Director: Victor Schertzinger
Year:  1940
Rating: 7.5

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In 1940 Paramount Pictures had a comedic script about two friends and a girl that they were trying to find the right cast for. They offered it to Burns and Allen who turned it down as did Fred MacMurray and Jackie Oakie. So they kept changing the script and looking for the right combination. Under contract was Dorothy Lamour who was a fine singer and known as the Sarong Girl for her native girl roles in films like Her Jungle Love and Tropic Holiday and so she was a natural for this film as . . . a native girl in a sarong. For the two men they turned to Bing Crosby who was a huge singing star though his film career was a series of so-so musicals and his friend Bob Hope, a comedian who had made a few decent films but was far from a known quantity and is listed third in the credits behind Crosby and Lamour.


Like so many good films in the business it was more luck than genius that put these three together. They were to go on to make 6 more Road films up to 1962 and were actually planning to do another when Crosby died from a heart attack. Road to Singapore re-started Crosby's film career, made Lamour a legend with her sultry looks and husky voice and turned Hope into a huge star that never really ebbed during his life. Nowadays Hope has been tarnished by today's generation as conventional, conservative and square, but to his credit was his astonishing commitment to entertaining the troops in war zones. In fact, it started before the war. He was on a liner coming back to America from London when England declared war on Germany and the passengers panicked that a submarine would sink them so he put a show together and performed to calm them down.


To Paramount's surprise and delight the film was a huge hit. It felt incredibly fresh and clever and Hope and Crosby's banter was like Astaire and Rogers with their perfect timing that the audience could just take pleasure in. Throw in Lamour as the object of desire and some good songs and the plot becomes nearly an after thought. In the seven films they always played different characters but with the same personalities with a few themes that ran through the films.


They are two footloose guys who chase after skirts but who run from marriage and seemingly never get laid. They generally get interested in the same girl (Lamour) and happily backstab each other in their pursuit of her. But in the end their loyalty to one another is an overriding theme. The comedy is all over the place from their patty cake routine to verbal wit that is reputed to often be ad-libs and just plain old slapstick fall down comedy. The Road to Singapore is really only mildly amusing and rarely break out laughing but very charming mainly because of the chemistry of this trio. Road to Zanzibar was next.