Road to Bali *** (1952, Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Dorothy Lamour) – Classic Movie Review 6607

After a five-year layoff since Road to Rio, Bob Hope, Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour are back on the road again with director Hal Walker’s zippy 1952 Paramount comedy Road to Bali, the sixth in the ever-popular ‘Road to…’ series.  It is the only one filmed in Technicolor and is the first to feature cameo appearances from stars of the day.

There are plenty of good-natured zany laughs to be found in this sprightly, if well-worn tale of a music-hall song ‘n’ dance duo (Hope, Crosby) in Melbourne, Australia, where they have to leave fast to escape marriage proposals.

Harold Gridley (Hope) and George Cochran (Crosby).

Harold Gridley (Hope) and George Cochran (Crosby) end up in Port Darwin in the South Seas as deep-sea divers employed by an adventurer (Murvyn Vye), seeking treasure and making pals with the gorgeous, saronged island Princess Lala (Lamour). Hope has an encounter with a sea monster in an underwater scene, and there is erupting volcano climax (taken from 1941’s Aloma of the South Seas, also starring Lamour), but even so the trio still manages to escape back by road to Bali. That giant squid threatening Hope was first seen attacking Ray Milland in Reap the Wild Wind (1942).

If the story is well worn, the five Johnny Burke Jimmy Van Heusen songs are disappointing hand-me-downs too, apart from Lamour’s dreamy ‘Mayflowers’. The soundtrack also includes the bagpipes-and-kilts number ‘Hoots Mon’, plus ‘The Merry-Go-Runaround’, ‘Chicago Style’, and ‘To See You’. Van Heusen’s real name was Edward Chester Babcock, and Hope’s character is called Chester Babcock in the final Road movie, The Road to Hong Kong (1962).

But, against the worn story and songs, there are generous helpings of guffaws, the usual bright and amusing performances, nice star cameos (Jane Russell in character from Son of Paleface [1952], Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, bandleader Bob Crosby [Bing’s brother], Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn from The African Queen) and glorious Technicolor cinematography (by George Barnes) for the first and only time in the series.

Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, and Dorothy Lamour in Road to Bali.

Repaying the debt, Hope and Crosby appeared in Martin and Lewis’s Scared Stiff the following year.

It is Carolyn Jones’s film debut. Also in the cast are Peter Coe, Ralph Moody, Leon Askin, Michael Ansara and Harry Cording.

Road to Bali runs 91 minutes, is written by Frank Butler, Hal Kanter and William Morrow, is produced by Harry Tugend and scored by Joseph J Lilley.

It proved the end of the road for Paramount’s series of six movies, but there was a British reunion movie, The Road to Hong Kong, 10 years later.

The whole ‘Road to…’ series is: Road to Singapore (1940) Road to Zanzibar (1941), Road to Morocco (1942), Road to Utopia (1946), Road to Rio (1947), Road to Bali (1952) and The Road to Hong Kong (1962).

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 6607

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