Call Me Bwana

A U. S. Capsule has returned from the moon and inadvertently landed in Africa. Naturally, the president only wants the most knowledgeable and brave explorer to retrieve it before others claim salvage rights, Matthew Merriweather (Bob Hope).

The other leader banging a shoe on the table also wants the capsule and sends a noted anthropologist (Anita Ekberg) to use Merriweather to obtain the prize.

In reality, Matthew has never been to Africa. His book is a rehash of his uncle's adventures.

You get the idea. Beautiful women, rough elephants, wild natives, and Arnold Palmer.

Gordon Douglas also directed "Them!" (1954) so he is no stranger to wild creatures. And from the rich background of the driving scenes, you would never guess that it was filmed in Pinewood Studios.

For years Bob Hope was one of cinema's most engaging presences, as classic comedies like "My Favorite Brunette/Blonde" and "The Princess And The Pirate" make clear even today. The lack of similar scripts in the 1960s didn't stop Bob from working, however, and the results were films like "Call Me Bwana" that diminished his legacy in a small but annoying way.

As the politically incorrect title suggests, this is a safari-themed picture, with Bob playing Matthew Merriweather, a writer who palms off his uncle's memoirs of African adventure as his own while loafing around his Manhattan bachelor pad in a leopard-print bathrobe. Only everyone thinks he's on the level, which is a problem when a capsule crashes down in Africa and both the U.S. and the Soviets figure Merriweather's the only man to find it.

The story is flimsy on many levels, but that's really not what's wrong here. Hope's not making "Out Of Africa," and the fact that the Frank Buck era of the Great White Explorer in Africa kind of ended by World War II is a minor nuisance, as is the fact its unlikely NASA couldn't find its own capsule with all the high-tech stuff they had even back then. No, you're supposed to enjoy this film as a vehicle for jokes. Only someone forgot the jokes.

Hope just moseys through the film, his timing solid but firing blanks. "I'm here on a mission for the President of the United States," he tells a hostile-looking group of tribesmen. "You know, President Kennedy?" No reaction. "Bobby Kennedy? Teddy Kennedy? Jackie Kennedy? Caroline? Boy, these guys must be Republicans!"

The attitude toward native Africans in this movie is not that bad. Hope's the buffoon, and for most of the film the black people around him are not targets as much as witnesses to his embarrassment. About the worst excess, other than the title, is when Hope makes a couple of porters carry his luggage on their heads, instead of toting them the normal way, because its more like what he's seen in "National Geographic."

What's more off is the threadbare plot and a cast of supporting players who don't want to be there. Anita Ekberg and Edie Adams play rival spies in a sort of dull-eyed way. If it wasn't for Hope's joking about it so much you wouldn't know they were supposed to be sexy, but of course he does joke, and joke, and joke, about it. Lionel Jeffries is awkward in bad makeup and adds nothing as a nasty Soviet spy pretending to be a pious missionary who'd rather kill Merriweather than find the capsule. The best supporting performance is probably that of golfing legend Arnold Palmer, just for the way he enters the picture, a supremely silly but classic moment revisited in the Dan Ackroyd/Chevy Chase film "Spies Like Us." Unfortunately, the producers then have Palmer and Hope do ten minutes of random club-swinging in the middle of the picture, Hope making in-jokes about Bing while trying to cheat his way into looking respectable against Arnie. It's one thing to tack on a quick cameo; but the padding here really shows.

Except there's nothing to pad. The whole movie is padded. Things happen, Hope makes a wisecrack, the scene changes, and everything we saw up to then is forgotten. At least a film set in Africa should be beautiful, but this is shot in such a cheap, offhanded manner it's almost distracting; its clear where the movie ends and the stock footage begins. The ending is particularly slipshod, which I couldn't spoil if I tried given I really have no idea what happened.

Any Bob Hope comedy has the potential to be great, so when one fails to deliver as persistently as "Call Me Bwana," it really leaves one flat.

Someone forgot to tell old ski nose that non-authentic African locations just weren't going to cut it any more. Not after King Solomon's Mines and The African Queen right up to Howard Hawks's acclaimed Hatari. What was good for the Road to Zanizibar wasn't going to cut it any more with a Sixties audience.

Call Me Bwana other than establishing background shots got no closer to Africa than London where the film was made. The plot such as it is has Hope as a Robert Ruark type author who has used his uncle's African diary as material for some successful books. This in fact was the same plot device that was used in the very funny Man's Favorite Sport where Rock Hudson was a fishing expert.

But all Rock was asked to do was enter and win a fishing tournament. In Call Me Bwana, the Kennedy administration wants to have the CIA hire Bob Hope to lead an expedition to recover a lost satellite before the Russians get it. The Russians in turn are sending Gina Lollabrigida in a ridiculous blond wig to help their man in Africa, Lionel Jeffries.

I do realize this is a comedy, but are we to believe that the Central Intelligence Agency didn't do some background check on Hope and found his credentials weren't all that good? Lord, they were non-existent. Helping Hope in his quest is CIA agent Edie Adams who I'm sure was personally hired at the agency by Allen Dulles.

Hiring Edie, I'm sure was either an act of charity or it's possible that Lionel Jeffries's part was originally meant for her late husband Ernie Kovacs. If the latter was the case it's a good thing Ernie checked out when he did.

There's a whole sequence when in the jungle Hope finds a golf course with Arnold Palmer playing on it. It's about 10 minutes and what might have been funny in a surreal road picture lays a Vermont volleyball of an egg in Call Me Bwana. The golf allows Hope however to get his obligatory Crosby jokes in the script.

The real problem is that by 1963 the American public had increased its knowledge of Africa. Sub Sahara Africa was in the news then, the Congo was in civil war, apartheid was being challenged in the Union of South Africa, there were wars against the Portugese in Angola and Mozambigue, and both Northern and Southern Rhodesia were in turmoil. Bob Hope was way behind the times in trying to sell Call Me Bwana.

Anita Ekberg was a most beautiful and fetching Russian spy. But she's Russian in the tradition of Janet Leigh in Jet Pilot rather than Greta Garbo in Ninotchka. Of course the charm of Bob Hope forces her to defect as per the American script has. I often wonder though did the Russians make films where charming spies get Americans to defect to them?

Call Me Bwana was doomed from the start in its release. What was funny in 1943 couldn't be sold in 1963.

Just watched this latter-day Bob Hope comedy on Hulu. In this one, he comes to Africa for the first time having previously passed his late uncle's adventures from the latter's diary as his own best selling books. I'll stop there and just say that I found many of Hope's lines and scenes alternately funny and lame in many places. His leading lady is Swedish sexpot Anita Ekberg though he probably would have been better off if he'd been more paired with other player Edie Adams as she's more of a comedienne as evident in their initial meeting on a plane. Lionel Jeffries also provide some amusements as the villain but perhaps the highlight is when Hope has golfing star Arnold Palmer stop by as they play a game with some clubs left by some guy named Crosby. In summary, Call Me Bwana isn't very good but it's not too bad either.

A US space probe returns from the moon and lands in Africa. The Americans call upon successful author Bob Hope (as Matthew "Matt" Merriwether) to retrieve the capsule, due to his books detailing the continent. He reluctantly answers his country's request, but Mr. Hope is a fraud; he's never been to Africa. The Russians are also interested in retrieving the probe. They send bosomy anthropologist Anita Ekberg (as Luba) to Africa, because she is "well equipped" to seduce Hope. Hope's traveling partner is attractive Edie Adams (as Frederica "Fred" Larsen) while Ms. Ekberg is accompanied by doctor "father" Lionel Jeffries (as Ezra Mungo).

This could have been a fine Bob Hope movie, with more effort. It was produced by the team behind the "James Bond" series; however, it appears to be more cheaply made. The scenes taking place in Africa are obviously edited in; certainly, Hope and the cast did not go on location. This can work in comedy. However, this time it just looks cheap. The soundtrack is good, but becomes annoyingly repetitive. As a film, "Call me Bwana" appears to have been fully conceived during post-production...

Hope was, by the 1960s, photographed with a shadow covering his head. This was the same shadow that was found over Joan Crawford's neck. In most films, Hope can be seen moving slightly out of the shadow's range. In this film, he is often way out of range - and can be seen with his colored, thinning hair. Even in the more harsh light, Hope's hair looks relatively nice, especially when compared to the full, obvious wigs his contemporaries were now wearing...

Hope's comic persona and delivery make scenes like his arrival in Africa amusing. His topical humor does not age well, but students of history will recognize good fun poked at chair-rocking John F. Kennedy and shoe-pounding Nikita Khrushchev. A surreal encounter with golfing pal Arnold Palmer works as an "inside joke" - with some amusing bits for the uninitiated.

**** Call Me Bwana (6/5/63) Gordon Douglas ~ Bob Hope, Anita Ekberg, Edie Adams, Lionel Jeffries