The Road to Hong Kong ** (1962, Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Joan Collins) – Classic Movie Review 6981

Bing Crosby and Bob Hope’s seventh romp is the end of the road for Hope and Crosby’s ‘Road to…’ movies, though unfairly their old co-star Dorothy Lamour (who had semi-retired a decade earlier, aged only 38, after Road to Bali) only pops in for a cameo as herself. Now that is a shame.

Joan Collins seems out of place as Bing and Bob’s leading lady, playing Diane, in director Norman Panama’s 1962 British-made tale The Road to Hong Kong, in which a super criminal, the Leader of the SPECTRE-type organization called The Third Echelon (Robert Morley), chases the space rocket plans stuck in Bob’s brain (some Hope!). Crosby and Hope play daffy con men Harry Turner and Chester Babcock, accidentally caught up in the machinations of the secret organisation plotting world domination.

Top guests Peter Sellers, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Zsa Zsa Gabor and David Niven look in briefly to try to shore up Norman Panama and Melvin Frank’s screenplay that raises some laughs, but not really quite enough to fill the running time – and it is only 91 minutes.

Also in the cast are Felix Aylmer as the Grand Lama, Walter Gotell as Dr Zorbb, Roger Delgado as Jhinnah, Peter Madden, Alan Gifford, Bill Nagy, Dave King, Jerry Colonna and John Dearth.

The songs are written by Jimmy Van Heusen (music) and Sammy Cahn (lyrics), including Warmer than a Whisper, Teamwork, The Road to Hong Kong, Let’s Not Be Sensible and Personality. Lamour did get to sing two of them: Warmer than a Whisper and Personality.

The seven-film ‘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). An eighth film was being planned by Sir Lew Grade at the time of Crosby’s death on 14 October 1977.

Lamour did get a half-decent role in Donovan’s Reef that same year. She wrote in her autobiography that Crosby thought her too old to be a leading lady at 48, but Hope refused to do the film without her. Many thought it was the 59-year-old Hope and Crosby who were too old to be leading men here, and that it was wrong of them to dump their old partner Lamour for the more youthful Collins.

Apparently to keep the feel of the Forties and Fifties ‘Road to…’ movies, it was shot in black and white, even though the last one, Road to Bali, was filmed in colour.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 6981

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