ROAD TO ZANZIBAR

US, 1941, 91 minutes, Black and white.
Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Dorothy Lamour, Una Merkel, Eric Blore, Douglass Dumbrille.
Directed by Victor Schertzinger.

Road to Zanzibar is the second in the Road series bringing together Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Dorothy Lamour.

The film is something of a satire on jungle movie set in Africa, Hollywood not really knowing anything about Africa, contriving all the scenes in the studio.

Bing Crosby and Bob Hope portray two performers, Hope always the victim, being fired off in a canon (and it is a dummy) but it sets fire to the circus marquee. They go on the road throughout Africa, doing variations, the human bat, fighting a gorilla, with newspaper headlines that Hope survives.

Eventually they are tricked by a genial Englishman who sells them a map of a diamond mine – only he doesn’t have one. The pair also get tangled up with two criminals and have to flee throughout Africa. They are also tricked at a slave market where Dorothy Lamour poses as a slave and the pair pay money for her release, only to find that she is in collusion with another showgirl and they decide to take all the money from the pair and the mine. The girls schmoozing up to the two but are all intent on bringing them down. At one stage, Dorothy seems to have been eaten by a leopard and they perform a funeral rite, trying to recite poetry over the remnants of her clothes.

Eventually, all turns out well, with the help of some of the African locals – straight from central casting.

As always, Bing is the smooth entrepreneur, able to put pressure on Hope, persuade him to do what Bing wants, capitalising on his cash. And, as usual, there are a number of songs, romantic songs as well as patter songs.

This film set the pattern for a number of sequels, including the road to Road to Utopia and Road to Rio, and, perhaps the most famous, Road to Morocco.