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This cue is described in Rózsa’s autobiography (pp. 98–99 in the 1989 edition). It was composed for the chase scene in the marketplace of Bagdad, where Abu first makes his appearance at the start of the flashback. Rózsa relates that he was asked to prescore the scene in the manner of a musical, and it was the director’s intention to strictly synchronize the actions of the actors to the music during playback on the set. Rózsa wrote that this approach did not work: the actors looked like puppets, and after a futile week producer Alexander Korda saw the results and put a stop to the quasi-musical treatment. He then asked Rózsa to rescore the scene dramatically.
The cue, which is forty-seven pages long and contains no reel numbers or timings, offers an intriguing glimpse of what the film might have become had cooler heads than Berger not prevailed. It is scored for full orchestra with extensive percussion (including gong, cowbells, glockenspiel, xylophone, jingle bells, harp, celesta, piano) and both mixed and children’s chorus as well as solo singers. There is no real melodic focus, for the cue is essentially a rhythmic piece, with the vocal parts providing a stabilizing centrum, and with lyrics such as “sweet fruit,” and “melons” sung in syllabic fashion. Unsung words (possibly dialogue cueing) are noted: “Oh you nasty little wretches, Oh you dirty pack of thieves.” To this the children’s chorus responds with musical laughter. The mixed chorus then sings a recurring refrain, “Stop him. Catch him!” While Rózsa implies that “Sabu’s song” was woven into this piece, it’s not the familiar “I Want to Be a Sailor” that is quoted, but rather the unused “Abu’s Thief Song.”
The overall effect of the piece is not really that of an ensemble number in a musical, where there is usually a strong statement of the song melody with refrain by the chorus, but rather a group recitative in an opera. The closest film musical number that comes to mind is the market scene in the Samuel Goldwyn film Hans Christian Andersen (1952), where vendors hawk their produce by speak-singing their lines.