why little boys and girls and British diplomats become Pirates

dhow with lateen sail --
the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean
are still filled them them

from The Powell & Pressburger Pages

Dedicated to the work of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger and all the other people, both actors and technicians who helped them make those wonderful films.

VLEEPTRON IS SPEAKING HERE: about a song the little beggar boy Abu (played by Sabu -- why'd they bother to change the name?) sings in the wonderful old movie "The Thief of Baghdad" (1940) ........ please rent it for yourself, please rent it for your kids, it's one of the great movie Fantasies of alllllllll time.

"I Want to be a Sailor"

Abu (Sabu) & Ahmad (John Justin) have just escaped from the prison in Bagdad.

Abu complains about the unjust King (meaning Jaffar).

Ahmad admits he is the King, Abu doesn't believe him.

Then Abu sees the guards sent to capture them and realises that Jaffar wouldn't bother to send so many just to capture him, so he throws himself on Ahmad's mercy.

Ahmad says they must go back to Bagdad but Abu says they would be killed and must escape to Basra.

As they sail the boat to Basra, the little begger boy sings ...

I want to be a sailor
Sailing out to Sea
No plowboy, tinker, tailor's
Any fun to be

Aunts and cousins
By the baker's dozens
Drive their men to sea
Or highway robbery

I want to be a bandit,
Can't you understand it?
Sailing to sea is life for me
Is life for me ........

Music by Miklós Rózsa

Lyrics by "Robert Denham" - pseudonym for Sir Robert Vansittart, chief diplomatic adviser to the British Foreign Office in 1939. Brought in by his friend Miklós Rózsa to write the lyrics for one of the songs in The Thief of Bagdad (1940).

Sir Robert had had much experience serving in the Middle East. He spoke various languages of the area and was well versed in the old stories and mythology. So when Korda wanted to put together a film that was an amalgam of various stories from the Middle East, Sir Robert was willing and able to help them.

However, he was still serving in the diplomatic corps and didn't want to use his own name in the on-screen credits for such a light-hearted film (he had previously contributed to Sixty Glorious Years (1938), but that was a worthy film about Queen Victoria). So it was agreed that he would take the name of the studio (Denham) as his on-screen surname.