The third (and most popular) film version of the Oscar Hammerstein II-Sigmund Romberg operetta features an eclectic assembly of handsome singing stars (Gordon MacRae and Kathryn Grayson) and reliable character actors (Raymond Massey, Steve Cochran, Ray Collins and William Conrad). While I cannot say that the song score was particularly memorable in itself, the film is made tolerable enough by its straight "Arabian Nights" trappings: a mysterious avenger (MacRae, of course, posing by day as a mild-mannered anthropologist) takes on the might of a tyrannical Sheik (Massey) and the French Foreign Legion (commandeered by Cochran and Collins) while romancing the latter's rebellious daughter (Grayson). Also on hand to round up the colorful cast of characters are Dick Wesson as an indomitable reporter successfully providing the expected comic relief, Allyn Ann McLerie as the requisite dancer-temptress with a proverbial heart of gold and Frank DeKova as a typically hot-headed (and ultimately duplicitous) desert rebel.
Review of The Desert Song
