Word: sheiks
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Firing off a reply, Belgrave discovered that the post was that of adviser to Sheik Hamed bin Issa al Khalifah of Bahrein, a 213-square-mile British protectorate composed of five islands lying off the coast of Saudi Arabia in the Persian Gulf. Charles Belgrave had never heard of Bahrein, but the pay was enough to get married...
...March 1926, found Bahrein a feudal and impoverished place. Manama, the crumbling mud capital, did not even have its own water supply. (Water brought from the mainland by ship was hawked through filthy streets in goatskin bags.) The populace, illiterate, diseased and unruly, was forever trying to overthrow the Sheik. The police, imported from Muscat on the Arabian coast, were, if anything, even less law-abiding...
...White Sheik is a mercilessly funny exploitation of these magazines. Wanda, one of the exploitees, has been reading all the "fumetti" for years, but of all the heroes, the White Sheik is her favorite. On her honeymoon in Rome with a healthy Italian villager, she takes off in search of the White Sheik to whom she has already written under the name of "Bamba Appassionata" (Passionate Doll). Somehow Wanda gets thrown into proximity with a secretary who advises her that "To dream is to live!", and then a moving van, and then many pseudo-Arabs and neo-Moorish hordes...
Except for poor Wanda who is an appealingly devoted fan as played by Brunella Boro, none of the people really are people. They are examples. The White Sheik himself (Alberto Sordi) combines aspects of Mario Lanza, Liberace, and Fernando Lamas in a gloriously dripping mixture. Wanda's husband is played, sometimes ferociously, sometimes stoically, by Leopoldo Triesti. Hordes of Moorish monsters also appear to attack the White Sheik along with relatives to attack Wanda's husband; and these creatures add motion to the commotion...
...Myrna Figg remains the solidest circulation builder. It is all good, nonsensical fun and reaches a happy end when the richest man in the world, a sheik with an oil kingdom, writes the winning love letter. But was the sheik's letter really the best? Or were the editors' palms greased just a little with sheikly oil? Novelist Hyams minces no words in his satire on the British popular press. He says that in reaching their decision, the Informer's editors refused absolutely to let the sheik's wealth stand in the way of Myrna...