself came in the shape of a handsome Bobo ceremonial mask from West Africa. It was purchased in celebration of my first soap opera, THE EDGE OF NIGHT. A featured part in the movie, LET'S GET HARRY, shot on location in Mexico, led to the acquisition of a terracotta Toltec mask from Vera Cruz. When I was offered a year-long tour of the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. to play "George" in WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?, I wanted to celebrate with a mask as ferocious as the play itself. I discovered one decorated with tattoos, boar's tusks and human hair from the Sepik River in Indonesia. It had a very ferocious history indeed. The cannibals who gobbled up Michael Rockefeller used it for their circumcision rituals.

I think I collect primitive masks because they aren't conventional "works of art." My decorating whims are admittedly particular. I suspect their inspiration comes from a childlike fascination with found items like shells and antlers. To my puerile thinking, a great find would be an Indian artifact, like an arrowhead. A mask, of course, would be the ultimate treasure. Masks, as I have come to learn, are used in tribal rituals, like coronations, fertility rites, and initiations. They are not pretty. They are not safe. They are spiritual, iconic and powerful. Exactly what the kid in me relishes.

"Ridiculous," snorted a friend of mine. "You're an actor! Actors wear masks. Of course you'd have a collection of masks."

To give you an idea of the potency of a primitive mask, I cite for example the backstory on one that came from what was once French Equatorial Africa, from the Marka people, in what is now Mali. The mask is embellished with fringes of red thread that dangle from its ears and nose. The man who sold it explained that the threads were shredded bits of the red wool uniforms worn by the French soldiers, who had waged bloody war against the Marka during the European colonization of Africa. The carnage was terrible for the natives. And the local tribesmen mistakenly attributed their casualties to the startling red uniforms of the soldiers. The real cause was of course their guns, but never having seen a firearm, the Marka assumed the power was in the pants. So, in order to give their masks some extra "juju", they would shred the red pants of a captured French soldier and apply it to their masks.

When I was hired to play a recurring part on the TV series MURPHY'S LAW, I was given a contract, guaranteeing me a number of episodes. MURPHY'S LAW was a George Segal vehicle (which, I was told on the QT, was supposed to resuscitate his flagging career). It was shot in Vancouver in the early 80's. I played his ex-wife's new boyfriend, a handsome but uptight criminal lawyer…who wore a lot of expensive three-piece suits…and a little too much make-up….but I digress….

Sensing a golden opportunity to expand my collection I set out to get a local Northwest Coast mask. British Columbia is home to the Kwakiutl, the Haida, the Tsimshian, Native Canadians, best known for making the totem poles. But the Vancouver galleries said that all the old wooden masks had either rotted away in the rainy weather, or had been snatched up by museums. I was persuaded to buy a rather high-end one at an up-market gallery, freshly carved and brightly painted. It was signed by a Kwakiutl carver, with the oddly Anglo-Saxon name, "Tom Hunt."

However, once I got the mask home I was disappointed to discover that it looked a little made-for-the-tourist-trade compared to my other masks which, by contrast, looked like the genuine articles (as indeed they were). In fact, to be honest, the new one looked a trifle tacky.

It was at this point that a dormant Martha Stewart gene kicked in, and I suddenly found myself sanding off most of the paint, "texturing" the surface with a hammer, rubbing the wood with shoe polish and burying it in the back yard for three months! It now hangs in my living room looking authentic and hundreds of years old….and very much part of a primitive collection "A good thing!" as Martha would say.

I had pretty much forgotten this incident until I went to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art some years later to see a touring exhibition of Northwest Coast Native Art. I noticed with rising excitement that there was a family of Hunts whose works dominated the show. I saw that several apprentice carvers had masks for sale in the gift shop running in the thousands of dollars. When I asked a docent what the value of an original Tom Hunt would be, she said "Anywhere from 10 thousand dollars up!"

A TV Show called THE OUTER LIMITS brought me back to Vancouver a few years later. A day off found me down at the gallery where I had purchased the mask, which by now had gone from "up-market" to "museum-like." Most of the artwork now ran between 10 and 25 thousand dollars.

Desperate to know what my mask was worth, I donned the 'mask' of a wealthy collector and asked one of the staff what were the chances of acquiring a "Tom Hunt." In reverential tones, she informed me that he had recently passed away, and that his masks were no longer on the market. Since he was considered a National Treasure, the few that he had made were snatched up by museums and private collections. But would I be interested in seeing a work by his grandson? "One just came in; an absolute steal at 5 thousand!"

No longer able to contain myself, I confessed that I actually had a Tom Hunt. "Which one?" she wanted to know. "He only made a few. He's sort of the Vermeer of masks." "It's called Dzunuqua, the Wild Woman of the Woods…," I began. "Oh my God!" she interrupted, grabbing my arm. "You have The Lost Dzunuqua! He only ever made one, as far as we know."

"Dzunuqua is such an extraordinary mask," she went on. "In some ways it is like our Boogieman. 'Don't go into the woods or Dzunuqua will get you!' She has protruding lips, right? The wearer would hop up on stilts, and shout, 'Woo Woo,' and the children would scatter. And most interesting of all," she continued, now warming to the subject, "on the day of his inauguration the new tribal leader, a man, would wear this female mask as a symbol of his new power. Isn't that fascinating?"

"Riveting!" said I, hardly daring to breathe. "How much would a Tom Hunt be worth in today's market?" "Well we would have to be certain of its provenance and then turn it over to our curator for evaluation, but off the record, thirty to forty thousand," she said, adding, "if it were in mint condition."

"Suppose, just for the sake of argument, it had lost some of its, well…. 'mintiness'," I inquired effecting the most diffident manner I could muster. "Then it would be worth very little. We had a customer," she continued, shaking her head in dismay, "who had the temerity to alter his mask by touching-up the paint. The paint on the original mask did not come from the Benjamin Moore people but was in fact made from squid ink and Saskatoon berries. Can you imagine tampering with that? Of course, the mask ended up losing most of its original value. Why would anyone alter a work of art?"

"Why indeed," said I. And with that, I thanked her, and headed to the exit, reminding myself to cancel my Martha Stewart subscription. I had mistaken an authentic Kwaquitl mask for a tourist artifact. Then ignoring the presence of the artist's signature, I had desecrated a genuine work of art.

As I reached the front door, the staff member came running up. "Would you be willing to let us show your mask in an upcoming retrospective of Hunt's works? The Lost Dzunuqua would be such an important addition." "GOOD GRIEF!" I thought. "I'll be stoned to death at the city gates, if they ever see what I've done!" I smiled and waved goodbye before she could pursue the matter.

When I got home I was so upset that I called the Inuit Gallery in Vancouver to confirm this debacle. This produced the most surprising revelation. Tom Hunt was neither dead nor a National Treasure, as I was lead to believe. He is alive and well and carving masks in Victoria, B.C. It was his father Henry Hunt who had died, and whose few surviving works are museum pieces. I also learned that each Northwest Coast Nation has its own version of the Dzunuqua myth. In fact each individual mask carries its own particular history. And I discovered that even my own mask was not the great Kwakuitl carving I thought I had purchased and feared I had desecrated..

I don't know which is more distressing: to discover that I don't own a great work of art, or that I had vandalized a minor one.