A Night in Paradise (1946)

Starring Merle Oberon, Turhan Bey, Thomas Gomez, Gale Sondergaard,
Ray Collins, Ernest Truex, John Litel, Jerome Cowan, Douglass Dumbrille
Directed by Arthur Lubin

Print: color
Runtime: 84 min.
Genre: drama
Print Quality: B

If Grecian storyteller Aesop really did exist, he was most likely a black
slave. He wasn't an Austrian actor with an Egyptian name, but that's who
played him in A Night in Paradise. Turhan Bey portrays the fable-spouting
Aesop, who tries to escape his bondage by disguising himself as an old
man. It is at the lavish court of King Croesus that the greyed-up Aesop
first meets luscious Grecian princess Merle Oberon. The low-born
talespinner is smitten, and determines to win the princess for his very
own. Moral: If Universal buys a novel by George S. Hellman titled The
Peacock's Feather, transforms it into a picture called A Night in Paradise,
and appoints onetime Abbott and Costello cohort Arthur Lubin as
director, you know what you're in for.