Road to Singapore

I recently watched the first 4 Road to...movies and I found this one to be the least engaging. Don't get me wrong; Hope and Crosby are having a blast. The gags mostly land. The songs are humble. The film moves at a good pace. I can understand it launching the series. But the writing isn't as sharp or as meta as the series would come alone. Overall this was more of a lark than anything. I was surprised by the fairly homosocial (if not homoerotic) subtext and it was funny squinting the story into a couple of old queens fleeing normalcy. I wish the film played up that angle a little more but you know it was 1940.

This is widely regarded as a classic film, and while I appreciate the quality, it didn't do a great deal for me.

source: Road to Singapore

First in what would become a series of movies called "Road to..." (in order)Singapore, Zanzibar, Morrocco, Utopia, Rio, Bali, Hong Kong this film sets the tone and standard for the rest of the films. The plot is always the same: Bob Hope and Bing Crosby play two guys who, by the end of the first scene, need to get out of town in a hurry. They always end up in some hot climate to justify the skimpy clothes worn by the leading lady, Dorothy Lamore. The chemistry and acting styles of Hope and Crosby are the real stars of the picture, but their goofing would be pointless if it weren't for the "gorgeous and sensible girl" archetype always deftly portrayed by Dorothy Lamore. This film was released in 1940. America was not in World War II until the following year (after being attacked by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii - for those of you still in school.) In 1940, while the British governed Singapore, they were attacked by the Japanese. But in this film, "Singapore" is merely the "exotic locale, very far away where no one will find us." No realistic portrayal of Singapore is needed or intended. In fact, you'd swear the character actors are doing Spanish accents, African accents...anything that sounds exotic. Some of the jokes might get by viewers trained on less-subtle material, but it's all very tame by today's standards, especially. But back then, innuendo was enough when you had a beautiful lady in a sarong.

"Road to Singapore" was the beginning of the "Road" pictures that teamed Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, and Dorothy Lamour together in a series of films. In this one, Bing is the heir to millions but escapes the rich life and a fiancé and winds up in Singapore with Hope. There they meet Lamour, who is escaping her obsessive dance partner (Anthony Quinn). Both guys fall for her. There are some hysterical scenes in this film, the best being the feast that the three attend toward the end of the movie. Hope and Crosby have obvious chemistry, and in later films, this would lead to more hijinks. Have to add that the young Bob Hope was pretty darn cute. Crosby sings beautifully, as does the exotic-looking Lamour. According to Lamour's autobiography, they apparently had a blast making these films. It shows.

Avoiding arranged marriages, shipping heir Bing Crosby (as Joshua "Josh" Mallon) and carefree pal Bob Hope (as "Ace" Lannigan) run away to Singapore. They swear off work and women, and then find both in pretty native Dorothy Lamour (as Mima). Eventually, the men begin falling in love with Ms. Lamour, and she likes them both. They work out attractions while getting into local trouble. This was the first in an initially unplanned series of "Road to…" pictures starring Mr. Hope and Mr. Crosby, with Lamour adding the necessary sex appeal. Proving himself handy with a bull whip is handsome young Anthony Quinn (as Caesar). The pleasant soundtrack hit is Crosby's "I'm Too Romantic". An obvious screen chemistry multiplied the co-stars' individual appeal. ***** Road to Singapore (3/14/40) Victor Schertzinger ~ Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Dorothy Lamour, Anthony Quinn

Victor Schlesinger, who also helmed the second movie in the franchise, Zanzibar, may well have directed all the Road films had he not died tragically young (51) after helming The Fleet's In. Had he done so the franchise may have had more variable scores inasmuch as Schertzinger was one of a handful of film directors (another was Edmund Goulding) who also composed notable songs for their films - and Schertzinger went out in style given that the songs he wrote, with lyricist Johnny Mercer, for The Fleet's In, were some of the finest in the history of the movie musical. In 1939 no one was thinking franchise, in fact no one was thinking beyond a one-off entry pairing Hope and Crosby - who often cross-talked their way to their respective Sound Stages on the Paramount lot, and throwing Dorothy Lamour into the mix as love interest. The one-off aspect accounts for the fact that for the only time in the franchise Bing is given a solid background - in all the others both the boys are just THERE, usually performers of some kind doubling as flimmers but with no history whatsoever - as the Fifth in a dynastic line of ship owners but even then he has already teamed up with Hope from frame 1 and significantly Hope has no background. Schertzinger supplied the music for two of the five numbers - with series lyricist Johnny Burke - the duet Captain Custard and Lamour's solo The Moon And The Willow Tree but the standout ballad proved to be Too Romantic with music by James V. Monaco, then just coming to the end of a partnership with Burke. Anthony Quinn and Jerry Colonna, who would both feature in later 'roads' (Morocco and Rio respectively) were on hand and the banter between Hope and Crosby was in place but the 'realistic' aspect - Crosby is the despair of his family by preferring work to play, not a million miles away from William Holden's David Larrabee in Billy Wilder's Sabrina Fair, also a Paramount release - tends to impair the free-flowing zanyness of the rest of the franchise. Overall a modest entertainment that paved the way for several superior entries.

I quite enjoyed the Bob Hope noir spoof My Favorite Brunette, which also starred Road to... straight woman Dorothy Lamour and featured Bing Crosby in a brief cameo in the last scene. What with the classic status of this particular series I assumed I would get even more of a kick out of this, the first entry, The Road to Singapore. Unfortunately the film just doesn't have much kick to give. On the whole it's a rather dull affair that only attempts one or two comic set pieces and pads out the rest of the film with some pretty unimpressive dialog. The only bit that even brought a smile to my face was when Hope and Crosby, trying to con a native crowd into buying their sham cleaning products, recruited the hapless Jerry Colonna and proceeded to decimate his immaculate white suit. The writing is entirely by-the-numbers with very little flair for the comedic, wasting Charles Coburn as Crosby's father. Lamour is charismatic and lovable as the dancer that Hope and Crosby rescue from an abusive showman, but she doesn't get much to do besides look pretty and dispense maternal affection. I wish she'd been allowed to do a little comedy, but then the boys don't get to do much of it either, at that, so I suppose that's a bit of a moot point. I'm a big fan of musicals from the 1930s, but the obligatory songs in The Road to Singapore are pretty flaccid and uninspired. Like those in a Marx Brothers picture you spend too much time just waiting for the singing to be over. Of course the Marx Brothers got back to their hilarious routines when the musical numbers ended, but nobody remembers to do that in this movie. Most of the love for this series seems to be centered on one or two of the various sequels. I liked the cast of The Road to Singapore, but the problem was the material, so if future outings prepared them with a better script then I'm all for checking them out. In the meanwhile if while traveling you find this road to be the one less traveled, take the other one.

Can you imagine The Road to Singapore with parts of Bing and Bob being played by Fred MacMurray and Jack Oakie? That was the original casting that Paramount originally had for this first of the Road pictures. You can tell that they did not have a series in mind because the billing was Bing Crosby, Dorothy Lamour, and then Bob Hope. When MacMurray and then Oakie became unavailable, someone had the bright idea of putting Crosby and Hope together. By this time a certain rivalry had developed on radio. Both had been guests on each other's shows, forever trying to top each other with unscheduled ad-libs in the script. So the casting changes were made. There's none of the surreal humor in this that characterized the later Road pictures because the formula wasn't there yet. But when you see Crosby and Hope trying to land a fish and later on singing the Captain Custard song, the chemistry is unmistakable. The rest of the score by Jimmy Monaco and Johnny Burke consists of one of Crosby's nicest ballads, Too Romantic and a novelty song for all three of the leads, Sweet Potato Piper. The director Victor Schertzinger who was also a composer of note and Johnny Burke did a South Sea Island ballad for Dottie, The Moon and the Willow Tree. So what would have been a routine film turned out to be a shakedown cruise for a lot of movie fun.

The first Road movie of seven. Bob Hope and Bing Crosby are low level officers on a ship. Bing is the heir to a shipping line but has no interest in taking the helm. He just wants to be fancy free to do as he pleases and he has a high maintenance fiancée that seems a bit off putting. She is extremely controlling and also very understanding about his peccadilloes. The two run out after starting a brawl on a posh yacht and to avoid Bing's impending marriage. They end up on a tramp steamer and land on a French ruled south pacific island. Here they meet Dorothy Lamour who is part of an act with Anthony Quinn. They take her away and she sets up housekeeping with them although they do not get the fringe benefits. Daddy and fiancée track them down to the island where they then get returned to civilization. It is a funny movie especially for that time period. No real sex stuff and plenty of jokes and humor.