Road to Zanzibar

"The Road to Zanzibar" scores in all departments! The interplay between Hope, Crosby, and Lamour is outstanding. A wonderful addition to this trio comes in the form of Una Merkel, playing Lamour's friend. She and Bob Hope made an inspired dream comedy team. Their scenes together are hilarious. Dorothy Lamour displayed a biting comic edge to her lines not usually displayed in her comedies.

The photography is moody, diffuse, reminiscent of von Sternberg's films. A real treat for comedy and cinema fans!

Bing Crosby, Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour are at it again in the second film of the "Road Series" which follows "Road to Singapore" produced a year earlier. However, although the three actors have returned their characters are completely different. For example, Bing Crosby plays a con-man named "Chuck" who is constantly coming up with dangerous acts to use in a circus. Bob Hope plays his best friend "Fearless Frazier" who is generally the one who risks his life in whatever dangerous scheme Chuck has concocted. Yet for all of their experience in the confidence field they somehow end up being taken for a ride by a woman named "Donna Latour" (Dorothy Lamour) and her friend "Julia Quimby" (Una Merkel) who manage to convince them to take them on a long safari through the African jungle but conveniently leaves out the real reason Donna and Julia want to get there-so that Donna can marry a young millionaire. But what none of the four realize is just how dangerous this safari ends up becoming. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that I thought this movie was a little bit better than its predecessor due in large part to the better coherence between the scenes. Likewise, the action was a little better as well. In any case, this was an entertaining comedy for the most part and I have rated it accordingly. Slightly above average.

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.

Bob Hope and Bing Crosby are on the "Road to Zanzibar" in this 1941 film. They play circus performers, with the Hope character, Fearless Frazier, being shot from a cannon. Actually it's a dummy. One night, the trick doesn't go so well, and the boys set fire to the entire circus. After that, they travel the country and Fearless lights up a light bulb with his mouth or whatever his partner (Crosby) thinks up as an attraction.

When they've finally saved enough money to go home, Chuck (Crosby) goes to buy the boat tickets and returns, the owner of a diamond mine sold to him by a man (Eric Blore) who turns out to be nuts. Fearless sells it to two thugs, and then the two jump any boat they can to escape. Once in the "nowhere everyone says they're 500 miles from" they encounter two con women, Lamour and Una Merkel, who attempt to bilk them out of their money. Merkel is determined to get Lamour into the arms of a wealthy man named Bradley, so they make up some story so that Chuck and Fearless will finance the caravan through the jungle.

Very funny movie, with Fearless fighting with a gorilla being one of the funniest scenes. When Chuck and Fearless think the Lamour character has been eaten by a wild animal (she's swimming and they find her clothes on land), they bury her clothes and say words over her grave. Then there's "patty cake," which the natives love.

Classic Hope and Crosby, with Crosby taking his usual terrible advantage of guileless Hope, Hope falling in love with Lamour, who loves Crosby, and Crosby singing.

This film leaves you with a smile on your face. I never can get over how cute Bob Hope was.

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.