ARABIAN NIGHTS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 9, Issue 214, 30 July 1943, Page 13

ARABIAN NIGHTS

(Universal)

ELL, the. title’s the same anyway. But hardly anything else is. For there is a tale they tell in Hollywood about Producer Walter Wanger who,

having decided to film The Arabian Nights, ploughed through the original and then discarded it on the ground that it was just "a dull and dirty book," and set about writing his own version. I like that story, even if it is as much a tale as any that Scheherazade told, for it seems to me to explain a lot of things about Hollywood, However, here we have the Nights a la Wanger-technicoloured nights and technicoloured days, with saffron sands and deep-blue skies, and the lithe golden bodies of Maria Montez, Jon Hall, Lief Erikson and Sabu, not to mention the Beauties of the Harem. Determined not to be dull (nor, of course, dirty), Mr. Wanger has concentrated on Colour, and I must say he gives us an eyeful, as he recounts his very own original tale of how Haroun-al-Raschid, the Caliph of Bagdad, battled with his wicked brother for the love of Scheherazade the dancing girl, and was assisted in all his battling by Sabu the Elephant Boy and a troupe of entertainers, whose ranks included two gentlemen named Aladdin and Sinbad. It ,is all pretty good fun-especially Aladdin’s feverish rubbing of every lamp he comes across in case it should be the right one, and Sinbad’s stock-phrase for every situation: "This calls to mind an experience I once had when I was a sailor.’ But being a bit of a traditionalist, I still prefer Burton to Wanger.