Caught In the Draft & Give Me A Sailor… Bob Hope Double Feature DVD Review!

Caught In The Draft / Give Me A Sailor
2002, Universal Studios Home Video

This double feature DVD was “lost” in my collection for about a year or so. I felt like I owned it but I didn’t even have it checked off in my “Bob Hope DVD” Word document! Luckily, I found it a few weeks ago while sorting through the DVDs in my closet. I had rented this collection from Netflix before but I don’t think I ever watched the movies once I owned them. I had seen Caught in the Draft a few times courtesy of AMC (Remember when American Movie Classics used to show classic movies… in B&W no less?) but I had viewed Give Me A Sailor just the one time when renting it.

Caught In The Draft
1941, Paramount Pictures

This is a typically funny Hope movie from the 1940s. Other than Hope, this is a great cast: Lynne Overman (who previously was in The Big Broadcast of 1938 with Hope) & Eddie Bracken (who would later be in Star Spangled Rhythm) are great as Hope’s friends and flunkies and Dorothy Lamour brings her usual mix of class & sex appeal to the screen. She’s super-adorable in this one and I love the scene where she’s down at the Army recruiter’s office and they do a close-up of her winking.

In this one, Bob plays a big Hollywood actor that is trying to dodge the draft by getting married to Dorothy’s character Tony (whose father is a colonel), whom he recently met on set while filming a war movie. Problem is, she figures out his true motives, gets mad and then when Hope tries to win her back and impress her by setting up a fake enlistment, it turns out he signs on for real!

Comedy ensues as Hope gets his buddies to sign up too and as they try to make it through basic training, Bob tries to win the love of Tony while also also trying to impress her father.

One of Bob’s better movies that doesn’t feature Bing (not even a cameo this time!).

Give Me A Sailor
1938, Paramount Pictures

Not really a Bob movie at all this is more a vehicle for Martha Raye though Hope does co-star with her. It’s based on a play called Linger Longer Betty and has Letty (Raye) longing for Jim’s (Hope) brother Walter and Jim longing for his brother’s girlfriend Nancy (a hot Betty Grable). They try to break them up and eventually succeed. Letty gets engaged to Walter and Jim dates Nancy but then Letty & Jim discover what they really want is each other. Reading that back, they don’t really sound like likable characters and neither really suffers any consequences for breaking up Walter & Nancy but oh well. It worked for the time. I don’t think you could pull something like this off in a movie today without the characters coming across as huge jerks.

Not a great movie but worth watching once or twice to see Bob acting instead of constantly spitting out one-liners. Martha Raye is pretty cute in an odd way.

Overall:

A worthy DVD to add to the collection of any Bob Hope fan!

Buy ‘Caught in the Draft/Give Me A Sailor’ at Amazon.com

My Favorite Brunette (1947)

My Favorite Brunette (1947, Paramount Studios)

My Favorite Brunette is another Bob Hope movie that has unfortunately found itself in the public domain. That means there are TONS & TONS of DVD (and VHS) copies of this movie available from various super low-budget distributors and the print is rarely any good. There’s even some releases that show Dorothy Lamour on the cover only and try to downplay that Bob Hope is even in the movie. I once saw a VHS copy years ago that was sad bad it was unwatchable; the audio was atrocious and it wasn’t from the typical wear ‘n’ tear of the VHS cassette itself.

I have to give credit to Digiview Productions’ copy they released in 2004 — it’s actually a pretty good print. Whether they found a cleaner one or did clean-up on their own, it’s good, though the audio seems to hiss for a bit during the opening. I’ve read Shout! Factory’s The Bob Hope Collection features the best available print these days. I plan on buying that set some day so I can own The Seven Little Foys so it’ll be interesting to check out the rest of that public domain collection to see how much cleaning up they did.

Digiview Productions release from 2004

More praise for my Digiview copy — I love the cover art. Out of all the various releases for this movie, this is the cover I like best. Looks like they used original promo art and that same photo of Bob & Dorothy is nicely printed on the disc itself. I don’t remember where I bought this copy but it’s in one of those flat DVD cases that typically is reserved for $1 videos, so I’m guessing I got it at Walmart if I didn’t buy it used at some point on Amazon.

As for the original theatrical poster, I don’t really get it. At no point does Hope wear a mustache and Lamour doesn’t walk around in a sarong (though that’s what she was famous for doing). I found a promo photo that tries to explain the mustache with a spoof of Sherlock Holmes but the movie isn’t that type of detective story. This is a film noir spoof, you get that idea from the Digiview cover art but now the original movie poster.

As for the movie itself, it’s fun and it deserves more than a life in the public domain but it’s not one of Bob’s best movies. Bob stars as a baby photographer who ends up impersonating a private eye and gets wrapped up in a mystery concerning a group of crooks trying to swindle a uranium mine. This is the second in the “My Favorite…” series (and it’s working title was The Private Eye). My Favorite Blonde (1941) & My Favorite Spy (1951) are more enjoyable comedies but this is still worth looking act because of the talented cast (Peter Lorre and Lon Chaney play criminals). Alan Ladd cameo’s as the real P.I. and there’s a really funny Bing Crosby cameo too!

This was the first Paramount movie to be made in conjunction with Hope’s Bob Hope Enterprises production company.

Buy Shout! Factory’s ‘The Bob Hope Collection’ at Amazon.com

Star Spangled Rhythm (1943) Review

Star Spangled Rhythm (1943, Paramount Studios)

I bought this movie as a part of a Bob Hope Tribute Collection Double Feature DVD with My Favorite Blonde but just recently got around to watching Star Spangled Rhythm (though I must’ve watched the first 10 or 15 minutes at some point because I remembered those scenes).

Star Spangled Rhythm is a big time Hollywood comedy-musical that was put on by Paramount Studios during World World II as a morale booster. And when I say Paramount Studios, I mean Paramount Studios! Literally every signed star at that point was in this movie: Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Fred MacMurrary, Ray Milland, Victor Moore, Dick Powell, Betty Hutton, Marjorie Reynolds, Veronica Lake, Alan Ladd, William Bendix, Jerry Colonna, Dorothy Lamour, Paulette Goddard, Vera Zorina, Mary Martin, Eddie “Rochester” Anderson, Dona Drake, Eddie Bracken, Susan Hayward, etc., etc….! Even a few directors (Cecil B. DeMille, Preston Sturges and Ralph Murphy) appeared on camera and a couple of Paramount studio execs were spoofed as well.

I’m not a big fan of musicals, certainly not a fan of anything modern, but I’m slowly starting to appreciate these old Hollywood musicals. I attribute my appreciation mostly to the ”Road Pictures” that featured musical numbers but were primarily zany comedies. Also, it helps that Bob Hope & Bing Crosby were in Star Spangled Rhythm as well but to be fair the DVD packaging is a bit misleading. Although Bing & Bob receive top billing over all the other stars, neither shows up until a little more than halfway into the movie.

The movie is put together in a neat way. The first half of the is a comedy that focuses on a Paramount Studios gatekeeper (Victor Moore), his son that’s in the Navy (Eddie Bracken) & Paramount phone operator/son’s girlfriend (the adorable Betty Hutton). It’s a flimsy but legitimately funny and wacky story that builds up to all of Paramount’s stars putting on a show for a bunch of sailors in the second half of the movie as a benefit. That’s where Moore, Bracken and Hutton are given a rest and Paramount pulls out the big guns with songs, dances and more comedy skits. Bob emcees the benefit and is featured in a comedy skit while Bing closes the movie with a “Old Glory”, a patriotic number.

There are a number of highlights in this movie, Betty Hutton being one of them. She’s so adorable and cute in this movie I wanted to pinch her cheeks (and do other things to her as well). She’s a great comedian and was a show-stealer. I especially enjoyed her wall climbing scene. Lots of physical comedy.

Bing & Bob typically put on great performances as did Eddie “Rochester” Anderson (from Jack Benny’s radio troupe) with his musical number “Sharp As A Tack”. Seeing Dorothy Lamour and Paulette Goddard (both frequent co-stars of Bob Hope) sharing the stage together was a real treat as well. Along with Veronica Lake, they poked fun at their sex symbol status with the song “Sweater, Sarong & Peekaboo Bang”.

Big stars, great comedy and songs… Star Spangled Rhythm needs to be seen by fans of classic Hollywood.

Buy the My Favorite Blonde / Star Spangled Rhythm Double Feature DVD at Amazon.com

Ranking the Hope & Crosby ‘Road’ series

I’ve been on a serious kick lately with the Hope/Crosby ‘Road’ movies, so what better time to rank them than today?

For those of you not familiar with the franchise, the Road movies (referred to on/off as the Road to… movies or the “Road Pictures”) were a series of films that were equal parts comedy, romance, adventure, genre spoof and music.

Though the series was most prolific during the 1940s, seven films were made from 1940 – 1962 and they all starred two of the biggest entertainers of the era: Bing Crosby & Bob Hope. For the first six films, Dorothy Lamour c0-starred (and received billing over Hope for the first film) with Joan Collins co-starring in the series’ final entry while Lamour is relegated to a cameo role.

None of the films are direct sequels to the movies that came before it. Hope & Crosby basically play the same characters in each movie (Crosby is the smooth, girl-chasing con man and Hope is his not-so-smooth girl-chasing cowardly friend) but the names are always different. Dorothy Lamour is always the object of desire for both of the boys (except for the last one).

7. The Road to Hong Kong (1962, United Artists)

The only movie in the series not made for Paramount Pictures. Definitely the weakest in the entire series. By far. The guys had zero chemistry with Joan Collins, the age gap made for a creepy love triangle and it just doesn’t feel like a Road movie. I hate to say it but it was a sad, tired attempt to bring the franchise back to life. Despite spoofing the popular spy genre, Hope & Crosby seem a bit out of date here. They should have gone for a more classic Road feel rather than try to appeal to a younger generation with some of their jokes & gags.

For more of my thoughts on this movie, check out my review that I wrote back in 2010.

6.  Road to Rio (1947, Paramount)

By 1947, four years had passed since the last Road movie was in production (yes, Road to Utopia was released in 1946 but more on that in a bit). With this one, I think it shows that maybe everyone had gotten a bit rusty from that layoff and maybe the studio & crew forgot why the series had been so enjoyable in the first place. Road to Rio is nowhere near as out of place as The Road to Hong Kong but it doesn’t really click.

On paper this has the makings of a Road movie but for me the series really depends on the snappy dialogue between Hope & Crosby (who both ad-libbed a lot throughout the series) and it’s just not there for the most part. You might be able to chalk that up to the fact that they hadn’t worked together in four years and hadn’t gelled fully together again.

It also seems like Lamour is featured less in this movie than she previously had been. Hmm… I wonder if that has something to do with the fact that this was the first in the series to be co-produced by Hope Enterprises and Bing Crosby Enterprises. Even though I like the movie just for the fact that it stars Hope & Crosby, it’s nothing special and the ending is a cop-out (most of the endings kinda were, but this one even more-so).

An interesting note, and I didn’t even realize this until watching it again last night, is that the movie was written by Ed Beloin. Along with Bill Morrow, Beloin co-wrote Jack Benny’s radio program from 1936-1943. That’s a great era for Jack Benny, so it’s surprising I wasn’t really feeling this movie because I know just how funny Beloin can be.

5. Road to Bali (1952, Paramount)

The first movie in the series to be filmed in Technicolor and the first Road movie I ever watched. It’s also the only Road movie in the public domain so I picked it up as part of a 2-disc collection featuring a few other public domain comedies. In fact, the print of the film used on the copy I have comes from the UCLA Library. I really don’t understand how Paramount could let something like this fall into the public domain but then I don’t claim to have some great knowledge of how copyrights work in the first place.

Road to Rio showed a rusty Road crew after four years of inactivity but, surprisingly, the five years of rest before Road to Bali doesn’t seem to matter a bit. Bali isn’t a classic Road picture but it is very good. It meanders about for a very long time while we wait for the film’s antagonists to appear but it’s during these plot-thin moments that Hope & Crosby start trading quips & insults like it was the 1940s all over again.

Lots of fun cameos in this one: Bob Crosby (Bing’s brother), Humphrey Bogart (via footage from The African Queen), Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis and Jane Russell (co-star of Bob’s for 1948′s The Paleface and 1952′s Son of Paleface).

4. Road to Singapore (1940, Paramount)

It doesn’t feature all of the running gags that would later become synonymous with the series and the comedy isn’t as slapstick, silly or over the top but Road to Singapore (the first film in the series) is a classic in its own right.

It’s much more of a traditional movie than what would later come: there’s some romance, some drama, some comedy, some singing. Nothing really out ordinary for the era. This one has the most solid plot out of all the movies too and probably features the most romantic drama. Plot is something that becomes less and less important with later releases when basically you’re watching an hour and a half of Hope/Crosby trading one-liners.

There is actually a story being told here but I have to agree with Turner Classic Movies’ online review where they state that something about the film feels “off”. They chalk it up to no one really knowing in what direction to take the movie by way of dialogue. Both Hope and Crosby were ad-libbing and had their own personal writers on the set to feed them lines as well. The legend goes that once Hope & Crosby read the script, they tossed it out and pretty much ad-libbed the entire movie (which caused frustration for Lamour, the crew and the script-writers).

Great movie featuring everything we love about classic Hollywood. It’s fun to look back at this movie to see a more grounded Road picture.

3. Road to Zanzibar (1941, Paramount)

The second film in the series and it really starts to kick off the great running gags of the series (“patty-cake”) and slapstick humor. Great songs and more great dialogue with Bob, Bing and Dorothy traveling through the jungle. What more could you ask for? Oh, how about the super cute & quirky Una Merkel (who was in The Mad Doctor of Market Street)?

2. Road to Utopia (1946, Paramount)

Okay, so here’s the deal from what I can gather online: Road to Utopia went into production in 1943 and wrapped in March 1944 but was not released to the public until 1946 for three different reasons.

Whether these are true or not, I don’t know but here are the reasons:

1. Road to Morocco was still a strong box office draw and Paramount rightfully wanted to get as much money out of it as they could and didn’t want Utopia taking away from that

2. Paramount also did not want to distract from Going My Way, which was released in 1944 and starred Bing

3. Road to Utopia was one of a number of movies made during WWII that was shown to U.S. troops before being release to the civilian public

I’m not sure how much of an affect the last reason should have to delay a movie by two years but the first two reasons about not wanting to take away from the box office of Road to Morocco and Going My Way completely make sense.

For the movie itself, it’s a great one and I liked it much, much better now than when I first watched it years ago. Most of the series features Bob & Bing in a warm or tropical climate but this one takes them to Alaska during the gold rush (the “Utopia” mentioned in the title) of the early 1900s. I’ve seen reviews state this as the best of the series and it’s hard to argue that. You can make a case for any of the top three on my list to be the best of the series.

The dialogue is great. Don’t believe me? The movie was nominated for Best Screenplay at the 1947 Academy Awards. There’s even some nice action and the whole thing really captures Bing & Bob in their prime and firing on all cylinders. After all, at the time of filming, this was their fourth movie together in as many years and everything was clicking.

1. Road to Morocco (1942, Paramount)

This is the one that’s generally accepted to be the best of the entire series. If someone asked me to show them a Road picture, this would be it. I think you can make a strong case for Road to Utopia or Road to Zanzibar as being the best of the series, but this is the quintessential Road film that really conveys best what the entire series is all about.

Like Road to Utopia, it received a nomination for Best Screenplay. It was listed at #78 on the American Film Institute’s 100 Years… 100 Laughs list and was inducted into the National Film Registry in 1996.

So there you have it… All seven of the Road pictures ranked. The top four are absolute classics and I recommend them as essential viewing for anyone that is a fan of old movies. I also recommend Road to Bali but give only a mild recommendation for Road to Rio. Stay away from The Road to Hong Kong.