Franchised through major Hollywood studios like MGM and RKO, born of the same arrogant, childish vitality that imported golf to the desert and designed suburbs in the shape of a fish -- Cairo’s cinemas lit up the sun-stroked boulevard: luminous utopias, Pleasure palaces where Western dreams filled the screen and spilled into the street. It wasn’t hard to find a local champion. King Farouk, with his hyper-European tastes, was adrift in the dream, too. Only sixteen when he ascended the throne in 1936, Farouk loved the movies. New cinemas sprang up, playhouses like Cinema Miami -- a lobby with a chandelier, two red-carpeted stairways sweeping majestically into the theater, plush velvet curtain, box seats and a balcony. Grown from boy-king into a fat pleasure-seeking ruler, Farouk had the royal armchair brought to the theater and guffawed at the screen like a teenager.