[2][3] The show's first American production in New York, with additional lyrics by Arthur Anderson, played for 208 performances in 1917–1918, starring Tyrone Power.

[5] A talking film, with the score intact, was made by the Gainsborough Studios in 1934, with George Robey as Ali Baba, Fritz Kortner as Abu Hasan, Anna May Wong as Zahrat Al-Kulub, Frank Cochrane reprising his stage role of the cobbler, and Laurence Hanray as Kasim.

In 1953, an ice version was produced at the Empire Pool in Wembley, London, starring Tyrone Power, which also toured the provinces and abroad.

[6] The success of the "Arabian Nights" adaptation Kismet, a 1911 play by Edward Knoblock, inspired Oscar Asche to write and produce Chu Chin Chow.

Asche directed the musical and played the lead role of Abu Hasan, leader of the forty thieves (the "Chu Chin Chow" of the title refers to the robber chief when impersonating one of his victims).

The design for the show was influenced by the English taste for all things connected with Asia (known as "orientalism") which had originated with Diaghilev's production of the ballet Scheherazade.

Complaints, not by the soldiers, resulted in the Lord Chamberlain (the British theatre censor) viewing the show and requiring "this naughtiness" to be stopped—at least for a while.

Abu Hasan forces his captive, the beautiful Zahrat al-Kulub, to spy for him in Kasim's house, disguised as a slave girl, by holding her lover hostage.

Meanwhile, the slaves tell Ali Baba, Kasim's poor, lazy brother, about Hasan's secret cave and the password "open sesame".