En route vers Zanzibar

I think that Road to Zanzibar is hilarious, one of the best Road movies. The gorilla fight made me laugh the hardest. I would recommend all of the Road movies, if you liked this one. The singing and all of the jokes were great. Bob Hope is one of the funniest people, and in my mind, he is still alive...kinda.

ROAD TO ZANZIBAR (Paramount, 1941), directed by Victor Schertzinger, reunites director with his ROAD TO SINGAPORE (1940) players, Bing Crosby, Dorothy Lamour and Bob Hope. While this edition could very well have been a rehash from their initial teaming or a continuation to where the previous film left off, this second installment, having its major stars assuming new character roles, has not only become a sequel in name only but a much funnier outing by ways of jokes and incidents revolving around Hope and Crosby. Hardly resembling ROAD TO SINGAPORE by any means, ZANZIBAR can easily be categorized as the official opener to what has become relatively known as the "Road Pictures."

The plot revolves around boyhood pals Chuck Reardon (Bing Crosby) and Hubert "Fearless" Frazier (Bob Hope), working in a carnival where Chuck is a smooth talking con man and "Fearless" the daredevil who gets shot out of a cannon flying through a hoop of fire at a distance. Using a dummy in Frazier's place (is there a difference?), the act comes to a halt when the dummy obtains the fire, lands on one of the tents, and burns down the carnival, causing our heroes to make a run for it. Traveling on the road to Mugabund, Kipungo and Molanda, Frazier, after five years of traveling with his pal through sideshow acts, wants to break with the act and return home to Birch Falls. There's one thing standing in his way, and that's Chuck. Having paid Charles Kimball (Eric Blore) $5,000 of his pals savings for the map leading to a diamond mine, it is discovered the map is worthless. Fearless decides to get his money back by passing the map over to Le Bec (Lionel Royce). Discovering he's been tricked, Le Bec and his henchman (Buck Woods) go after them, forcing our heroes to make another run for it, this time on a boat to Zanzibar. While there, Chuck and Fearless meet up with Julia Quimby (Una Merkel), a woman in distress who asks the boys for money to rescue her abducted friend, Donna Latour (Dorothy Lamour) from a slave auction. With all that done, the boys further assist the girls by teaming up in a safari to help Donna locate her long lost brother, who, in actuality is only using the boys to help her meet with J. Theodore Brady, a millionaire whom she plans to marry. Realizing they've been tricked by a couple of American showgirls from Brooklyn, Chuck and Fearless break away from them, getting themselves lost in the jungle and ending up in the middle of a hostile native tribe. Paging Tarzan!

In spite of Dorothy Lamour now being part of the Hope and Crosby teaming, her scenes, though prominent, are actually secondary. While her character as well as Merkel's appears mid-way to limited results before disappearing during another long stretch before reappearing, the film overall belongs to Hope and Crosby from start to finish. Song numbers are at a minimum this time around, with new songs by James Van Husen and Johnny Burke, including: "You Lucky People You" (sung by Bing Crosby during opening titles and story introduction); "African Etude" (sung by natives chanting "Ba-toom-bomba"); "The Road to Zanzibar" (sung by Crosby); "You're Dangerous" (sung by Dorothy Lamour); and "It's Always You" (sung by Crosby). Interestingly, Hope doesn't get to sing any songs this time around. Although some sources credit "Birds of a Feather" to have been scored for the film, this, along with a cameo by Leo Gorcey, do not appear in circulating prints.

With Hope supplying much to the comedy and one-liners, Crosby also demonstrates his flare for comedy as well. Aside from their their traditional "paddy cake" routine, other highlights include Hope's wrestling with a gorilla (guess who wins), and their encounter with natives (with subtitles translating to what they're saying). Others in the cast include Douglass Dumbrille (The Slave Trader); Joan Marsh (Dimples); and Luis Alberni, Paul Porcasi and Leigh Whipper in smaller roles.

In spite of its fine slapstick and gags keeping the story moving at a brisk pace, ROAD TO ZANZIBAR, has become one of seven "Road" movies not be as well known or revived as the others, namely SINGAPORE (1940), MOROCCO (1942) and UTOPIA (1946). ZANZIBAR, along with the others in the series, have been readily available on home video and DVD, along with occasional cable TV broadcasts on American Movie Classics (1995-2000) and Turner Classic Movies(2005-2006, 2010-present). As a satire on jungle movies, ROAD TO ZANZIBAR is as good as it gets, you lucky people you. Next installment: ROAD TO MOROCCO (1942), hailed by many to be the wildest and funniest yet. (***)

This early entry in the Hope and Crosby canon may be their best. The Don Hartman gags are still fresh, and Bob and Bing are young enough to be romantic leads, which indeed they are. A spoof of the kind of jungle adventure movie popular at the time, one's enjoyment of this now more than sixty year old film may depend in part on the kind of movie it's making fun of, otherwise it might seem just plain absurd. It is anyway. Absurd I mean. Also very funny. The studio jungle looks like a studio jungle, which only adds to the air of the ridiculous, as does Bing's breaking into song at odd moments. Leading ladies Dorothy Lamour and Una Merkel are good foils for (as they used to call them) the boys. Good fun, and a great movie for the holidays.

Of the comedy teams that made a series of movies in the 1940s and 1950s, Hope and Crosby were probably the most engagingly amusing.

Abbott and Costello were usually silly. Their movies seemed aimed at an audience of children, although some, like "Meet Frankenstein", are outrageous. There was an element of sadism too, with Abbott (always the humorless straight man) slapping the helpless Costello around and snarling at him, a standard relationship left over I guess from vaudeville where clowns batted each other over the head with bladders.

Martin and Lewis were clearly differentiated. Martin was the parent and Lewis was the twelve-year-old child. It all seems a bit much, now.

But Hope and Crosby were the most nearly equal. Crosby was the smooth-talking crooner. Both were cowards but Hope was a braggart too, a stock figure in the comedies of Ancient Rome and afterward. I think the figure was called miles gloriosus. What they had that the other teams didn't, and what's on good display here, is a kidding quality that consists of trying to outwit one another, competition for the girl (Dorothy Lamour), inside jokes, and a kind of comfortably relaxed unspoken friendship that draws the audience in.

In many ways the funniest scene is when Hope and Crosby realize they've been double crossed by Lamour and set out to find her and tell her off. They discover some shreds of her clothing and conclude, mistakenly, that she's been eaten by leopards and carried off. (Hope: "They didn't even leave an ear. What hogs those leopards are.") The two men try to mourn her passing in a sincere and dignified way but their anger at her keeps simmering to the surface. They interrupt their weeping to recite some poetry over her buried clothing but they don't know any poems. Hope starts off with, "A bunch of the boys were whooping it up/ in the Malamut saloon..." Crosby chides him and instead begins to recite "Casey at the Bat." The scene simply cracks me up. Crosby: "She was just a kid." Hope: "We'll miss her. Even though she was WRONG!" When they realize she's still alive they sneer and kick away the dirt from her "grave."

I don't think of "The Road to Zanzibar" as necessarily their best Road picture, although it's right up there with "Utopia" and "Morocco." It was basically their first though. The earlier "Road to Singapore" lacked the lazy improvisational impression that this one has. "Singapore" seems, in retrospect, too well plotted, if you can imagine. You've gotta give these guys a little room to kick out.

The plot's absurd anyway. Africa on the Paramount set, with phony drums and "natives" and a guy in a gorilla suit engaged in a professional wrestling match with Hope. Actually, Hope's pretty amusing. Woody Allen has said that he picked up quite a few of Hope's comic mannerisms to use in his own performances. (See also Hope's "They've Got Me Covered," a classic of its kind, so to speak.) And Crosby is a necessary counterpart to Hope's physicality. The two work very well together.

I'll have to throw in one of their exchanges. The pair find themselves broke and stranded in a small African town.

Hope (gloomily): "This must be the nowhere that people say they're 500 miles from."

Crosby: "Well don't blame me. We wouldn't be here if you hadn't sold the map to that diamond mine."

Hope: "Hah! It's your fault! If you hadn't bought it I wouldn't have had it. And if I didn't have it I couldn't sell it. So if I couldn't sell it, then we wouldn't be stuck here, would we?"

Crosby: "Nope."

Hope (looks doubtful for a moment, thinking hard): "I don't get it."

Their movies also produced a number of popular songs, some of which have become standards. This one has "It's Always You." Others have songs like "Moonlight Becomes You."

You'll probably enjoy this one. If you're in the proper mood, it will crack you up.

A previous reviewer said something interesting about this second Road picture being a satire on all those Hollywood jungle epics. A pet peeve of mine has always been that American's concepts of Africa came out of those films. We were not in the imperialist game in Africa which was good, but we also knew nothing about these people, their politics and culture, and in some respects we're paying for that ignorance.

That being said, I can't hold up Road to Zanzibar for that kind of criticism. It's a comedy and a funny one. With the success of the Road to Singapore and the obvious chemistry between Bob and Bing, the boys could now unload their monkeyshines on the audience full blast.

This film marked the beginning of a long association between composer James Van Heusen and Bing Crosby. Van Heusen was replacing Jimmy Monaco as partner to Johnny Burke, lyricist, and this was the first of many Crosby films they would score.

And the songs followed the usual Road picture pattern. Bing starts the movie off by singing You Lucky People You under the opening credits and continuing it in the opening scene at a carnival sideshow, a nice patented Crosby philosophical number. Dotty sings You're Dangerous while trying to vamp Hope the schnook. But then Bing croons to Dotty It's Always You another ballad and finally Hope and Crosby have a patter number Birds of a Feather sung in up tempo as the law is closing in. In that same scene is Eric Blore, better known for Fred Astaire films and he contributes to the clowning with a nice touch.

In a sense this is the first real Road picture because Singapore didn't have a lot of the spontaneity the others do because no one figured it would be such a hit. So get out and hit the Road.