Kismet (1955)

The Poet: May your taxes increase!
[Said when acting as a beggar to get the Baghdad merchants to give him alms]

---

Caliph Guard: [closing lines] Is this man to be pardoned, O Caliph?
Omar: Pardon him, All Highest. His crime was a service. Let him go free.
The Poet: No, don't ask that. Under the circumstances it would embarrass the All Highest to pardon his father-in-law. No, O Prince of Justice, let me help you to compose this most difficult of verdicts against a man who in his life never once did right and who never once wronged anyone. Condemn the scoundrel to some dreadful oasis at least a week's camel's journey away. Force him to take with him the widow of the soon to be late Wazir and all the property she can get her hands on before the accounts are audited. Condemn him to lighten her sorrow and to toil ceaselessly to remove all grief from her heart.
Lalume: You have just condemned yourself for life, My Lord.
The Poet: And finally, O Prince of True Believers, take from me my greatest treasure, my daughter, Marsinah. Take her away forever by marrying her til the end of her days.
The Caliph: Such is the Caliph's pleasure. And so he orders.
The Poet: [singing] Princes come/Princes go. An hour of pomp and show./ They know. /Princes come/ And over the sands and over the sands of time./ They go./ Wise men come./Ever promising/the riddle of life to know./Wise men come./But over the sands./ The silent sands of time./ They go./Lovers come./Lovers go./And all that there is to know/Lovers know./Only lovers know.

---

Lalume: [singing] On days when my lord groweth restless, and bored by his staff and his plume... his handmaiden hath what he needeth- and what doth he need? Rahadlakum!

---

read more quotes from Kismet...

There was a number in the original musical called "Zubbediyah, Sameris' Dance" that was later excluded from the movie version; it was performed by Princess Zubbediyah, the woman who the Caliph was supposed to marry.
It was Vernon Duke who suggested Bob Wright and Chet Forrest use the music of Aleksandr Borodin as a basis for their score.
Alfred Drake won the 1954 Tony Award (New York City) for Actor in a Musical for "Kismet" as the Public Poet.
read more facts about Kismet...