George Mallory - Legacy

Legacy

Mallory was honoured by having a court named after him at his alma mater, Magdalene College, Cambridge, with an inscribed stone commemorating his death set above the doorway to one of the buildings. Two high peaks in California's Sierra Nevada, Mount Mallory and Mount Irvine, located a few miles southeast of Mt. Whitney, were named for them.

Mallory was captured on film by expedition cameraman John Noel, who released his film of the 1924 expedition Epic of Everest upon returning. Some of his footage was also used in George Lowe's 1953 documentary The Conquest of Everest. A documentary on the 2001 Mallory and Irvine Research Expedition, Found on Everest, was produced by Riley Morton. Mallory was played by Brian Blessed in the 1991 re-creation of his last climb, Galahad of Everest.

Tragedy in the mountains has proved a recurring theme in the Mallory line. Mallory’s younger brother, Air Chief Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory, also met his death on a mountain range when the Avro York carrying him to his new appointment as Air Commander-in-Chief of South East Asia Command (SEAC) crashed in the French Alps in 1944, killing all on board. Mallory's daughter, Frances Clare, married physiologist Glenn Allan Millikan, who was killed in a climbing accident near Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Millikan was the son of Robert Millikan, a Nobel-Laureate and one of three founders of the California Institute of Technology.

Not all Mallory-related mountain endeavours have proved fatal. Frances Mallory's nephew, Rick Millikan, became a respected climber in his own right during the 1960s and '70s. Mallory's grandson, also named George Mallory, reached the summit of Everest in 1995 via the North Ridge with six other climbers as part of the American Everest Expedition of 1995. He left a picture of his grandparents at the summit citing "unfinished business".

Jeffrey Archer's book, Paths of Glory, is based on Mallory's life.

The 5-volume graphic novel Kamigami no Itadaki (2000) by Japanese manga artist Jiro Taniguchi and author Baku Yumemakura uses the 1924 expedition as a back-story. A mountaineer photographer believes he has found the missing camera that Mallory and Irvine took with them and tries to find the film it contained which may provide valuable clues as to whether they reached the summit. The book retraces the expedition and, by extension, looks at the world of mountaineering and its ever-present fatal accidents.

In Anthony Geffen's 2010 biographical documentary film about Mallory's life and final expedition, The Wildest Dream, Conrad Anker and Leo Houlding attempt to reconstruct the ill-fated climb, dressed and equipped similarly to Mallory and Irvine.

Keith Thomas and Glyn Bailey are creating a musical about Mallory's life called Mountain of Dreams to be launched in New Orleans in 2012-13.