17 Jan Action in Arabia
Action in Arabia, WWII Movie starring George Sanders
(1944) An American journalist (George Sanders) is in Damascus in 1941 and gets involved with Nazis who are plotting to blow up the Suez Canal. Of course there is a beautiful woman for him to get involved with too.
The movie was introduced on Turner Classic Movies by Robert Osborne and his guest co-host Dr. Jack Shaheen, author and visiting scholar at NYU and an expert on how Arabs have been portrayed in Hollywood movies. Action in Arabia is an example of the Arabs being portrayed as villains, wanting to align themselves with the Nazis.
The two of them discussed why this movie might have been made when it did, and they thought that perhaps it was because #1 the studios had to churn out one movie right after the other, and #2 they had Arabian footage left over from a film about Lawrence of Arabia which was not used.
I kept reading that the best part of Action of Arabia was the climax. That must have been the left-over footage … a multitude of camels and tribes of Arabs. It’s not a positive review, is it, to admit that I fast-forwarded from half way through to this climactic ending.
As I have so often discovered, the “behind the scenes” material is more interesting than the movie. I have always liked the suave George Sanders and was surprised to learn that he was a Russian-born Englishman. I had forgotten that he married two of the Gabor sisters: Zsa Zsa in 1949 for five years, then Magda in 1970. That marriage last for six weeks after which he began to drink heavily. It is also possible that during this time he suffered a minor stroke. In 1972 in a hotel in Barcelona Sanders took an overdose of Nembutal and left a suicide note. He was dead at the age of 65.
A woman, a dog and a walnut tree, the more you beat them, the better they be. (George Sanders, Personal quote, IMDb)
Action In Arabia at amazon.com
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