Desert Sands (1955) falls squarely in the "don't-make-em-like-that-anymore" category. There was a time when tales of "noble" Foreign Legionnaires battling "evil" sheiks were foolproof audience pleasers, especially if the audience happened to be little boys with big imaginations. Judging from the number of movie blogs and on-line reminiscences, plenty of those male viewers look back fondly on Saturday afternoon matinees and memories of this now largely obscure adventure flick. It may not be Beau Geste (1939), but this story of a Legionnaire who falls for an Arab princess, who in turn saves him and his battalion from her foreigner-hating family, obviously had the right mix of action, romance, Technicolor, and SuperScope to please fans of the rather specialized genre.

Ralph Meeker, fresh off his unforgettable turn as Mickey Spillane's private eye Mike Hammer in Kiss Me Deadly (1955), released just a few months earlier, stars as Capt. David Malcolm, an American commander who arrives at his post via helicopter (one of the few signs that the story is actually set in the present). Shapely, exotic Marla English (a former model and beauty contest winner born in San Diego) is his love interest; she plays the fiery Princess Zara, who rides in on a horse and strikes Meeker with a whip before speaking a word. The role was something of an advancement for the dark-haired starlet, whose career up to this point had been mostly playing various bit characters called "girl," aka "Harem girl," "Girl on bridge," and most notably "Girl at songwriter's party" in Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954).

The cast of Desert Sands also boasts some well-known and respected character actors, including J. Carrol Naish, a New Yorker of Irish ancestry who was best known for playing a range of decidedly non-Irish ethnicities, including Arabs, Latinos, and Indians, both Eastern and Western. John Carradine is the despicable Jala, whose plot against his own brother years earlier sets into motion the anti-foreigner sentiments of Zara and her brother.

The picture, under the working title "The Desert Battalion," was directed by Lesley Selander, a B-movie director with a long and prolific career, mostly in Westerns. His release immediately before this was Fort Yuma (1955). Selander must have liked the setting because, according to many reports, Desert Sands was shot in Yuma, Arizona (although Fort Yuma was actually shot in Utah). Like many B directors, Selander found a lot of work later in his career in television, and he earned a Directors Guild of America nomination for his outstanding work on an episode of the popular show Lassie.

According to an item in the Hollywood Reporter on January 4, 1955, executive producer Aubrey Schenck originally intended to shoot the picture in CinemaScope. A March 25, 1955 news bit in the same publication noted that the picture was being converted to SuperScope instead, and that the release date had been pushed back to allow for the conversion. SuperScope was one of the few wide-screen competitors to offer even a marginal challenge to the hugely successful CinemaScope developed by 20th Century Fox. SuperScope was quickly adopted by RKO and smaller, independent studios because it could be rendered with conventional photographic equipment and no fees had to be paid to Fox. Perhaps the most successful SuperScope production, and maybe the best, was Vera Cruz (1954), a Robert Aldrich Western starring Gary Cooper and Burt Lancaster.

Director: Lesley Selander
Producers: Aubrey Schenck, Howard W. Koch
Screenplay: Danny Arnold, George W. George, George F. Slavin, based on the novel Punitive Action by John Robb
Cinematography: Gordon Avil
Editing: John F. Schreyer
Art Direction: Daniel Hall, James W. Sullivan
Original Music: Paul Dunlap
Cast: Ralph Meeker (Capt. David Malcolm), Marla English (Zara), J. Carrol Naish (Sgt. Diepel), John Carradine (Jala), John Smith (Pvt. Rex Tyle).
C-87m.

by Rob Nixon