Nuits d'Arabie

ALI BABA GOES TO TOWN (1937) is an interesting historical curiosity for classic movie buffs. It stars famed entertainer Eddie Cantor in one of his rare movie roles. The cast includes such familiar faces as Roland Young, John Carradine, Douglass Dumbrille, and Charles Lane, but also features burlesque queen Gypsy Rose Lee (a.k.a. Louise Hovick) at the outset of her ill-fated film career. "Looney Tunes" fans and music enthusiasts are also in for a treat seeing Raymond Scott and His Quintet dressed as Arabs and "performing" their eccentric jazz ("Twilight in Turkey") on primitive instruments.

Old movies from Hollywood's Golden Age often serve as time capsules for their era, and that is true with ALI BABA. Meant to be shown for a few weeks in theaters before stepping aside for new features from Hollywood's movie-churning machine, films set out to entertain the audience of their time, never dreaming of being resurrected in the age of home video and TCM. Jokes are often topical, reflecting the political climate or world news of the day. Dance sequences capture an era in music history and small cultural references may be lost on modern viewers.

ALI BABA GOES TO TOWN borrows its premise from Mark Twain's "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court", inserting a modern man (through a dream) into an old and foreign setting. This time, star-struck autograph seeker Al Babson (Cantor) visits the set of a Hollywood "Arabian Nights" movie, dozes off, and imagines he is in ancient Bagdad, where Roland Young is the real sultan and Douglass Dumbrille is the scheming prince. Cantor reforms Bagdad, introducing American principles of democracy and economics. He shapes Arab society in the image of New Deal America, with amusing (if absurd) modern touches (camel filling stations?) and plenty of cracks at Franklin Roosevelt and 1930s politics.

Eddie Cantor was an entertainer on stage, radio, and screen. He was famous in part, like Al Jolson, for his blackface routines, and there's one in ALI BABA. When the sultan is unable to grab the attention of his tribal African servants, Cantor speaks some Cab Calloway jive and gets them on their feet. Rubbing on his minstrel face paint, Cantor leads the Africans in an extended musical number ("Swing Is Here To Stay"), which earned an Oscar nod for dance direction. The scene was an innocuous inclusion in 1937, but can be a bit uncomfortable for modern viewers in this age of racial sensitivity.

Another great time capsule scene is at the close of the film, where the movie-within-the-movie has its glitzy premiere. It's a look back at the red carpet Hollywood premieres of yesteryear, where stars would be announced as they arrived by an emcee at a microphone. Footage from an authentic movie premiere provides cameos from Hollywood icons like Douglas Fairbanks, Shirley Temple, Tyrone Power, Victor McLaglen, Sonja Henie, Cesar Romero, and Dolores del Rio, as well as other stars of the day whose names haven't stood the test of time.

This Eddie Cantor vehicle is a dated comedy in many ways, but is valuable from a historical perspective. With its political satire and its glimpse of vintage Hollywood, the movie is intriguing. Some of the gags are fun, and it's a rare film that shows John Carradine (in an Arabian get-up, no less) doing a silly little dance. The flying carpet effects are relatively primitive, but fairly effective. I'd never seen Eddie Cantor on film before, and I must say I found his eye-rolling shtick tiresome. But that's probably his trademark and he did know his way around a witty line of dialogue.

Check out ALI BABA GOES TO TOWN if you're a fan of old-time Hollywood. (It helps if you're familiar with the 1930s and recognize names like Eddie Cantor, Gypsy Rose Lee, Roland Young, John Carradine, and Raymond Scott.) It's mildly entertaining, but it's certainly a neat curiosity. Keep an eye out for it.

It's always a treat to see another Eddie Cantor film, rarely shown on TV and slow to be transferred to the latest video technology. Eddie dreams he has traveled to Bagdad, where he becomes Ali Baba, becoming involved in palace politics and initiating an Americanization program. He introduces swing music and finally convinces the reluctant sultan to replace his hereditary position with an elected president, with the understanding that the sultan will have no meaningful opposition. Eddie arranges for rally signs displaying various New Deal slogans and also nicknames the sultan(Abdullah) "Honest Abe". But, the people overwhelmingly elect Eddie, even though he isn't running. They dig his swing music played by a Harlem band, his humor and his enthusiasm for reforms benefiting them. The Sultan wins only 2 districts: garbled versions of Maine and Vermont, which were the only 2 states FDR didn't carry in the 1936 elections. Eddie is now in big trouble with the sultan, who is determined to make good on his threat to boil Eddie in oil. Eddie has to get away from here fast, but how? He finds a magic flying carpet, but the magic word to make it fly isn't known. Eddie guesses "inflation", since FDR thinks that should make the economy fly. It works, but without a steering wheel, Eddie is at the mercy of its whims as to where it takes him. His troubles aren't over yet....I'm sure, the screen writers would be shocked if they knew that Iraq would be forcibly subjected to an Americanization campaign only 65 years later.

The musical highlight is the "Swing is Here to Stay" scene: an all African American effort, if we include Eddie in black face as an AA. The supposed band consists of AAs dressed as various native African tribals playing mostly obvious fake ornate or primitive musical instruments while dancing around. Meanwhile, Eddie struts and dances and sings in front, eventually being replaced by Jeni Le Gon, as a wild native dancer, then by the Peters Sisters, primarily a singing trio, with some footwork included. The Peters Sisters pretty well filled up the screen, being on the heavy side, but I enjoyed their act the most. They repeated their performance near the end of the film. It's too bad this seems to be the highlight of their very limited film career, although they continued to perform for several more decades. They may also be seen-heard on DVD in "Hi Di Ho" and heard on the CD "The Jazz Train", although I have not seen or heard these.

Most of this film takes place in a dream. Eddie Cantor (Ali Baba) is a hobo travelling to Hollywood where he wants to hang out with the movie stars and collect their autographs. However, he falls out of the train he is travelling on and ends up on a film set for Ali Baba and the 40 thieves. He is given a part as an extra and waits for his moment. However, he has taken some medication which sends him to sleep.........cue the dream......

The film is fun if you like Eddie Cantor and a few of the cast play dual roles. It pokes fun at legislation that is of its time and this dates it. Also, the songs performed by Cantor aren't particularly memorable and the dancing is nothing memorable either. What does entertain in this film are the novelty numbers and so a mention must go to Jeni le Gon and the Peters Sisters who elevate the film into the worthwhile category.

Gypsy Rose Lee plays a part in this film as the evil Sultana and she is memorable as a baddie. She is mean and must have incorporated dominatrix aspects into her burlesque striptease routines. John Carradine has a very strange outfit in the dream sequence - a sort of inspiration for the New Romantic movement of the early 1980s and a modern-day champion for gender neutrality. He wears a large pearl necklace with matching earrings and what comes across as a clown/joker outfit with angled shoulder pads. He reminded me of Steve Strange in David Bowie's video for "Ashes to Ashes." Carradine's outfit is something that Steve Strange would have worn many years later as he influenced the fashion world and formed his band Visage - "Fade to Grey" is a classic. If you ask me, it's a ridiculous look.

In his second "back to the past" dream film (four years after "Roman Scandals"), Eddie Cantor skewered FDR and the New Deal in this satiric look at the Arabian Nights. Cantor and screenwriter Gene Fowler wanted to do a take on "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court," with the difference that, as much as they poked fun at FDR's policies and oratory, the New Deal policies that Cantor institutes in Baghdad don't backfire quite the same way as the Yankee's did at King Arthur's court.

Hobo Aloysius Babson, a film fan and autograph hound, stumbles onto an Arabian Nights film set and gets made an extra. A miscalculation on his medicine sends him into a dream, however, and he finds himself at the court of the Sultan of Baghdad. Giving his name as "Al Babson," they assume he's the son of Ali Baba, and after surviving an assassination attempt made with his stunt knife, he's made an adviser to the king.

The film is full of Cantor's trademark humor, singing and dancing, and the obligatory rueful reference to Cantor's family full of daughters. A troupe of African musicians--who speak no language but Cab Calloway's--provides a terrific swing number (unhappily, Cantor performs it in blackface), and Cantor and Tony Martin deliver a catchy number, "Vote for Honest Abe," that works as a campaign song for Sultan Abdullah.

The production cost over a million dollars, not a little of which went to create an impressive flying carpet effect. Sadly, two of the crew were killed when the carpet fell on them, and Cantor himself got so knocked about and bruised in the scenes on the carpet that he was elected an honorary member of the Hollywood Stunt Men.

The film ends with Al Babson attending a film premiere in which he sees Eddie Cantor (another common Cantor touch), and a host of stars such as Victor McLaglan and Shirley Temple are also seen there (understandably: the premiere was for "Wee Willie Winkie").

All in all, the film is great fun, with fast-paced and topical dialogue and lots of great sight gags (a "W.P.A. Filling Station" for watering local camels). It's very much of its time, so if you're at all familiar with the New Deal era, it will be an entertaining hour and a half.

Seeing it for the first time on Youtube recently, 'Ali Baba Goes to Town' made for an hour and a half of good fun entertainment and an interesting curiosity. Not a great film, but a pretty good one.

The story is a bit thin and silly, kept afloat by the dialogue, some efficient pacing and the songs but more an excuse to string along musical numbers and comedy. The cast are a mixed bag. Eddie Cantor enjoys himself thoroughly and is enormous fun, while Roland Young is a suitably urbane sultan. On the other hand, Louise Hovick (aka Gypsy Rose Lee) overdoes it and, despite singing gloriously, Tony Martin is very wooden.

However, 'Ali Baba Goes to Town' looks good, with pleasing photography, costume and set design while the special effects still hold up as above decent. The script is funny and cleverly written, while the energy has much exuberance so the film never feels dull.

A big standout here is the songs, which are marvellous. The standouts being "Swing is Here to Sway", "Twilight in Turkey" and "Vote for Honest Abe".

Overall, a fun curiosity if not great. 7/10 Bethany Cox