Campy fun!…suggests a story conference debauch…Miss Montez saunters with the regality of an usherette…Turhan Bey gives a boyish imitation of Rudolph Valentino…If there's a scene that explains why the film is called SUDAN, a locale that never figures in the plot, it wasn't included in the print I saw…I was born in Sudan. If I showed this film to my Mum it would only confirm to her that I’m a pot head.
-Reviews of the film Sudan (1945), starring Spanish-accented Maria Montez, aka the Queen of Technicolor, and German-accented Turhan Bey, aka the Turkish Delight
I haven’t seen this film, so I missed the slave trader’s villainously comic henchman played by Philip Van Zandt, who also appeared in the other Orientalist B-gems Yankee Pasha, Arabian Nuts, Thief of Damascus (as Ali Baba), and Son of Ali Baba (in an uncredited role- so low his star had fallen by the end of his career). He killed himself after his last silly part in a Three Stooges short.
Van Zandt’s most dignified role was in Citizen Kane as the newsreel editor Mr. Rawlston, whose line “It isn’t enough to tell us what a man did. You’ve got to tell us who he was” frames the greatest film ever made. I wonder if Voice of the Whip tells us who KhairAllah is, or is there still more to learn?
