Sat 18 Apr 2009
Movie Review – SIREN OF BAGDAD (1953).
Posted by Steve under Action Adventure movies , Films: Comedy/Musicals , Reviews[8] Comments
SIREN OF BAGDAD. Columbia Pictures, 1953. Paul Henreid, Patricia Medina, Hans Conried, Charlie Lung. Director: Robert Quine.
Turner Classic Movies had a salute to Hans Conreid the other day, which was kind of a surprise, as I don’t think anyone would consider him one of the great movie stars of the day, to put it frankly.
He began his career in radio — think Professor Kropotkin on My Friend Irma (1949), for example, a role he carried over to the film version, as did Marie Wilson in the title role, but most people remember the movie as the debut of a comedy team named Martin and Lewis — and he also did a lot of work on TV on up through the early 1980s.
But movies? Not really, that wasn’t his metier, but I taped the ones that TCM showed, and my reviews of them will show up here eventually. (Assuming that you don’t mind, I’ll exclude The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T from 1953, which I’ve seen before and I decided I’d pass on watching again.) Conreid was perfect for radio and TV sitcoms, though — he was also Uncle Tonoose on Danny Thomas’s Make Room for Daddy — loud, sneeringly brash and willing to do anything for a gag.
A role not unlike the one he plays in Siren of Bagdad, too. There’s a small amount of adventurous derring-do in the movie, but very little. The movie’s played for laughs all the way, and on the level of a mediocre radio show, much less TV, although the sets could have come from the same warehouse.
Samples:
Trying to distract a palace guard: “I beg your pardon. I realize they haven’t been invented yet, but have you got a match?”
Making his way with his boss, the magician Kazah the Great (Paul Henreid), to Bagdad: “The sands of the desert have barbecued my bunions.”
At a time when things are looking dark for the pair: “Where can I catch the next camel to Basra?”
Story line: When the dancing girls in his entourage are kidnapped by desert bandits and taken to Bagdad to be sold as slaves, Kazah the Great and Ben Ali (Conried) follow and fall in with some revolutionaries. The Great Kazah also falls in love with the leader’s daughter (Patricia Medina), and you can take it from there.
There is also a large magic trunk into which people are put, only to disappear, among other uses, including changing Ben Ali into a beautiful dancing girl (with Ben Ali’s voice, both unfortunately and amusingly), the better to infiltrate the Sultan’s harem. (Along this line of thinking, there is much to see in this movie.)
One would think that’s a long way down for Paul Henreid, from Now, Voyager and Casablanca to Siren of Bagdad, but to his credit, and this is the honest truth, he seems to be having a great time.
As for the director, Robert Quine, you may not be able to tell from this film, but he was on his way up — to films like My Sister Eileen (1955), The Solid Gold Cadillac (1955) and The World of Suzie Wong (1960), among a number of others.
April 18th, 2009 at 10:48 am
I think the team that created Siren of Bagdad had seen Hope and Crosby in Road to Morrocco and Abbot and Costello in Lost in a Harem too many times, but then it’s an attractive cast and has a goofy charm, although I never quite did embrace Paul Henried as a swashbuckler although he played in enough of them and always gave it his best — often cast opposite Maureen O’Hara on loan from John Wayne and John Ford.
As for Conried he’s in more movies than we usually think of from a Soviet officer in Howard Hughes Jet Pilot with John Wayne and Janet Leigh to the effiminate fall guy in The Falcon Takes Over (based on Chandler’s Farewell My Lovely), to a doomed young man in On Borrowed Time, and many others. Not a star certainly, but a notable character actor. Of course for some of us he is always Uncle Toonose and the voice of the magic mirror on The World of Disney, but misspent childhoods are hard to outlive. Anyway I suspect the Hans Conried day on TCM was only an excuse to show The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. It was that or a Peter Lind Hayes film festival.
April 18th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
The 5,000 Fingers of Dr T is certainly a great Hans Conried movie but the one I watched was The Twonky, based on the Henry Kuttner short story. I have to admit to being very disappointed with the film, which seemed slanted towards children only. It had some good moments but I would have to say I found it mediocre at best.
I reread Farewell My Lovely a few days ago and then watched the three films based on it. At least Murder My Sweet and the Robert Mitchum version tried to have fairly big guys playing Moose. But The Falcon Takes Over had Ward Bond playing Moose, and he certainly is not a big guy!
April 18th, 2009 at 7:54 pm
David
Re: Siren of Bagdad. I’ve seen the reference to the Hope-Crosby “Road” movies before, but in terms of the characters, I didn’t see much that they had in common. Maybe there’s more plot-wise, but if you were to ask me to describe the story line of any of the Road pictures, I don’t think I could do it.
Walker
I was going to watch The Twonky tonight, but you’ve just confirmed my greatest misgivings about it. Maybe I’ll watch a good crime movie instead.
What I have been watching the last month or so — and not reporting on — are various SF TV series, like Stargate, Battlestar Galactica, and some of the various Dr. Who runs on BBC.
I missed a stretch of movies on TCM I was going to tape this afternoon. I forgot all about them, but I imagine they’ll all be on again.
— Steve
April 18th, 2009 at 9:18 pm
Granted 6’2″ Ward Bond didn’t look as proportionately large next to 6’3″ George Sanders compared to Dick Powell and Mike Mazurki (6’5″) or Robert Mitchum and Richard Keil (7’1.5″), but “not a big guy?” Does this mean I no longer have to shop at the big and tall shop?
April 18th, 2009 at 10:15 pm
David
Your first line explains all. It’s all relative. Moose HAS to be taller than Marlowe, or it just doesn’t work.
— Steve
April 18th, 2009 at 10:32 pm
I didn’t mean to suggest Sirens of Bagdad borrowed the plot of Road to Morocco or Lost in a Harem, only the jokey approach those films had to the whole Jon Hall/Maria Montez Arabian Nights sub genre. For a while it seemed just about everyone did at least one of these including Tony Curtis (“Yonder lies da castle of my fadder.”), Joan Davis, Jeff Chandler, Donald O’Connor, Dale Robertson, and eventually Elvis. Vincent Price even shows up in one as Omar Khayam, the film’s comic relief (and the villain in at least one other with Maureen O’Hara). No one ever took them too seriously including the people in them, and they vary widely from entertaining to simply awful (Siren probably coming closer to the latter despite the cast’s best efforts).
The chief excuse for them seems to have been technicolor and Montez, Medina, Arlene Dahl, Rhonda Fleming, Maureen O’Hara, Virgina Mayo, or Debra Paget in gauzy outfits suitable for a burlesque stage. By the time Barbara Eden bared her belly button (before the censors got to her) on I Dream of Jeannie the genre was on it’s last legs save for a few Italian sword and sandal epics with Hercules or Maciste straying into Arabian Nights country, though Disney’s Aladdin and a lavish mini series based on the Arabian Nights proved you can never kill a genre off entirely.
Since this began with Hans Conried’s film career I’ve copied his filmography from the Wikipedia page.
Never Say Die (1939)
It’s a Wonderful World (1939)
On Borrowed Time (1939)
Dulcy (1940)
The Great Dictator (1940)
Bitter Sweet (1940)
Maisie Was a Lady (1941)
More About Nostradamus (1941) (short subject)
Underground (1941)
Unexpected Uncle (1941)
Weekend for Three (1941)
The Gay Falcon (1941)
A Date with the Falcon (1941)
Joan of Paris (1942)
Blondie’s Blessed Event (1942)
Saboteur (1942)
The Wife Takes a Flyer (1942)
Pacific Rendezvous (1942)
The Falcon Takes Over (1942)
The Big Street (1942)
The Greatest Gift (1942) (short subject)
Nightmare (1942)
Once Upon a Honeymoon (1942)
Underground Agent (1942)
Hitler’s Children (1943)
Journey into Fear (1943)
Hostages (1943)
A Lady Takes a Chance (1943)
Crazy House (1943)
His Butler’s Sister (1943)
Passage to Marseille (1944)
Mrs. Parkington (1944)
The Beach Nut (1944) (short subject) (voice)
Ski for Two (1944) (short subject) (voice)
Chew-Chew Baby (1945) (short subject) (voice)
Sliphorn King of Polaroo (1945) (short subject) (voice)
The Dippy Diplomat (1945) (short subject) (voice)
Reckless Driver (1946) (short subject) (voice)
Design for Death (1947) (short subject) (narrator)
Well Oiled (1947) (short subject) (voice)
The Senator Was Indiscreet (1947)
Variety Time (1948)
The Barkleys of Broadway (1949)
My Friend Irma (1949)
Bride for Sale (1949)
On the Town (1949)
One Hour in Wonderland (1950)
Nancy Goes to Rio (1950)
Summer Stock (1950)
Rich, Young and Pretty (1951)
New Mexico (1951)
Behave Yourself! (1951)
Texas Carnival (1951)
Too Young to Kiss (1951)
I’ll See You in My Dreams (1951)
Johann Mouse (1952) (short subject) (voice)
The Light Touch (1952)
Three for Bedroom “C” (1952)
Big Jim McLain (1952)
The World in His Arms (1952)
The Twonky (1953)
Peter Pan (1953) (voice)
The Emperor’s New Clothes (1953) (short subject) (voice)
Siren of Bagdad (1953)
The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T (1953)
The Affairs of Dobie Gillis (1953)
Ben and Me (1953) (short subject) (voice)
Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier (1955)
You’re Never Too Young (1955)
The Birds and the Bees (1956)
Bus Stop (1956)
Carnival in Munich (1956) (short subject) (narrator)
The Story of Anyburg U.S.A. (1957) (short subject) (voice)
The Monster That Challenged the World (1957)
Jet Pilot (1957)
The Big Beat (1958)
Rock-A-Bye Baby (1958)
Juke Box Rhythm (1959)
1001 Arabian Nights (1959) (voice)
The Magic Fountain (1961) (voice)
Jay Ward’s Fractured Flickers (1963) (host)(available on DVD)
My Six Loves (1963)
Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964)
The Patsy (1964)
Wake Me When the War Is Over (1969) (TV)
The Phantom Tollbooth (1970) (voice)
Horton Hears a Who (1970) (voice)
Dr. Seuss on the Loose (1973) Narrator/North-going Zax (voice)
The Brothers O’Toole (1973)
The Shaggy D.A. (1976)
The Magic Pony (1977) (voice)
The Hobbit (1977) (voice)
Halloween is Grinch Night (1977) (voice)
The Cat from Outer Space (1978)
Oh, God! Book II (1980)
Why Didn’t Somebody Tell Me? (1980)
Scruffy (1980) (voice)
Faeries (1981) (voice)
The Trolls and the Christmas Express (1981) (voice)
Miss Switch to the Rescue (1982) (voice)
April 19th, 2009 at 10:23 am
David
Thankfully this list excludes all of his TV appearances. I wonder, though, if you were to exclude all of the cartoon voices and movies in which he only had bit parts (uncredited or less than two minutes), how many would be left?
By which I do not wish to diminish his career by any means. He knew his abilities well and made great use of them.
— Steve
April 23rd, 2009 at 9:21 pm
[…] radio show included Hans Conreid, Mel Blanc and Sheldon Leonard. (One of these fellows came up for discussion not too long ago, as regular readers of this blog will quickly recall.) […]