Pedecaris alive or the Raisuli dead

Speaking of Teddy (see previous post), I was clicking around and caught The Wind and the Lion on television this evening. A classic, and just as good as ever. Sean Connery as an Arab bandit? Of course. And no stranger than making the kidnap victim a beautiful woman (Candice Bergen, looking her best) instead of the ugly little man, Ion Pedecaris, he really was. Brian Keith had a splendid turn as Theodore Roosevelt, and John Huston was magnificent, as ever, as John Hay, the Secretary of State. But it's the bit characters that made the movie, especially Vladek Sheybal as the Bashaw; my favorite.

Rico says it's a funny thing, but we like our Arabs fierce and interesting, like Connery's Raisuli, safely trapped in the sixteenth century or so and a long way off in the desert, but not in the twenty-first century and in our back yard with guns and bombs...