The Man Who Turned White

• 1919
• 1 hr 30 mins
• Action & Adventure
• NR

• Watchlist

This Arabian tale starring H.B. Warner (returning to the screen after an extended Broadway performance) may seem racist today, but in the days of silent cinema it was about par for the course. Captain Beverly (Wedgewood Nowell) becomes involved with a colonel's wife. Because Beverly had saved his life on the battlefield, Captain Rand (Warner) protects him by taking the blame. As a result, Rand is court-martialed and it makes him bitter. Disguising himself as Ali Zaman, an Arab, he takes out his resentment on all white men, and kidnaps Ethel Lambert (Barbara Castleton), the girl Beverly loves. She figures out he is white, however, and he lets her go. Later on, dressed as himself, Rand meets her at a restaurant in an Arabian town. He saves her father from an attack and a romance begins to develop between them. Beverly tells Ethel that Rand was drummed out of the service in disgrace. Rand gives her a week to consider their romance. Fanine (Carmen Phillips), a resentful dancer in love with Rand, is part of a conspiracy to kill him and she lures Ethel into the desert. Beverly, meanwhile, has come to regret his actions, and goes into the desert and is killed in the ensuing battle. English soldiers rescue Rand and Ethel, and they are happily united.