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The Thief of Bagdad was the first Hollywood picture to cost more than a million dollars, according to Walsh, who filmed it in an efficient thirty-five days. He quickly accepted the job, though, happy to work with Fairbanks, whom he considered 'the perfect hero.' He also appreciated the lavish production values of the project, with sets created by the great William Cameron Menzies and costumes by Mitchell Leisen, later to become a prolific director himself. He was surprised when Fairbanks asked him to supervise such an exotic entertainment, since most of the pictures he had directed at that point in his career 'dealt with cowboys and gangsters and pimps and prostitutes and the dregs of the American West,' as he later wrote in his autobiography. The Thief of Bagdad was directed by Raoul Walsh, still fairly young but already a seasoned Hollywood hand. Griffith and Charles Chaplin, added even more to his status as a foremost figure not only in the motion-picture industry but in American culture at large. His marriage to Mary Pickford, known worldwide as America's Sweetheart, and their partnership in the United Artists studio, which they founded in 1919 along with D.W. Equally important, he was a sophisticated Hollywood player, fully involved in his projects from the planning stages through the world premieres.

He was also a gifted comedian, and as critics have noted, his knockabout adventure pictures were often parodies of knockabout adventure pictures, made all the more enjoyable by Fairbanks's willingness to poke irreverent fun at his own screen image. He was a top-flight gymnast who virtually never used a stunt double. It's a good thing someone played by Fairbanks is around to save the day, dodging all sorts of dangers like a human-hating monkey, a giant underwater spider and more along the way.įairbanks was more than a handsome star with a knack for choosing sleek, effective vehicles. The story's main gimmick is a standard fairy-tale situation: the beautiful princess will marry the man who proves himself the bravest and cleverest, but a tubby little prince has somehow gotten into the running, and an even darker threat comes from a sinister Mongol who will stop at nothing to win. The eponymous hero is the kind of devil-may-care rascal who watches a fellow thief get flogged for stealing a jewel, and then immediately steals a jewel to show how unflappable he is. The plot is episodic, geared more to flamboyant escapades than to narrative logic. This said, the freewheeling Arabian Nights adaptation has lots of atmospheric charm and silent-movie spectacle, and looking for hidden wires in rope-trick, flying-horse, and magic-carpet scenes is a good part of the fun. In the forties, the Kordas only grew in stature-due not only to such immensely popular titles as The Thief of Bagdad and That Hamilton Woman but also to the selection of Alexander, the first film director to be so honored, for knighthood.Douglas Fairbanks has been called the first celebrity, which is probably correct, and his 1924 epic The Thief of Bagdad: An Arabian Nights Fantasy holds a special place in his sizable body of work - not because it was his best picture, but because it capped a phase in his career so grandly and excessively that afterward he looked for less humongous productions that better suited both his talent and his audience. But its films-often about historical personalities ( Rembrandt) or the exploits of the British Empire abroad ( Sanders of the River, The Four Feathers)-remain exemplars of a grand period of British cinema.

The rest of the thirties held highs ( The Rise of Catherine the Great, Elephant Boy) and lows ( The Private Life of Don Juan) for the company.

Their first big hit was The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), which earned Charles Laughton an Oscar and the Kordas international attention. In the late twenties, following a short stint in Hollywood, Alex was sent to England to head up Paramount’s British Production Unit in 1932, he established London Films and brought aboard his younger siblings, Zoltán as a writer/director and Vincent as a production designer.

The thief of bagdad movie#

The mastermind behind their legendary company, London Films Productions, was producer, director, writer, and eventual mega-mogul Alex born Sándor Kellner, he became interested in the art of silent cinema as a teenager in his home country, writing criticism and even founding a movie magazine before finding success making his own films all over Europe.

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During sound cinema’s first full decade, the Hungarian-born Korda brothers-Alexander, Zoltán, and Vincent-built a British empire.