Road to Zanzibar
| Road to Zanzibar | |
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Film poster
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| Directed by | Victor Schertzinger |
| Produced by | Paul Jones |
| Screenplay by |
Frank Butler Don Hartman |
| Story by |
Sy Bartlett Frank Butler |
| Starring |
Bing Crosby Bob Hope Dorothy Lamour Una Merkel |
| Music by | Victor Young |
| Cinematography | Ted Tetzlaff |
| Edited by | Alma Macrorie |
| Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
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Release date
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Running time
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91 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Road to Zanzibar is a 1941 Paramount Pictures comedy film starring Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, and Dorothy Lamour, and marked the second of seven picture in the popular "Road to …" series made by the trio.
Paramount executives owned the rights to a story by Sy Bartlett titled "Find Colonel Fawcett" about two men trekking through the jungles of Madagascar. They felt that its plot was so similar to the recently released Stanley and Livingstone (1939) that it could not be made as written without seeming too derivative, so they turned the project over to Frank Butler and Don Hartman, the writers on the wildly successful Road to Singapore which Paramount had released the year before. Thus reborn as a comedy and spoof of the safari genre, the film resembled its predecessor in every important way, with plot taking a back seat to gags (many of them ad libbed), and music. The film was so successful that further "Road to..." pictures were assured.
The film starts with con-artist Chuck Reardon (Bing Crosby) as a side-show caller at a circus advertising an act featuring his friend Hubert "Fearless" Frazier (Bob Hope), as a human cannonball, with 'Fearless' quickly substituting a dummy at the last minute and hiding in a secret compartment. The flaming dummy sets the big tent on fire and everyone into a panic and the two of them flee. Their subsequent acts show 'Fearless' doing more dangerous acts, usually getting injured. When Chuck brings the next 'great idea', wrestling a live octopus, 'Fearless' finally balks and wants to go back to the states. At a fancy restaurant, they're sent champagne by a wealthy man, diamond baron Charles Kimble (Eric Blore). The festive mood turns sour when the police show up, but Kimble bails them out. They decide to go home to the United States, but when Chuck goes to get the tickets Kimble invites him onto his yacht for a drink.
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Wikipedia