Bob Hope Tribute Collection - The Road Show Series (The Road to Morocco / The Road to Singapore / The Road to Utopia / The Road to Zanzibar)

Road to Zanzibar
The second Road movie from Paramount Pictures finds barnstorming con artists Chuck Reardon (Bing Crosby) and Hubert "Fearless" Frazier (Bob Hope) at liberty after their act goes haywire. (In these movies, Crosby generally lures the suckers into the tent, while Hope is always stuck getting shot out of the cannon.) A phony map to a diamond mine brings our boys into the middle of Africa, which means there's a good chance they'll end up sitting in a cauldron while natives perform a cannibal dance around them. These stereotypes would be offensive if the movie wasn't actively parodying the kind of jungle movie popular in 1941 (just as Road to Morocco would satirize the Arabian nights picture). Dorothy Lamour is along for the ride, of course, and her scene in a tight clinch with Hope established a tradition of steamy comic exchanges through the series (as she croons a love song to him, he checks to see if his wallet is still in his pocket). This is the first Road movie to actively wink at the audience; in one scene, Lamour mocks the way movies always have characters break out into song in the middle of nowhere with a full orchestra backing--which is exactly what happens next. The chatter between Crosby and Hope already feels improvised, and it should be noted that the secret of their chemistry is not a sentimental friendship but a cheerfully hostile rivalry between the two characters, a cheeky approach that must've delighted audiences used to the Andy Hardy niceness of most Hollywood movies of that era. Oh, and they do their patty-cake routine, too. --Robert Horton

Road to Morocco
Road to Morocco, number three in the series of breezy comedies teaming Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, may be the funniest of the bunch. Bing and Bob find themselves Morocco-bound ("like Webster's dictionary"), caught in an elaborately faked-up world of harems, palm trees, and other Arabian Nights bric-a-brac. Naturally, Dorothy Lamour is also there, as she was the customary target of male rivalry in the Road scenarios. There is something so loose and ingratiating about the patter between Hope and Crosby that it doesn't ultimately matter if half the jokes don't land; these guys had their own comfortable rhythm, fueled by cheerful one-upmanship. Their sense of spontaneity broke the fourth wall between movie and audience in a way only the Marx Brothers had really accomplished before, and audiences--feeling in on the joke--ate it up. Songs (including "Moonlight Becomes You"), topical references, and ancient vaudeville routines fill out the program. --Robert Horton

Road to Utopia
I feel sorry for people who can't appreciate Hope and Crosby Road pictures. This is the fourth in the series, and has the boys masquerading as the killers Sperry and McGurk, from whom they've stolen the map to a gold mine, but which really belongs to Dorothy Lamour, but which... and you know it really doesn't matter anyway. The point is they've got this thin plot on which to hang a series of hit-and-miss jokes, coming fast enough to make it just all right and a certain amount of time to see who gets Dorothy Lamour, while maintaining their fierce and friendly and wisecracking rivalry. They're in the Klondike this time around, which doesn't stop the film from working in a glimpse of Dorothy in her sarong. Along the way, animals talk, including the humorist Robert Benchley, whose thoroughly dispensable introduction and running commentary I wouldn't dispense with for anything. This is arguably the goofiest of the road pictures. My favorite joke is when Bob is bested in fishing with Bing. Bob remarks, "My worm must have B.O." Bing comes back with "Couldn't B.U." You may not care where you're going, just as long as you're with them. Put it there, pal, put it there. --Jim Gay