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Tony Curtis and Piper Laurie in The Prince Who Was a Thief (1951)

In the early Fifties, Tony Curtis was notwithstanding honing his skills as an player, simply he was adept-looking, athletic, and gosh, people liked him, and so Universal decided to make him a star. Fortunately for us, for his start 2 swashbucklers Universal paired him with Piper Laurie, who was even more good-looking, able-bodied, and likeable than Curtis. And knowing that by the late Fifties Curtis would become a pretty decent histrion, it'south interesting to lookout man him develop over his first few features.

The Prince Who was a Thief

Rating: ***
Origin: USA, 1951
Director: Rudolph Maté
Source: ATI Amusement DVD

This is the first of many sword-swinging starring roles for Tony Curtis, whom you really can't avoid if yous're watching historical adventures fabricated in the Fifties. Everybody mocks Curtis, and it's somewhat deserved, since he didn't take the smarts of a Burt Lancaster or even a Louis Hayward, only he wasn't terrible and so much equally mediocre. Somebody was persuaded that he was moving picture star textile, but it took Hollywood about ten years to figure out that he was best employed as a reliable 2d banana. Fortunately, he's showtime in this film by engaging performances from Everett Sloane and Piper Laurie, who fifty-fifty this early in her career knew exactly what she was doing.

As he had in The Prince of Foxes, Sloane excels at playing a thief and assassin, though hither he does so with a comic touch he didn't get to show in the earlier moving-picture show. Hired to kill the baby Dey of Tangier so the child's wicked uncle can assume the throne, when the time comes he can't practice it, so he fakes the murder and takes the child to raise every bit his ain. As in all tales of a rightful monarch raised in obscurity, we know how it'southward going to stop, so the pleasures or disappointments come in getting from here to in that location, and this fourth dimension the trip is generally worthwhile.

The boy grows upward to become Julna (Tony Curtis), the metropolis's greatest thief, who is fixated on its greatest prize, the treasury vault where the false dey stores the gold his tax collectors wrest from the people. The business of thieving gets a proper workout in this pic, and Julna's exploits evoke the young Conan the Barbarian or a Dungeons & Dragons rogue. The whole thing is shot on soundstages, with no exteriors at all, just the ever-nighttime metropolis streets and the moody lamp-lit interiors that surround and belfry over them.

In proper Thief of Bagdad fashion, while escaping some guards Julna goes where he shouldn't and casts his optics on forbidden fruit, his cute cousin the Princess Yasmin (Peggie Castle). The thief is smitten with the snotty princess, but as presently as he beautiful-meets another thief, Tina (Piper Laurie), during a bungled jewel robbery, we know she's actually the one for him. The barely legal Laurie, as slippery as an eel and equally cute as two bugs, is a wide-eyed naïf who speaks of herself in the third person similar an Elder Scrolls Khajiit and is just every bit adorably acquisitive. Lissome and energetic, she effortlessly matches Curtis's considerable athleticism, usually while squealing with glee. She's a delight.

Though based on a story by Theodore Dreiser, of all people, the plot is standard-result claptrap, with mistaken identities, intrigue in the dey's courtroom, and an egg-sized pearl the possession of which is the key to marrying the snotty princess. There are several unnecessary scenes of "oriental" dancing by scantily clad women, simply to exist fair there's besides a lot of gratuitous swimming by the bare-chested Curtis. The thefts and pursuits are interspersed with gags, only about one-half of them fall flat, oft because they rely on lines such as, "Begone, you sons of she-camels!" Distressing stuff, only the scene where the thieves utilise geese as projectiles is mannerly. After many such hijinks, Julna is revealed as the Rightful Dey — he has a tattoo and a scar, to make doubly sure — the snotty princess is packed off, and Tina is forced to have a bath and then she tin can be properly married. Ending with a wedlock: in classical terms, that'south what makes it a comedy, right?

Son of Ali Baba

Rating: **
Origin: USA, 1952
Director: Kurt Neumann
Source: Universal Vault DVD

Universal decided to practise some other Arabian Nights-fashion hazard starring Tony Curtis and Piper Laurie, merely this time they got a dud. Thanks to the vast wealth of his father Ali, a onetime thief, Kashma Baba (Curtis) is enrolled with the sons of the nobility equally a buck in Bagdad's Military University — which, except for the dark Curtis, is entirely filled with WASP-looking frat boys straight from the country club. (As usual for Hollywood of this era, only merchants, thieves, and the caliph's goons look like bodily Persians or Arabs.) Kashma throws himself a rowdy birthday party in his opulent Bagdad business firm in which the caliph's boorish son gets thrown into Kashma's indoor pool. Uh oh! Vengeance is sworn past the caliph and his son, and the next morning Kashma is embroiled in a plot to ruin him and his father past foisting upon him an escaped slave girl named Kiki (Laurie), only she's really a princess who's been promised to the shah unless she can discover Ali Baba's treasure for the caliph in fourth dimension to salvage her mother but it'southward impossible to care considering this thing is a mess, okay?

I ever hate to blame the writers, they've got it hard plenty, but in this case I experience obliged to signal the finger of shame at Gerald Drayson Adams, who concocted this goofy story and wrote all the terrible, terrible dialogue. There'southward a definite loftier style to the classic Arabian Nights stories and adapting that poetic diction to a movie script can be done and washed well, but based on this clunker Adams had no thought where to begin. These poor actors are only human, and no one can say a line like, "I sense an evil hand has wrought this chain of circumstances!" without looking at least a picayune embarrassed. Poor Tony Curtis has information technology the worst, having to utter junk like, "Perished I would take, had non the princess dragged me from the flames," all with a pronounced Noo Yawk accent. Yeesh.

The but real point of involvement in this otherwise dull and derivative exercise is the graphic symbol of Tala (Susan Cabot), a bow-wielding huntress and friend of Kashma's youth. At first it seems her but purpose is to make Princess Piper jealous of her friendship with Kashma, only and then she saves the day several times in succession with her deadly archery talents. Tala is intriguing and capable, and how she wandered into this fiasco is anybody's guess. The function should probably take been combined with the princess's so Laurie would accept something to do other than look ornamental, because as it stands, her considerable talents are wasted. Watch The Prince Who was a Thief a second fourth dimension instead.

The Blackness Shield of Falworth

Rating: ***
Origin: U.s., 1954
Manager: Rudolph Maté
Source: Amazon streaming video

The Victorian children's novel Men of Atomic number 26 (1891) past the American author and artist Howard Pyle had a big influence on the "knights in shining armor" medieval take chances tales that were pop right up through the 1950s. Pyle's story was a simple morality play in which Myles, a immature Englishman whose father was betrayed past an ambitious noble, trains as a squire and and then as a knight, finally avenging his father'south betrayal. Pyle's bright depiction of would-exist knights training with sword, shield, armor, and lance was recycled countless times in tales of medieval chivalry over the following 3-quarters of a century. Men of Fe also established in popular fiction the convention of trial by combat ("And may God defend the right!"), the favorite climactic plot device of the lazy knight-pulp writer.

All of these tropes are on display in classic fashion in Falworth, Universal'southward accommodation of Men of Fe. Concocted as a starring vehicle for Tony Curtis, hither in his beginning big-budget ballsy, Pyle's uncomplicated tale is simplified even further for the screen, while its romance attribute is fleshed out to provide additional screen time for the radiant Janet Leigh, Curtis'south then-wife, in the role of the female romantic lead, Lady Anne. Curtis'due south nimble athleticism serves him well in the function of the hot-headed and energetic Myles, though when reading his lines his delivery is yet rather awkward. Information technology doesn't assistance that a lot of the dialogue is in the highfalutin elevated wording that had been considered advisable for tales of medieval chivalry ever since Sir Walter Scott, stuff like, "Have yous not had your fill of buffoonery?", only thankfully it'south toned down considerably from the stilted language in Pyle's novel.

The guy who gets the best lines is Torin Thatcher — you know him as the sorcerer in 7^th Voyage of Sinbad — actualization here as Sir James, the surly one-eyed principal-of-arms-cum-drill-sergeant who trains Myles in the knightly martial arts. Thatcher's is easily the film's near enjoyable operation, clichéd though it may exist, and when he threatens to hurl Myles from the battlements if he gets into only one more brawl, you lot believe him.

Falworth was Universal'due south beginning Cinemascope extravaganza, and no expense was spared on the colorful costumes and expansive sets, with absurdly spacious castle interiors and thou courtyards where platoons of men-at-arms ply their medieval weaponry. The romance story is familiar and the villains' plots are all too predictable, but the fight scenes are tight and well-choreographed, the film is a pleasure to look at, and information technology doesn't pretend to exist anything merely a simple tale of pluck and virtue triumphant over hateful-spirited wickedness. (Oh, and by the manner, persistent movie myth even so, in this film Curtis never says,"Yonda stands the castle of my fadda" — for that, run into The Son of Ali Baba.)

The previous installments in the Movie theatre of Swords are:

Olivia de Havilland — Kickoff Queen of the Swashbucklers
Goofballs in Harem Pants
Disney's Early Swashbucklers
'50s Vikings – Havoc in Horned Helms
Laughing Cavaliers
Charming and Dangerous: Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.
Eleven Samurai: Early on Chambara Classics
Beyond Captain Blood: Three past Sabatini
3 Musketeers + 1 Long Nose
Louis Hayward, Everyman with a Sword (Part i of 2)
Days of Technicolor Knights
Louis Hayward, Everyman with a Sword (Office ii of two)
Laurence Olivier, Swashbuckler?

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LAWRENCE ELLSWORTH is deep in his current mega-projection, editing and translating new, contemporary English language editions of all the works in Alexandre Dumas'due south Musketeers Bike, with the 4th volume, Claret Royal, just published by Pegasus Books in the Usa and UK. His website is Swashbucklingadventure.net.

Ellsworth's cloak-and-dagger identity is game designer LAWRENCE SCHICK, who'southward been designing function-playing games since the 1970s. He now lives in Dublin, Republic of ireland where he is co-designing a new mobile RPG for the WarDucks game studio.

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Source: https://www.blackgate.com/2020/12/16/ellsworths-cinema-of-swords-tony-curtis-goes-yonda/

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