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Aloysius "Al" Babson, a star-struck autograph hound
on his vacation to Hollywood, falls out of a boxcar in the desert. Startled to
see a horde of Arab riders heading toward him, he runs into an Arabian village,
where some riders fall over him. He then awakens in the 20th Century-Fox Film
Corp. first-aid room to learn that he has ruined a take in their desert picture,
Ali Baba.
When a company man offers him money to sign a waiver
releasing the company from damages, his nurse Dinah cautions him not to sign,
but when he is offered the opportunity to be an extra and to collect autographs,
Al excitedly agrees. Dinah gives Al some pain-killing pills and instructs him to
take two at twelve o'clock.
On the set, Al plays one of the forty thieves hidden
in large jars who are to kill Abdullah, the sultan, for Prince Musah, who plans
to abduct the sultan's daughter, Princess Miriam. He volunteers to play the
thief who remains faithful to the sultan, but when he learns that it is two
o'clock, he mistakenly thinks that Dinah told him to take twelve pills at two
and takes the large dosage. In his subsequent dream, Al finds himself in Bagdad
in the year 937. He is about to be put to death, but when he reveals that his
name is Al Babson, he is hailed as the great "Ali Baba's son" and invited to
lunch at Sultan Abdullah's palace.
In response to the starving people outside the
gates, Al convinces Abdullah to invite them to lunch also, thus quelling the
rebellion. Al is soon made prime minister, and he instigates a number of works
projects based on American New Deal projects. When Al suggests that Abdullah
disband the army, Musah plans, with the connivance of Sultana, one of the
sultan's 365 wives, to take over the kingdom, capture the princess, who has
rebuked his entreaties, and serve Al's head on a platter.
Meanwhile, Al has met and fallen in love with Deenah,
who is the daughter of Omar the Rug Maker, a magician, while Princess Miriam and
the spokesman for the peasants, Yusuf, also fall in love. Because marriage
between a princess and a commoner is not allowed, Al suggests that Abdullah
resign as sultan and run for president. Despite Al's attempt to inaugurate a
"Vote for Honest Abe" campaign on Abdullah's behalf, the people elect Al
president, which leads Abdullah to sentence him to be boiled in oil.
Al escapes and, dressed as a veiled woman, enters
Musah's camp. Greatly attracted to Al, Musah has "her" dance for him, whereupon
Al secures Musah to a post with his veils and escapes to Deenah's house, where
Omar is trying out commands to make his carpet rise. Al suggests the word
"inflation," and the carpet takes off over Musah's approaching army with Al
aboard. He scatters the army with a burning rope, but Musah climbs up, and they
fight as the carpet burns. Al knocks Musah off, but then falls off himself.
After Al is rudely awakened from his dream, the
director of the film shoves him off the set. Later Al goes with Dinah and his
autograph book to the front of the theater showing the film's premiere, where
actor Tony Martin introduces celebrities, including Eddie Cantor, who is mobbed
by autograph seekers. When Cantor waves to an excited Dinah, Al, upset, asks
"What's he got that I haven't got?" and rolls his eyes around.
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