argue over which gift is rarest, but the princess points out that without any one gift, the remaining two would have been useless in saving her. Her loyal slave shows her Ahmed in the crystal ball, so the princess convinces her father to deliberate carefully on his future son-in-law. The Mongol prince chooses not to wait, unleashing his secret army that night and capturing Bagdad. Ahmed arrives at the city gate, shut and defended by Mongols. When he conjures up a large army with his powder, the Mongol soldiers flee. The Mongol prince is about to have one of his soldiers kill him when the Mongol slave suggests he escape with the princess on the flying carpet. Ahmed liberates the city and rescues the princess, using his cloak of invisibility to get through the Mongols guarding their prince. In gratitude, the caliph gives his daughter to him in marriage. Cast Douglas Fairbanks as Ahmed, the Thief of Bagdad Snitz Edwards as His Evil Associate Charles Belcher as The Holy Man (Imam) / Narrator Julanne Johnston as The Princess. Johnston had appeared the previous year in another Arabian Nights fantasy, the now lost The Brass Bottle, directed by Maurice Tourneur Sojin Kamiyama as Cham Shang, Prince of the Mongols Anna May Wong as The Mongol Slave Brandon Hurst as The Caliph Tote Du Crow as The Soothsayer Noble Johnson as The Prince of the Indies Mathilde Comont as The Prince of Persia (uncredited) Sam Baker as The Sworder Sadakichi Hartmann as The Court Magician (uncredited) (uncredited) Laska Winter as Slave of the Lute (uncredited) The eccentric Second World War soldier Jack Churchill had an uncredited part, as did blues musician Jesse Fuller. Production Fairbanks sought to make an epic. Lavishly staged on a Hollywood studio set, at a reputed cost of $1,135,654.65, The Thief of Bagdad was one of the most expensive films of the 1920s. Art director William Cameron Menzies was largely responsible for the production design, closely following the requirements laid down by Fairbanks, who acted as writer, producer and star. Fairbanks' meticulous attention to detail, as well as complex visual imagery, required the use of state-of-the-art special effects, featuring a magic rope, a flying horse, a flying carpet and full-scale palace sets. Music Douglas Fairbanks encouraged the respected composer Mortimer Wilson to provide a fully-fledged classical score, unusual at the time. Wilson composed leit-motifs for each character and