Lost in a Harem
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Lost in a Harem is a 1944 American comedy film directed by Charles Reisner and starring the team of Abbott and Costello alongside Marilyn Maxwell. When a traveling vaudeville show becomes stranded in the Middle East, their singer, Hazel Moon, takes a job at a local cafe. Two of the show's prop men, Peter Johnson and Harvey Garvey, are hired as comedy relief, but their act unfortunately initiates a brawl. The two men, along with Hazel, wind up in jail (where Abbott and Costello perform the "Slowly I Turned" routine with a crazy derelict with Pokomoko as the trigger word). They encounter Prince Ramo, a sheik, who offers to help them escape if they agree to help him regain the throne that his Uncle Nimativ had usurped with the aid of two hypnotic rings.
After escaping jail, Peter and Harvey join Ramo and his desert riders and hatch a plan to have Hazel seduce Nimativ, as he is quite vulnerable to blondes. Once Nimativ is distracted, Peter and Harvey plan to retrieve the hypnotic rings to facilitate Ramo's reclamation of the throne. Peter and Harvey enter the capital city, posing as Hollywood talent scouts, and meet up with Nimativ. He is quickly enamored with Hazel and manages to hypnotize Peter and Harvey, who then reveal their plans. They are imprisoned (and encounter once again the derelict, who this time introduce them to an invisible friend named Mike with clear sound effects from a door, a piano and a broken glass), while Hazel is hypnotized into being one of Nimativ's wives.
After Ramo helps the boys escape, they enlist the aid of Teema (Lottie Harrison), Nimativ's first wife, by promising her a movie career. Harvey then disguises himself as Teema, while Peter dresses up as Nimativ. They manage to steal the rings during a large celebration and turn the rings against Nimativ, who abdicates the throne. Ramo again becomes ruler, with Hazel as his wife, and the boys return to the United States with the derelict as the driver.
Lost in a Harem was filmed from March 22 through June 3, 1944, mainly using leftover sets and costumes from the 1944 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer production of Kismet. Abbott & Costello filmed Lost in a Harem for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer before they made In Society for Universal, but it was released afterwards. It is the second of three films that Abbott and Costello made on loan to MGM while under contract to Universal, the other two being Rio Rita and Abbott and Costello in Hollywood.
Jimmy Dorsey and his orchestra perform several musical numbers, the first of which backs Maxwell singing What Does It Take early in the film. Douglass Dumbrille's character's name, "Nimativ", is "vitamin" spelled backwards. This film was banned in Morocco, and Syria required that it be edited before it could be shown there.
Cast
Bud Abbott as Peter Johnson
Lou Costello as Harvey Garvey
Marilyn Maxwell as Hazel Moon
John Conte as Prince Ramo
Douglass Dumbrille as Nimativ
Lottie Harrison as Teema
Lock Martin as Bobo (as J. Lockard Martin)
Murray Leonard as The Derelict
Adia Kuznetzoff as Chief Ghamu
Milton Parsons as Crystal Gazer
Ralph Sanford as Mr. Ormulu
Jimmy Dorsey and His Orchestra as Themselves
Lubin recalled the film "was very strange to shoot because they didn't go by much of a shooting script. Being burlesque comedians they just did their old routines. They would say 'This routine is "Spit in the Bush".'... And they would have to act it for me and show it what it was. The entire first script was a series of titled gags. I would just say 'We'll take a close up here and a two shot here'. I never interfered. There were was nothing I could do because these were tried and true old burlesque things that they and their forefathers and their forefathers, probably since the Greek period, had done."
Director Arthur Lubin recalled, "The studio was a little uncertain about how they were going to be accepted. But at the first preview the audience just died. Buck Privates was a very, very funny show. And, actually, I must say it was very little credit to the director. It consisted mainly of fabulous gags that these two wonderful guys knew from years and years of being in burlesque."
Universal had already sold Buck Privates to exhibitors as a low-priced "B" feature, rented to theaters for a flat fee instead of a percentage of the ticket sales. This became an embarrassing mistake when the film went on to become Universal's biggest moneymaker of the year, grossing over $4 million at the box office at a time when movie tickets averaged 25 cents. Because of the flat-fee rentals, the studio had surrendered much of the profits to the theaters. Universal began promoting Abbott and Costello as a major attraction, and from then on sold their films as "A" features commanding higher prices and profits. Universal gave director Lubin, who was under contract at a fixed salary, a $5,000 bonus and told him to start on another film, Hold That Ghost. Lubin directed five Abbott and Costello films in ten months.
Cast
Bud Abbott as Slicker Smith
Lou Costello as Herbie Brown
Lee Bowman as Randolph Parker III
Jane Frazee as Judy Gray
Alan Curtis as Bob Martin
Nat Pendleton as Sgt. Michael Collins
The Andrews Sisters as Themselves
Samuel S. Hinds as Maj. Gen. Emerson
Harry Strang as Sgt. Callahan
Nella Walker as Mrs. Karen Parker
Shemp Howard as Chef
Don Raye as Dick
Hughie Prince as Henry
