A Hypothetical History Of Harems

When Peter Ustinov told us that he would be playing King Fawz., ruler of the mythical, oil-rich desert land of Fawzia, in his latest 20th Century-Fox film, John Goldfarb, Please Come Home, we asked to hear more about it. The good king, Peter explained, true to his counterparts and prototypes, boasts an infinite number of piasters, and a similar supply of wives lovingly living together in that apotheosis of togetherness---the harem. This led us to ponder the fact that, though the harem has long been one of the happier aspects of Arabian life, it has unfortunately been frowned upon by most other cultures. What, we wondered, would history have been like if the seraglio had displaced monogamy as the connubial keystone of civilization? We then asked Peter to lend his talents to an exclusive pictorial depicting a hypothetical chronicle of harems; he readily agreed, and pitched into our parody with the same enthusiasm he devotes to making the ludicrously lecherous potentate in John Goldfarb a characterization of delightfully larger-than-life proportions.