A THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS

 "A THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS" --- (1945) --- 

FUN FACTS & TRIVIA:

• Shelley Winters is most easily spotted as one of Adele Jergens' blonde handmaidens, standing in the background at the aborted wedding scene.
• This film provides documentary evidence that the word "groovy" was already in use in American English vernacular and reasonably well understood by most Americans at least as early as 1942. Tommy Dorsey says it to Red Skelton.
• Phil Silvers wears his horn rim glasses throughout the film even though they were an anachronism. He was so near-sighted that he was unable to function without them. In later years he often wore contact lenses.
• Rex Ingram makes a brief appearance as a giant genie in the cave and is dressed and made up to look exactly like the genie he'd played five years earlier in The Thief of Bagdad (1940). He does not come out of a lamp or a bottle in this film, though, but just resides in the cave.
• The hero is introduced several times as "Aladdin of Cathay" referring to Marco Polo's name for (Northern) China. In the original Arabian Nights tale, Aladdin is a Chinese lad and his adventure takes place in a rather Arabian-seeming China. No attempt is made to make Cornel Wilde look Chinese.
• This film was Carol Rush's debut.
• This film was the final screen appearance for Dorothy Koster.
• Inspired the mid-1960's hit TV series "I Dream of Jeannie" with Larry Hagman (as Captain Nelson) in the Cornel Wilde role and Barbara Eden (as Jeannie) in the role played by Evelyn Keyes.
• This film was the final screen appearance for Pauline Derby.
• Phil Silvers' Abdullah may have been one of the first on-screen characters to say "give me some skin" while slapping hands with another person.