From the 1930's to the end of World War II, the actor, director and producer Togo Mizrahi was a major figure in the Egyptian cinema. Born in 1901, this half-Jewish, half-Italian man of the cinema came to symbolize the cosmopolitan nature of Alexandria before the war, city to which he remained faithful until 1938, when he decided to invest in Cairo's Wahbi studios. Over a period of 16 years Togo Mizrahi worked on more than thirty films, trying his hand in every creative department. He was a major figure in the golden age of film which made Egypt the spearhead of Arab cinema. 

In his quartet Al-Mandouban (1934), Shalom al-Dragoman (1935), Shalom al-Riyadi et Al-Ezz Bandala (1937), Togo Mizrahi plays the part of Shalom, a character whose identity this time left no place for ambiguity. As well as these films he directed several very fine and successful comedies, using Faouzi and Ihsane Al Gazayerly, two stars from the theatre, to which Egyptian cinema owed a lot. His success with the public continued thanks to his collaboration with the actor Ali el Kassar, another famous Egyptian actor who he directed in a series of films taken from the Thousand and One Nights. Togo Mizrahi exploited his talent for comedy in musicals, with the singers Layla Mourad and hugely popular star Oum Kalthun – he cast her in Sallama (1945), her first role and today considered one of the greatest Egyptian films.