Barnum & Bailey's Circus

Poster for Barnum & Bailey's Persia or the Pageants of The Thousand and One Nights (1916)

And also the following info about the show is from the book, From Barnum & Bailey to Feld by Ernest Albrecht (2014):

Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp - Anne Anderson

Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp - Anne Anderson

Read more about Anne Anderson, the Scottish illustrator, here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Anderson_(illustrator)

Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves - Felicitas Kuhn

“Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves” - The Golden Book of Fairytales- Collins Publishing, 1966, United Kingdom. Illustration by Felicitas Kuhn (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felicitas_Kuhn).

The Wonderfully Bizarre History of The Magic Voyage of Sinbad

So there's this Russian film called Sadko (1953) that won a bunch of awards in Russia. Roger Corman's film company in the States went and bought the rights (or something, the history isn't exactly clear) to the film and the company remade it. According to Wikipedia Francis Ford Coppola helped write the new script. 

They changed it from a Russian adventure film with nothing to do with the Nights into a 1001 Nights Sinbad film, changing the dialogue and dubbing it into English. It's not clear how much of the plot they changed but the company did cut some of the original. The resulting film is The Magic Voyage of Sinbad, which didn't do well at all in terms of reception. It's sort of tolerated in B-movie/camp fans and was featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000.

From wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sadko_(film)) - 

"The film was re-released in the United States in 1962 in an English-dubbed and modified form by Roger Corman's Filmgroup under the title The Magic Voyage of Sinbad. It retains the plot structure of Sadko but includes several changes: the total running time is reduced from approximately 85 to 79 minutes (most of the deleted footage consists of scenes in which songs are performed, though one song is retained and sung in English), voice-over narration is added, the protagonist "Sadko" is renamed "Sinbad," and other characters and places are renamed to disguise the film's Russian origin and transform the film into a story about Sindbad the Sailor (perhaps most significantly, the city of Novgorod is renamed "Copasand"). The English dubbing in this version arguably gives the film a slightly "campier" tone than the original version, in which the dialogue has a more polished and "literate" tone. Cast and credits were also altered to made-up "American-sounding" names. The "Script Adaptor" for this version of the film, uncredited, was a young Francis Ford Coppola.

This version of the film was featured in Season 5, Episode #505 of Mystery Science Theater 3000 in 1993, despite the fact that Kevin Murphy, voice of Tom Servo, has professed a love for the "breathtaking" visual style of this and other films by Aleksandr Ptushko in multiple interviews.^[1][2] Paul Chaplin, another writer of the show, has also expressed admiration elsewhere, but not regrets for the mockery."

If you like, you can watch it here: 

Long-Lost Watercolors Of '1001 Nights' Bring New Life To Age-Old Tales

 

Long-Lost Watercolors Of '1001 Nights' Bring New Life To Age-Old Tales

"In the early 20th century, artists experimented with color and less realistic dimensions, and mixed the worlds of Eastern and Western mythologies. Danish illustrator Kay Nielsen, working in Europe during World War I, finished his own evocative version of A Thousand and One Nights. His mysticism-tinted take on the Arabian stories pushed visual storytelling to new heights.

Nielsen filled his illustrations with expressionist, nearly surrealist characters and whimsical landscapes, breaking the boundaries of what visual storytelling was supposed to look like. His use of bright reds and deep blues, of golden leaves and detailed floral elements, hinted at a mix of Asian folklore and Arab iconography, make of his work a revolutionary body of visual art.

But the illustrations were never published, and the watercolor images remained tucked away for more than 40 years. They were rescued from oblivion after Nielsen's death in 1957 and sat unused for another 60 — until now."

More on the story, the new book and reproductions of the artwork -

https://www.npr.org/sections/pictureshow/2018/10/22/653642391/long-lost-watercolors-of-1001-nights-bring-new-life-to-age-old-tales

Walter Benjamin - On Hashish

The Journal of the 1001 Nights took a little break but is now back in full force. Promise. MJL.

Here is from Walter Benjamin's On Hashish - a little reflection of what he thought of while smoking hash.

Full text is here - https://archive.org/stream/walter-benjamin-on-hashish/walter-benjamin-on-hashish_djvu.txt

"December 18, 1927

13. Oven turns into cat. The word “ginger” is uttered and suddenly in place of the desk there is a fruit stand, in which I immediately recognize the desk. The Thousand and One Nights came to mind."

The 1001 Nights Podcast

The 1001 Nights Podcast is a collaborative online storytelling website featuring 25 retellings of Nights-related stories. They seemed to stop making new ones in 2015 but you can still listen to all of the old podcasts here  -

http://www.1001nightspodcast.com/

1001 SF Nights - Baghdad-by-the-Bay and Herb Caen

 

One of the funniest writers I've ever read and the reason I bought a subscription to The San Francisco Chronicle at the tender age of 17 many years go is Herb Caen (1916-1997) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herb_Caen.

His column was an almost daily rapid fire barrage of witticisms and insight into one of my many homes SF.

And he gave The City one of its most well-known nicknames – "Baghdad-by-the-Bay" – in several of his columns. The name caught on and is commonly used as SF's alter-ego. Unfortunately "Crazytown USA" never did...

Baghdad-by-the-Bay is a decidedly 1001 Nights related nickname and from its uses below one can easily still imagine Haroun and co. wandering around Polk and Pine getting into all sorts of Nights-esque problems. 

Herb's obituary and some of his greatest quips can be read online at the (somewhat ad-heavy) SFGATE page - http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/7-Decades-of-Baghdad-By-the-Bay-Tied-Together-2855480.php

From October 1940:

"The inner excitement of Stockton tunnel, as the jampacked F-cars wiggle noisily through, autos somehow squeeze past, and school kids run excitedly along the inside walk; and North Beach, with its 1001 neon-splattered joints alive with the Italian air of garlic and juke-box wail of American folk songs. . . The dismal reaches of lower Market after midnight; the city within a city that is the deep Mission District, and the bittersweet juxtaposition of brusquely modern Aquatic Park against the fortresslike jumble of red brick where Ghirardelli makes its chocolate. 

The crowded garages and the empty old buildings above them, the half-filled night clubs and the overfilled apartment houses, the saloons in the skies and the families huddled in the basements, the Third Street panhandlers begging for handouts in front of pawnshops filled with treasured trinkets, the great bridges and the rattletrap streetcars, the traffic that keeps moving although it has no place to go, the thousands of newcomers glorying in the sights and sounds of the city they've suddenly decided to love, instead of leave.

...This is Baghdad-by-the-Bay!"

"Hello, Visitors!

By Herb Caen

Greetings and welcome to San Francisco, city of the world, worlds within a city, forty-nine square miles of ups and downs, ins and outs, and going around in circles, most of them dizzy. A small “d” democratic city run by big-buck conservatives, a place where the winds of freedom will blow your mind and your hat off, where eccentricity is the norm and sentimentality the ultimate cynicism. Cable cars and conventions, boosterism living uncomfortably with sophistication, a built-in smugness announcing simply that we are simply the best. The only city better than San Francisco today was San Francisco yesterday–maybe. Remember, visitors, that you are lucky to be here. Have fun. Spend money. Marvel at our giddy combination of Kookville and High Kultur, busyness and booziness, millionaires stepping daintily over passed-out winos, hot-pantzed ladies of the night throwing themselves at your passing car. Enjoy yourselves, but don’t stay too long. Parking is such street sorrow.

Years ago, this wide-eyed kid from Sacramento dubbed it Baghdad-by-the-Bay, a storybook city of spires and minarets, gay banners fluttering in the breeze. A viewtiful city, he called it, a Saroyanesque pastiche of lovable gamblers and boozy bohemians spouting half-aphorisms in saloons run by patrician publicans. The most beautiful bay in the world–only superlatives were accepted–was breasted by ferries that looked like Victorian mansions with sidewheels. Then came the greatest bridges in the world–“the car-strangled spanner” of the bay and Joe Strauss’s suspenseful “bridge that couldn’t be built.” We looked around at the wonderful, funderful city and we were proud to be San Franciscans, the envy of all.

San Francisco, Queen City of the Pacific (the title was once non-ironic), gleaming jewel of the West Coast, surrounded on three sides by water and on the fourth by Republican reality. Occasionally a Republican mayor sneaks in, but it is essentially a city that votes the straight Demo ticket. I don’t even know how they get people to run for mayor: who wants to be Chief Kook of Kookville? We have a city father who is an unmarried mother of two and a gay seat on the Board of Supes, as befits the new demographics. San Francisco has a large gay population, and it keeps increasing, although exactly how gays multiply has not been explained. Nothing is ever explained in San Francisco.
“The city that was never a town.” There’s a thought that appeals to San Franciscans. Will Rogers may or may not have said it, but the phrase does conjure up a flash of the crazed and crazy place that was born in a Gold Rush and grew up overnight to become a fabled city. Tip to visiting journalists: “The coldest winter I ever spent was one summer in San Francisco” was one of the best lines Mark Twain never wrote, but who cares. Whoever said it was accurate enough.

Welcome visitors, to a city as confusing as the Democratic party. If you drive, don’t drink, but the driving will drive you to drink. We are casual about street signs, but you might find one if you look hard enough. Directions? Forget it, and don’t ask whatever looks like a resident. He won’t know either. If you keep going on a one-way street, you will soon come to another one-way street with traffic coming right at you. That’s what makes us colorful and our insurance rates the highest. Don’t worry about traffic lights. Green and red both mean go like hell; in fact you cross on the green at your own risk. Another tip: No Parking Any Time means park any time, usually on the sidewalk and sometimes on a pedestrian. There are a lot of tow-away zones, so check the signs. It is maddening to pay $60 to ransom your car from a towing company whose slogan is “Discover San Francisco”.


San Francisco, a city for all seasons (sometimes four in one day) and various reasons. A city that thinks nothing of spending $60 million to rebuild a cable car system that was obsolete a century ago and even less of letting drunks lie on the street as long as they aren’t in the way of the cables; “a sociological, not a police problem,” unquote. A city of soup kitchens and two thousand restaurants, some of them excellent and most of them crowded. A place where whites are a minority and “the largest Chinatown outside of the Orient” is no longer large enough. The mayor and both congressmen are Jewish women; do we need a Yenta Control Board?

So welcome, dear visitors, to Crazytown USA. You will either be crazy about it or become as crazy as the rest of us. Either way, may you all return safely to your funny country, that large land mass slightly to the right of Baghdad-by-the-Bay."

Ali Baba and the Seven Saracens (1964)

Ali Baba and the Seven Saracens is a 1964 Italian film directed by Emimmo Salvi. Its Italian title is Simbad contro i sette saraceni.

More info on the film's production details at IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058589/

And the film, in public domain, can be seen here (edited by someone from its original version in order to correspond with the Italian version's timeline) in English:

New Revelations about Disney's Aladdin

Disney has apparently issued a bunch of press releases to the media to tout their new Aladdin: Diamond Edition on digital, Disney Movies Anywhere and Blu-Ray.

The following "news" from E! reveals that the racially problematic introductory character of the film was actually the genie in disguise. The directors/producers were going to reveal this at the end of the film but, according to the article, it seems they forgot about it.

They were also going to set the film in Baghdad. Due to the Gulf War, they changed it to the "fictional" Agrabah.

Anyway, you can read more of the press release here - http://www.eonline.com/news/706200/disney-myths-debunked-by-ron-clements-and-john-musker-directors-of-the-little-mermaid-aladdin-and-hercules

Here are some quotes from it (I like the heroic notion of Roy Disney saying no! We cannot have this film set in Iraq! Like it's some kind of major cultural event for the world.):

"According to Musker, composers Howard Ashman and Alan Menken's original version had been set in Baghdad, Iraq. "We kept it Baghdad in our first treatment, and then the Gulf War happened—the first Gulf War. Roy Disney said, 'This can't be in Baghdad.' So, I took letters and did a jumbled anagram and came up with Agrabah," he explained. "We came up with a few alternates. But no, we never thought it was post-apocalyptic, futuristic or in some other time.""

Clements, however, did confirm one longstanding rumor. "I saw something that speculates that the peddler at the beginning of Aladdin is the Genie. That's true!" he said. "That was the whole intention, originally. We even had that at the end of the movie, where he would reveal himself to be the Genie, and of course Robin did the voice of the peddler. Just through story changes and some editing, we lost the reveal at the end. So, that's an urban legend that actually is true."

1001 and 420 Tales

From the March 4, 1932 edition of the Eagle Valley Enterprise., comes this clip -

"'Inspired by Hasheesh?'

It is generally supposed that the 'Arabian Nights,' and others of these weird strange Eastern tales were written under the influence of hasheesh, which lends such a marvelous brilliancy to the imagination"

more at - http://www.westword.com/news/colorado-cannabis-time-capsule-1934-1001-stoned-arabian-nights-6591812

Mushi Productions presents A Thousand and One Nights (1969) - 千夜一夜物語

A Thousand and One Nights (千夜一夜物語 Senya Ichiya Monogatari?) is a 1969 anime feature film directed by Eiichi Yamamoto, conceived by Osamu Tezuka. The film is part of Mushi Production's Animerama, a series of films aimed at an adult audience. More on wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Thousand_and_One_Nights_%281969_film%29

Someone has uploaded it to youtube with subtitles in English. It is an "adult" animated film with a decidedly psychedelic 60s feel to it.

A review by Fred Patten has more on its background - http://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/tezukas-adult-features-a-thousand-and-one-nights-1969/

Here is the film -

Tales Within Tales - Sabrina Guerrieri (Pasolini, the Nights and Postmodernism)

Many thanks to Haitham Alsarraf (http://www.amazon.com/Mr.-Haitham-Alsarraf/e/B00OJ2UKSC) for passing this along -

"Tales within Tales" is a recent article on Pasolini, the Nights and postmodernism at Reorient, an online magazine. It is written by Masters student Sabrina Guerrieri and does a fine job at suggestively tying together notions of postmodernity with Pasolini's treatment of the Nights.

"Sometimes I ask myself (without the least anxiety) if by chance this trilogy [to] which I am giving myself body and soul is not a form of political disengagement and … indifference. But I know intimately that my recent works are political precisely because they do not want to be so … The interruption of meaning is not only more honest, it is more universal than the meaning itself.

Such a statement suggests that Il Fiore, through the interruption of meaning, is an attempt to bring Pasolini’s spectators to a politico-cultural alertness. Identifying himself with those on the margins of society, he sought stories that explored the non-normative — those of characters such as queers, prostitutes, immigrants, and peasants. Although the entire Trilogy of Life has been argued to be a celebration of pre-capitalist/non-industrialised societies, Il Fiore, in particular, with its emphasis on the ‘non-West’, provided Pasolini with a potential point of resistance to the cultural hegemony of the economic centre. ‘My polemic was against the culture of the dominant Eurocentric class’, Pasolini explicitly stated. He was well aware of the fabrication of Orientalist representations within the popular imaginary – that is, of the ‘East’ as a society still on the borders of consumer culture and not yet homologated by the forces of neo-capitalism."


You can read the entire article here - http://www.reorientmag.com/2014/12/thousand-and-one-nights/

Ali Baba - Louie Ramirez

Here is the song "Ali Baba" (1972) by Louie Ramirez (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louie_Ramirez), part of the soundtrack to the film Chef (2014).




"I refuse to open My Sesame"

Thomas Barger's 1001 Nights

This is a rare one of a kind version of the Nights that a family member has. It was a gift upon retirement to Thomas Barger, ex-CEO of Aramco and one of that company's founders (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Barger).

It is a sixteen volume version of Richard F. Burton's Alf Layla in a wooden treasure chest box. Each volume is bound in leather and each one is stamped with Barger's name in Arabic. The Saudi Arabian publisher is marked on one of the pages below. It is stamped 1964 KHAYATS Beirut. Just wanted to share the pictures -

The Muppet Show - Arabian Nights Episode - Season 5 Episode 18

With many thanks to Soren here is The Muppet Show's take on the Nights with the exceptional Marty Feldman as Scheherazade!

The Muppet Show, Season 5, Episode 18, 1980. Guest starring Marty Feldman.

Salesman Paul Brennan lost in Opa Locka's 1001 Streets

The 1969 film Salesman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salesman_%28film%29) is something you should run out and rent immediately. It is a beautifully shot documentary following several door-to-door Bible salesmen in the 1960s. In one sequence one of the salesmen, Paul Brennan, gets lost in the city of Opa Locka, Florida and thus in its 1001 Nights built layout. You can see a lot of the street names here and get a glimpse of the Orientalized city hall. At the end of this clip he tells his coworkers he was lost in the "Muslim district".

Ali Baba et les quarante voleurs (Ferdinand Zecca, 1905)

Here is the short silent Ali Baba et les quarante voleurs from France (Ferdinand Zecca, 1905). Other release dates I've seen have included 1902.



More on Zecca - http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0954087/

Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger - Ghanaian Movie Poster

This is a handmade movie poster for Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger from Ghana. You can buy it here - http://www.ghanamovieposters.com/servlet/the-343/MOVIE-POSTERS-HAND-PAINTED/Detail

Black Bagdad - John H. Craige

 

Black Bagdad: The Arabian Nights Adventures of a Marine Captain in Haiti is a book by John H. Craige about his time spent in the US Military in Haiti. It was written/published in the early 1930s.

It is interesting to me because of its overt connections to the Nights alongside Western depictions of race/culture/strangeness/other.


Text below from the book selling website - http://www.scuttlebuttsmallchow.com/bgdad1.html

"A.L. Burt Company, NY & Chicago, 1933. By arrangement with Minton Balch & Co., VG+/VG--. Second Impression (April 1933).

This was one of the first books to bring voodoo to the attention of the outer world. Jacket blurb (ca. 1933): "No one has seen Haiti more intimately than Capt Craige of the U.S. Marine Corps. For a number of years he was loaned to the Haitian Government and served as a white officer of the black troops of that republic. His first duty was in a wild & mountainous interior district nearly half as large as the State of New Jersey. Here the inhabitants shuffled on the sides of their feet. Some of them had peanut-heads and could not straighten their knee-joints.

Captain Craige learned their language, on which he is an authority. He went to their dances, attended their funerals, studied their weird, primitive religion,-- the voodoo. The natives called him Papa Blanc, White Father. Then he was called to take charge of the Police Force of Port au Prince, capital of Haiti. He found the city a black Bagdad full of happenings & tales as fantastic, exciting & beautiful as any Scheherazade related of the days of Haroun al Raschid. Voodoo rites, cannibalism, black magic, *wangas* were all part of his daily routine.

He tells the story in distinguished prose that carries the reader breathless from the opening paragraph to the last sentence. That a Marine officer could write such a book is remarkable, but Captain Craige is a remarkable man. In his youth he studied divinity and is acquainted with the classical tongues as well as several of the languages of western Europe. His adult life as described in a "Profile" in the *New Yorker* sounds like the exploits of a modern D'Artagnan: he has been a professional gambler, a gold miner in Alaska, heavy-weight champion of France, a sailor, a newspaper man, to mention only a few of his non-military activities. He has served under the flags of Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua & Honduras, as well as the Stars & Stripes-- and he still carries a Mexican bullet around with him. At present Captain Craige is in charge of the publicity bureau of the Marine Corps."