"Abdul Abulbul Amir" is the most common name for a music-hall song written in 1877 under the title "Abdulla Bulbul Ameer" by Percy French, and subsequently altered and popularized by a variety of other writers and performers. It tells the story of two valiant heroes—the titular Abdulla, fighting for the Turks, and his foe, a Russian warrior—who encounter one another, engage in verbal boasting, and are drawn into a duel in which both perish.
Variant names
The names of the principal characters have been transcribed in a variety of ways in different versions of the lyrics. The title character's last name appears as both "Ameer" and "Amir", and the syllable break between his first and middle names varies from version to version. His Russian opponent's name has been more drastically modified over time. First given as "Ivan Potschjinski Skidar", the character is perhaps best known today as "Ivan Skavinsky Skivar", with considerable variation in the spelling of both the middle and last names.
Lyrics
A great many versions of the lyrics exist, with the names of the principal characters spelled in a variety of ways. The following, presented by biographer James N. Healy, appears to be the most authoritative available text. According to Healy, French sold his rights in the song for five pounds while failing to register his copyright to it, and subsequently discovered that a London publisher had produced an altered and unauthorized version which failed to identify French as the author.
Abdulla Bulbul Ameer
Abdullah Bul Bul Ameer
Various versions varied to a greater or lesser degree from French's original. For instance, the lyric in the 1896 New Harvard Songbook makes several changes including the names of the principals:
Explicit version
An obscene parody version of the song, in which Abdul and Ivan engage in a competition regarding who can have sex with more prostitutes in a given time, originated in the British military and is traditionally sung in rugby clubs. Although there is substantial variation depending on the exact version of the song being sung, the lyrics are generally along the lines of:
Cartoon
The song was adapted in 1941 into an MGM cartoon, Abdul the Bulbul-Ameer, with Fred Quimby producing and direction by Hugh Harman. Voice acting for the nine-minute cartoon was provided by Cliff Nazarro, Harry Stanton, Leon Belasco and Hans Conried, while Frank Crumit wrote new lyrics. It features caricatures of Groucho Marx, Lou Costello and Al Ritz as news reporters. In this version, Abdul is depicted as a bully who picks on Ivan's dwarf friend, provoking Ivan into treading on the Turk's toe. He has many traits of 1930s and 1940s cartoon villains, such as Bluto, including thick lips, a beard and a big belly. There is a brief swordfight, which soon changes into a brawl, that ends with Ivan and Abdul literally "out cold", after falling through a frozen lake and emerging frozen in a pillar of ice thanks to Ivan's friend who planted a bomb on Abdul and it is unknown if they are being thawed or not. The relatively sympathetic depiction of the Russian character is unlikely to have had any connection to then-current world events, as the cartoon was in production in 1940, and was released in February 1941, before the invasion of the USSR by Nazi Germany, and before the alliance with the UK, in June 1941.
Commercial
In the 1980s Whitbread adapted the song using their own lyrics for a series of commercials on British television, suggesting that the two protagonists were great fans of their beer who squabbled over trivialities such as what type of glass to drink it from, because they had forgotten that "the best beer needs no etiquette". The commercials starred Stephen Fry as Ivan, Tony Cosmo as Abdul, Tim McInnerny and Roy Castle, and were directed by Paul Weiland. A variant of the poem appeared in an ad for Springmaid cotton sheets in Life magazine, 7 January 1952.
In the episode "Brothers |Brothers", the character Lore is heard singing verses of the song as he murders Noonien Soong, commenting "I've always loved that old ditty". In the closing scene of the 1937 film "Devil's Playground", Richard Dix and Chester Morris are singing verses while riding a rickshaw in China. Bing Crosby included the song in a medley on his album 101 Gang Songs. In the film Tiger Shark directed by Howard Hawks and starring Edward G. Robinson, a loose adaptation of Moby Dick, the fishermen of San Diego are depicted singing the song.
