TCM Schedule for Thursday, January 28 -- Primetime Feature -- On the Road

[Staph]

We're going on the road tonight, and not just any road. If you've never had the chance to see any of the Hope and Crosby Road pictures, you need to settle back with a big bowl of popcorn. These films aren't great art; they're just a silly series of buddy pictures, a couple of guys hitting the road and chasing pretty girls (including the generally saronged Dorothy Lamour). There were seven Road pictures -- TCM is showing five, skipping numbers five (Road to Rio) and seven (Road to Hong Kong). Enjoy!


5:15am -- The Doughgirls (1944)
Honeymooners in Washington get caught up in wartime crowding, with disastrous results.
Cast: Ann Sheridan, Alexis Smith, Jack Carson, Jane Wyman
Dir: James V. Kern
BW-101 mins, TV-G

Quote from the hotel manager, Mr. Jordan: Of course, the honeymoon couple. I'm sure you'll like our bridal suite. Wonderful view of the Potomac. Although so few of the occupants notice.


7:00am -- The Wedding Night (1935)
A married author falls for the beautiful farm girl whose inspiration has saved him from writer's block.
Cast: Gary Cooper, Anna Sten, Ralph Bellamy, Helen Vinson
Dir: King Vidor
BW-83 mins, TV-G

Edwin Knopf, who wrote the original story for "The Wedding Night," was a close friend of F. Scott Fitzgerald and based the characters played by Gary Cooper and Helen Vinson on Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.


8:30am -- A Night at the Opera (1935)
Three zanies turn an operatic performance into chaos in their efforts to promote their protege's romance with the leading lady.
Cast: Groucho Marx, Chico Marx, Harpo Marx, Kitty Carlisle
Dir: Sam Wood
BW-91 mins, TV-G

Producer Irving Thalberg would often call people in for meetings, and then keep them waiting in his office for hours while he attended other meetings on the MGM lot. One day, during pre-production for A Night at the Opera (1935), Thalberg kept the Marx Brothers waiting for several hours in his secretary's office, while he was in his own office making phone calls. When Thalberg's secretary went home for the day, the brothers decided they'd had enough. They pushed the office file cabinets against Thalberg's door, trapping the producer in his office. Afterwards, Thalberg kept his appointments with the Marx Brothers, but would often interrupt his meetings with them and step out to attend other meetings - again keeping the brothers waiting for hours. One day, Thalberg came back from another meeting to find Groucho Marx, Chico Marx, and Harpo Marx sitting in his office completely naked, and roasting potatoes on sticks in his office fireplace. Thalberg sat down with them, had a potato, and never missed or interrupted another meeting with the Marx Brothers.


10:15am -- Paradise For Three (1938)
A businessman mingles with German laborers to learn more about their lives.
Cast: Frank Morgan, Robert Young, Mary Astor, Edna May Oliver
Dir: Edward Buzzell
BW-78 mins, TV-G

This may be the only movie in which Roger Moore appeared with his older brother, Robert Young. (No, not that Roger Moore!)


11:45am -- Only Angels Have Wings (1939)
A team of flyers risks their lives to deliver the mail in a mountainous South American country.
Cast: Cary Grant, Jean Arthur, Richard Barthelmess, Rita Hayworth
Dir: Howard Hawks
BW-121 mins, TV-PG

Nominated for Oscars for Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Joseph Walker, and Best Effects, Special Effects -- Roy Davidson (photographic) and Edwin C. Hahn (sound)

Richard Barthelmess had deep scars that resulted from an infection due to plastic surgery. The only way to cover them up was with heavy make-up, but Howard Hawks convinced him to leave them the way they were because "those scars tell the story and are important to your character." Hawks also removed planks to make Barthelmess appear taller, to reflect his character's inferiority among his fellow pilots.


2:00pm -- Ninotchka (1939)
A coldhearted Soviet agent is warmed up by a trip to Paris and a night of love.
Cast: Greta Garbo, Melvyn Douglas, Ina Claire, Bela Lugosi
Dir: Ernst Lubitsch
BW-111 mins, TV-G

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Greta Garbo, Best Writing, Original Story -- Melchior Lengyel, Best Writing, Screenplay -- Charles Brackett, Walter Reisch and Billy Wilder, and Best Picture

Greta Garbo did not wear any makeup for her scenes where she is the stern envoy.


4:00pm -- The Shop Around The Corner (1940)
Feuding co-workers don't realize they're secret romantic pen pals.
Cast: Margaret Sullavan, James Stewart, Frank Morgan, Joseph Schildkraut
Dir: Ernst Lubitsch
BW-99 mins, TV-G

To make sure his film was stripped of the glamor usually associated with him, Lubitsch went to such lengths as ordering that a dress Sullavan had purchased off the rack for $1.98 be left in the sun to bleach and altered to fit poorly.


5:40pm -- One Reel Wonders: Beautiful Budapest (1938)
In this "Traveltalk," we learn about the landmarks, people and culture of Budapest.
Cast: James A. FitzPatrick
C-9 mins

Budapest became a single city occupying both banks of the river Danube with a unification on 17 November 1873 of right (west)-bank Buda and Óbuda with left (east)-bank Pest.


6:00pm -- The Philadelphia Story (1940)
Tabloid reporters crash a society marriage.
Cast: Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, James Stewart, Ruth Hussey
Dir: George Cukor
BW-112 mins, TV-G

Won Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- James Stewart, and Best Writing, Screenplay -- Donald Ogden Stewart

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Katharine Hepburn, Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Ruth Hussey, Best Director -- George Cukor, and Best Picture

The film was shot in eight weeks, and required no retakes. During the scene where James Stewart hiccups when drunk, you can see Cary Grant looking down and grinning. Since the hiccup wasn't scripted, Grant was on the verge of breaking out laughing and had to compose himself quickly. James Stewart thought of hiccuping in the drunk scene himself, without telling Cary Grant. When he began hiccuping, Grant turned to Stewart saying, "Excuse me." The scene required only one take.


What's On Tonight: TCM PRIME TIME FEATURE: ON THE ROAD


8:00pm -- Road to Singapore (1940)
A runaway tycoon and his sailor buddy try to con their way through the South Seas.
Cast: Bing Crosby, Dorothy Lamour, Bob Hope, Charles Coburn
Dir: Victor Schertzinger
BW-85 mins, TV-G

Originally written as "Beach of Dreams" for 'George Burns (I)' and Gracie Allen. Later retitled "Road to Mandalay" for Fred MacMurray and Jack Oakie before receiving its final title and cast.


9:30pm -- Road to Zanzibar (1941)
A lady con artist scams two out-of-work entertainers into financing a safari.
Cast: Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Dorothy Lamour, Una Merkel
Dir: Victor Schertzinger
BW-91 mins, TV-G

Originally, this film was not supposed to be a sequel to Road to Singapore (1940); in fact, Bing Crosby and Bob Hope were not even supposed to be in it. The film was first offered to Fred MacMurray and George Burns, who both rejected it. While assembling a list of contract Paramount stars to offer it to, someone at the studio remembered that "Road to Singapore" had done relatively well, and Hope and Crosby "seemed to work well together", so it was offered to them. The rest, as they say, is history.


11:15pm -- Road to Morocco (1942)
Two castaways get mixed up in an Arabian nightmare when they're caught between a bandit chief and a beautiful princess.
Cast: Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Dorothy Lamour, Anthony Quinn
Dir: David Butler
BW-82 mins, TV-G

Nominated for Oscars for Best Sound, Recording -- Loren L. Ryder (Paramount SSD), and Best Writing, Original Screenplay -- Frank Butler and Don Hartman

The scene where the camel spits in Turkey's (Bob Hope's) face wasn't planned. The camel did it of its own accord while the cameras were rolling, and Hope's recoil and Bing Crosby's reaction were so funny that it was left in the final cut of the film.


12:45am -- The Road to Utopia (1946)
Two song-and-dance men on the run masquerade as killers during the Alaskan gold rush.
Cast: Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Dorothy Lamour, Hillary Brooke
Dir: Hal Walker
BW-90 mins, TV-G

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Writing, Original Screenplay -- Norman Panama and Melvin Frank

This is the only one of the seven "Road" pictures in which Bing Crosby and Bob Hope do not do their famous "pat-a-cake" routine.


2:30am -- Road to Bali (1952)
Two song-and-dance men on the run dive for treasure while competing for a beautiful princess.
Cast: Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Dorothy Lamour, Murvyn Vye
Dir: Hal Walker
C-91 mins, TV-G

This was the only "Road" picture of the seven to be photographed in Technicolor. Ten years later, the British-made "Hong Kong" finale would revert to black and white.


4:15am -- My Favorite Brunette (1947)
A baby photographer mistaken for a private eye ends up framed for murder.
Cast: Bob Hope, Dorothy Lamour, Peter Lorre, Lon Chaney
Dir: Elliott Nugent
BW-86 mins, TV-G

The film contains a number of in-jokes. Bob Hope's character is just saying that he wants to be a private detective like Alan Ladd - when Ladd appears, playing a private detective. Bing Crosby, Hope's long-term co-star and rival in the Road movies, plays an executioner who is livid when he doesn't get to execute Hope's character. Hope retaliates by saying "He'll do any kind of role" - at the time Crosby was a top star, but here was doing a one scene cameo. Dorothy Lamour's character looks longingly after Crosby for a moment - in the Road movies, Crosby nearly always got the girl - before Hope wins back her attention.

[Staph]

1. Road to Singapore

From the effortless look of them, you'd think that the Bob Hope-Bing Crosby "road pictures" were destined to work like a charm from day-one. But Road to Singapore (1940), the first installment in the series, clearly shows that it wasn't that easy. Though several of the components that audiences came to know and love are there, including Dorothy Lamour as the romantic interest, and the apparently free-form repartee between the sarcastic leads, something is a bit off about the timing. The fact is, Hope and Crosby (and, almost incidentally, their director, Victor Schertzinger) had no idea where they were heading with the dialogue, but blindly trusted their instincts - and their personal joke writers - to invent something worthwhile. Just how worthwhile (i.e. profitable) these movies would finally become took everyone involved by complete surprise.

There's a plot to Road to Singapore, in the sense that it features a lot of things for Bob and Bing to mock. Even so, it's far more traditional than the rest of the films in the series. Crosby plays Josh, the son of a wealthy shipping magnate (Charles Coburn). A carefree sort, Josh wants nothing to do with his father's business, and basically avoids anything else that requires him to act like a grown-up. He even skips out on his bride-to-be (Judith Barrett) the day before their wedding, and takes off with his good buddy, Ace (Hope), to exotic Singapore. There, Josh and Ace launch an ineffective money-making scam involving an equally ineffective spot remover.

Eventually, both of the boys fall for a beautiful dancer named Mima (Lamour), who runs away with them to escape her violently jealous dancing partner (Anthony Quinn). Mima admits to being in love with either Josh or Ace, although, for much of the movie, she's strategically unclear about the particulars. Throw in a few songs, including one non-legendary ditty entitled "Captain Custard," and everything gets padded out to feature length. Audiences at the time didn't care about the skimpy material, though. The movie was a runaway smash, and Paramount quickly set about duplicating, and perfecting, its newfound formula.

Road to Singapore took such a winding route to the big screen, no one is really sure how it came into being. The most believable story is that a Harry Hervey adventure script called The Road to Mandalay was re-tooled by Paramount into a comedy vehicle for George Burns and Gracie Allen, who promptly turned it down. Then Fred MacMurray and Jack Okie supposedly rejected it, although, in later years, neither one of them could recall that ever happening. Then the title location was changed to the more exotic-sounding Singapore, and the script was given to Hope and Crosby. But that leaves out the very important detail of exactly who decided to team them up in the first place.

In the long run, it doesn't matter. You can bet that executives all over the Paramount lot were proclaiming their own genius when Road to Singapore became the highest grossing movie of 1940.

Hope and Crosby's disregard for the film's original shooting script is the stuff of Hollywood legend. Lamour later wrote in her autobiography that her first day on the set convinced her that there was simply no point in memorizing her dialogue- Bob and Bing would say whatever popped into their heads, or deliver gags that their writers had thought up the night before. "What I really needed," she said, "was a good night's sleep to be ready for the next morning's ad-libs. This method provided some very interesting results on screen. In fact, I used to ask to see the finished rushes to see what the movie was all about."

She wasn't kidding. One day on the set, Hope actually yelled to screenwriter Frank Butler, "Hey Frank! If you hear anything that sounds like one of your lines, just yell 'Bingo!'" Butler reportedly was not amused, although Schertzinger enjoyed his directing duties, which more or less consisted of shouting "Stop!" and "Go!"

It's interesting to note that Hope and Crosby were not the loving off-screen buddies that press releases and carefully orchestrated public outings implied they were. Though both men knew a major cash-cow when they were riding one, and thus were able to maintain a façade of deep friendship, they were highly competitive egotists who never missed an opportunity to belittle each other. And it wasn't always in good fun.

During the Singapore shoot, Hope took special advantage of Crosby's self-consciousness about his balding head and somewhat flabby behind, which generated the endearing nicknames, "Skinhead" and "Mattress Hip." Hope would also get his writers to secretly come up with zingers that would cancel out Bing's supposedly off-the-cuff jibes during shooting. Crosby, for his part, repeatedly called Hope "Ski Snoot" and loved pointing out that he was by far the better dramatic actor of the two. And he ribbed Hope mercilessly when he won a 1944 Best Actor Oscar® for Going My Way. So much for a partnership made in heaven.

Producer: Harlan Thompson
Director: Victor Schertzinger
Screenplay: Don Hartman and Frank Butler
Editing: Paul Weatherwax
Cinematography: William C. Mellor
Music Director: Victor Young
Art Design: Hans Dreier and Robert Odell
Choreography: LeRoy Prinz
Principal Cast: Bing Crosby (Josh Mallon), Bob Hope (Ace Lannigan), Dorothy Lamour (Mima), Charles Coburn (Joshua Mallon IV), Judith Barrett (Gloria Wycott), Anthony Quinn (Caesar), Jerry Colonna (Achilles Bombanassa), Johnny Arthur (Timothy Willow), Pierre Watkin (Morgan Wycott), Gaylord "Steve" Pendleton (Gordon Wycott), Miles Mander (Sir Malcolm Drake), Pedro Regas (Zato), Greta Granstedt (Babe), Edward Gargan (Bill).
B&W-85m. Closed captioning.

by Paul Tatara