Cinema Sunday: Road to Bali

When discussing movie comedies, you might hear something described as being "like a Hope-Crosby road picture".  

What pray tell is "a Hope-Crosby road picture"?

Back in the mid-20th century, comedian Bob Hope and singer Bing Crosby made seven movies where they would play a pair of not quite trustworthy pals, conning their way on a journey from one place to another, the road to this place or that.

Today Cinema Sunday takes a look a one of these "road" pictures, from 1953, it's Road To Bali. 

George (Bing Crosby) and Harold (Bob Hope) are a pair of American song-and-dance men performing in Melbourne, Australia but they gotta book it out of town pretty darn quick to extricate themselves from various marriage proposals. 

They end up in Darwin. George and Howard are flat broke and need money to get out of Australia and back to America. And the only job openings are jobs as deep sea divers for a island prince. Neither man has any experience with deep sea diving so naturally they get the job.   

George and Harold are brought to an idyllic island between Australia and Bali, Indonesia. The two men get twitterpated over the beautiful exotic charms of the half-Scottish Princess Lala.

Half Scottish? Well, even in 1952, we needed a reason why Dorothy Lamour could be an island princess.  

There's a hazardous dive which includes a frightful encounter with a giant squid (courtesy of stolen footage from another movie).  Escaping from the prince and his henchmen, George, Harold and Lala abscond with the recovered treasure chest of priceless jewels.

And we're OFF on the road to Bali! George and Harold take turns wooing the lovely Lala who is so inexplicably moved by their script mandated charms, she can't decide between the two of them.  

Then....Whoops! Shipwreck! Stuck on an island with a tribe that may or may not be about to eat them, Lala gets married off to the island's chief while George and Harold wind up somehow getting married to each other.  

Uh oh! The volcano god is most displeased and BOOM! 

A massive eruption of molten magma sends our intrepid trio to another tropical isle where Lala chooses George over Harold. Undaunted, Harold uses a magic basket (procured earlier in the film, forgot to mention that) to conjure up Jane Russell her own damn voluptuous self for his own pleasure. But damned if Jane Russell doesn't also pick George over Harold. 

Harold is not having this shit and doesn't think the movie should end this way, forcefully pushing away the "THE END" graphic to keep the movie from ending before he gets laid by one of these women, damn it! 

And we fade to black and... "THE END".

The "It's That Person Who Was In That Thing" Department 

The big game hunter who wanders into a scene with George and fires his rifle is described by George as "my brother, I promised he could have a shot in the movie". Truth in advertising at work: the hunter is Bob Crosby, Bing's brother.  

That really is Humphrey Bogart courtesy of footage from The African Queen. 

And that is also really Jane Russell as her character from the Bob Hope starring comedy film Son of Paleface (1952).  

And the floating heads in Lala's dream really are Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis.  Hope and Crosby would repay the favor with a similar cameo the following in year Martin and Lewis's Scared Stiff.

The giant squid that threatens Bob Hope previously attacked Ray Milland in Reap the Wild Wind (1942), directed by Cecil B. DeMille. 

And finally, the erupting volcano had previously worked on Aloma of the South Seas (1941) which also starred Dorothy Lamour.

There's breaking the fourth wall and then there's Bob Hope shattering it with a jack hammer. In one scene where Bing Crosby is about to sing, Hope looks at the camera and "He's gonna sing, folks. Now's the time to go out and get the popcorn."

And there's Hope's futile struggled with the keeping the film from reaching "THE END" before he can get the girl, a girl, any girl.  

Road To Bali is the only one of the seven Hope-Crosby "Road" pictures to filmed in technicolor. 

And this movie is a brightly hued lark that almost feels like a live action cartoon. Replace Bing Crosby with Bugs Bunny and Bob Hope with Daffy Duck and the story would still work. 

The whole template of the Hope Crosby "Road" movie has inspired other movies and TV shows. 

Rounding out today's post is a clip from an episode of Family Guy, a series that as a whole I don't particularly care for but this specific episode was a gem. Here Brian and Stewie get their Hope and Crosby on for "The Road To Rhode Island".