Stewart’s reaction about it all, how he was “amazed” about the sitting and the bread, it was all “how can one be Persian?”. How can one eat this bread? How can one sit on these pillows? How can one eat with his hands? To top it all, the scene needed the white character’s approval that that was indeed very good food.

There was also literally a black-face scene further in the movie, which even for the late 1950s it was a strange thing to film.