The Thief of Baghdad Reprise

My third and final post on The Thief of Baghdad theme. What can I say? It's been an Aladdin kind of month. Ignored by CommonSenseMedia, given a cautious nod by Ty Burr in his Old Movies for Families book, mined for content by Disney's Aladdin and now a musical at Seattle's Fifth Avenue Theater (so much fun, thank you Katrina!), the Thief of Baghdad has been popping up all over.
So, I had to look into it a little closer. After spending some quality time on IMDB and Wikipedia, I am intrigued by Sabu, who plays the title character, the thief Abu. Born in India in the 20's, he was head of a rajah's elephant stables before he was 10. A British film crew picked him up for the movie "Elephant Boy" and he spent his teen years as a film sensation. He was a tail gunner in WWII, and after the war found that he was too old for the charming roles he used to play. Most of the rest of his career was spent churning out schlock as the exotic ethnic guy, and he died of a heart attack at 39.

But he wasn't just a foreshadowing of the Blaxploitation era, and  for a few years at the end of the Depression, he had a stellar career and made several classics, especially when he was working in England. I think I'm going to have to dig up some of those old movies and check them out. Next stop, the original Jungle Book.