In so many ways, it was a peculiarly British expedition to Everest – with its four cases of Montebello champagne, 60 tins of quail and foie gras, 70 porters, 300 animals, and the climbers wearing hobnailed boots and gabardine jackets.
But, 86 years on, the mystery remains. Did the obsessed aesthete George Mallory and his colleague Sandy Irvine make it to the top and become the first people to conquer the world's highest and most formidable peak?
A documentary-drama, The Wildest Dream, to be released in cinemas in September, examines one of the most enduring and possibly unanswerable of exploration mysteries. While it does not offer a conclusion, it does throw up some fascinating new angles, and shows that the pair could have made it to the top.
The film's director and producer, Anthony Geffen, said: "What is great about this mystery is that it will probably remain a mystery, and our intention was never to solve it. I do think each generation will go on throwing up new theories and probabilities, but I don't think they will solve it, and that's great. Mallory is still on Mount Everest, and he got higher than anybody else before him."
Mallory, who uttered one of the most famous of all short sentences when asked 'why Everest?' - "Because it's there"- was last seen alive 800ft from the summit on what was his third attempt on the mountain. The question has always been whether he was going up or coming down.
The idea for The Wildest Dream came after the astonishing news reports from 1999 that climber Conrad Anker had found Mallory's body in what is known as the "death zone" of the mountain, where something like 40 bodies jut out of the icy surface. The body was found intact. Everything was there, apart from a photograph of Mallory's wife Ruth, which the explorer had vowed to leave at the summit.
For the movie, Geffen filmed Anker and a Leo Houlding, a young British climber, as they recreated Mallory and Irvine's climb up the more difficult north approach. They even, for part of the journey, wore the absurdly inappropriate boots and jackets.
The film, described by Geffen as "the highest costume drama in history", tells the story of Mallory the man, using photographs and moving letters, as well as film footage unseen until now. Liam Neeson narrates, while Ralph Fiennes voices Mallory and, in her last film before her death from a skiing accident, Neeson's wife Natasha Richardson voices Ruth.
The film also touches on Mallory's experiences in the first world war, where he fought at the Somme.
"I don't think it was beyond Mallory to do a one-way trip on Everest," said Geffen. "I don't mean a suicide trip. I mean pushing himself, realising that he might make it one way and not come down."
The filmhas done well since its release in the US, and will be released in the UK on 24 September, when it will be the first feature-length documentary to be shown at the Imax on London's South Bank.
Geffen, who would have made it to the top himself had not the monsoon arrived at the end of filming, has come away with nothing but respect for Mallory and his achievement. "Mallory was the product of an extraordinary era but was also a very independent spirit, an outsider. He was interested in the aesthetics of life and the world, the beauty of things, but he was also incredibly tough. He is full of contradictions and was a very unusual adventurer."
The mystery of Mallory continues to fascinate. Expeditions to find Irvine's body continue, and new stories and theories endure, the latest being a report by Canadian scientists showing how an extreme storm would have hit the climbers near the top of Everest.
In some ways the debate is academic, because Mallory did not make it down the mountain. To be the first to the summit you have to get up and get down, as Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay did in 1953.
Geffen said: "Whether he got to the top is not the most important thing for me. Mallory's story is what is remarkable."
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