The Desert Song (1953 film)

The Desert Song is a 1953 film version in Technicolor of Sigmund Romberg's operetta. It is the third film version of the operetta, the third made by Warner Bros., and the second in full three-strip Technicolor. Although it was released in 1953, it was not made in widescreen; at that time Twentieth-Century Fox held the rights to Cinemascope, which was introduced that year in the film The Robe.

Plot

The original plot is more-or-less adhered to, with some significant alterations. Benny is depicted as a comic Bob Hope-like coward, but not as a sissy. El Khobar's alter ego is that of a mild-mannered (but not squeamish) Latin tutor and anthropologist, whom Birabeau (Ray Collins) hires to keep Margot (Kathryn Grayson) from flirting with his regiment.

The conclusion to the film is slightly different, since El Khobar (Gordon MacRae) is not Birabeau's son here. After the final battle, the General's soldiers realize that El Khobar and the Riffs were actually on their side and helped in preventing an uprising. When one asks, "And where is El Khobar?", MacRae, as the professor, enters carrying El Khobar's clothes, and quietly announces "El Khobar is dead". Margot is grief-stricken, but Birabeau, suspecting the truth, mischievously says that they can all be grateful to "the ghost of El Khobar", winking as he says this. As soon as they are alone, MacRae begins to sing the song One Alone to Margot, making her realize that her boring Latin tutor and the dashing El Khobar are one and the same. She rushes into his arms.

The Desert Song (1943 film)

The Desert Song is a 1943 American musical film. It was directed by Robert Florey and starred Dennis Morgan, Irene Manning and Bruce Cabot. It is based on the 1926 operetta with music by Sigmund Romberg. It was nominated an Academy Award for Best Art Direction (Charles Novi, Jack McConaghy).

This film version of the operetta was, like the 1929 film version, almost never seen after its original release. Copies were hard to come by. In 2014, it was released on DVD by Warner Brothers

Technically the film is more sophisticated than the earlier film due to its large budget and advances in both sound and color. It tries to make the operetta topical in terms of World War II, by having the outlaw hero with a dual identity fight the Nazis as well as Arabs. As in the 1953 film, the hero's name is changed to El Khobar, rather than the Red Shadow.

The 1943 Desert Song is perhaps the only instance in which a stage operetta of the 1920s has been updated to reflect topical concerns of the 1940s. In fact, the U.S. United States Office of War Information held up release of the film for a year due to the shifting political position of France. It did well at the box office nonetheless.

Lo!

Lo! was the third published nonfiction work of the author Charles Fort (first edition 1931). In it he details a wide range of unusual phenomena. In the final chapter of the book he proposes a new cosmology that the earth is stationary in space and surrounded by a solid shell which is (in the book's final words) ".. not unthinkably far away."

Overview

Of Fort's four books, this volume deals most frequently and scathingly with astronomy (continuing from his previous book New Lands). The book also deals extensively with other subjects, including paranormal phenomena (see parapsychology), which was explored in his first book, The Book of the Damned. Fort is widely credited to have coined the now-popular term teleportation in this book, and here he ties his previous statements on what he referred to as the Super-Sargasso Sea into his beliefs on teleportation. He would later expand this theory to include purported mental and psychic phenomena in his fourth and final book, Wild Talents.

It takes its derisive title from what he regarded as the tendency of astronomers to make positivistic, overly precise, and premature announcements of celestial events and discoveries. Fort portrays them as quack prophets, sententiously pointing towards the skies and saying "Lo!" (hence the book's title)—inaccurately, as events turn out.

Lož

Lož (pronounced [ˈloːʃ]) is a settlement in the Municipality of Loška Dolina in the Inner Carniola region of Slovenia. Originally the settlement that is now Stari Trg pri Ložu was called Lož, but in 1341 a new settlement was begun around Lož Castle and the name of the older settlement as well as its market rights were adopted by the new settlement. The older settlement began to be referred to as Stari trg (literally, 'old market town' in Slovene; German: Altenmarkt). The new settlement was granted town privileges in 1477.

There are two churches in the settlement. The church in the centre of the town is dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul. It was first mentioned in written documents dating to 1428. During Ottoman raids in the late 15th century the church was fortified and a wall was built around the town. The second church is outside the town at the cemetery and is dedicated to Saint Roch. It was built in 1635 after an oath by locals in a 1631 outbreak of bubonic plague.

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Ålo

Ålo is a village in Søgne municipality, Norway. It is located with the sea and nearby Mandal municipality.

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Coordinates: 58°03′N 7°42′E / 58.050°N 7.700°E / 58.050; 7.700