The bonus documentary included on the Blu-ray reissues of a set of Bing Crosby-Bob Hope “Road Pictures” from the 1940s makes an obvious point: the main appeal of those movies at the time of their release was escapism in the face of an impending war. Watching them raises another question: what appeal could they have for us today?
The Road to Singapore (1940), The Road to Zanzibar (1941) and The Road to Morocco (1942) are part of the Hollywood DNA, still visible in buddy-road pictures coupling a pair of distinct characters on an adventure. A dashed and zigzagging line connects The Green Book to the Bing & Bob shows. The “Road Pictures” are significant bits of cinema history, even if no one pretends that they were great cinema.
Bing & Bob were a comedy team with a range of talent seldom in evidence nowadays. They sang, they danced, they fulfilled the expectations of believable characters, they cracked wise. Those first three “Road Pictures” remain funny in large part, albeit knowledge of history is necessary to understand all of the jokes. When Hope and Crosby wrestle a writhing swordfish onto a yacht in The Road to Singapore and Hope quips, “He never gives up, he must be a Republican,” getting the joke requires knowledge of New Deal-era politics. Some of the comedy spoofs the clichés of 1930s Hollywood and TCM fans will have an easier time than the general public in discerning the humor.
Striking to contemporary eyes is the multicultural composition of the societies visited by Bing & Bob. Dorothy Lamour’s character in Road to Singapore is of Algerian origin; her lover-tormentor (played by Anthony Quinn) seems Latino; characters of uncertain (but not WASP) ethnicity are sprinkled among the Polynesians at the Pacific island trading post where much of the story is set. Likewise, The Road to Zanzibar realistically includes people of west and southern Asian origin in major towns. Some of that film’s “darkest Africa” segments appear egregious nowadays, yet there is a beautifully staged jungle scene in which Crosby picks up the work chants and rhythms of the native porters and transforms them into a jazz melody.
As noted in the bonus interview on the Blu-ray releases, escapism was the “Road Pictures” appeal at the time of their production. Perhaps for some viewrs they still serve that function, less from their journeys through imagined exotic lands but by recalling an imagined past.
