Road to Morocco
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Road to Morocco
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This film has been preserved in the National Film Registry in 1996.
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Road to Morocco is a 1942 American comedy film starring Bing Crosby, Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour, and featuring Anthony Quinn and Dona Drake. Written by Frank Butler and Don Hartman and directed by David Butler, it’s the third of the "Road to ..." films. It was preceded by Road to Zanzibar and followed by Road to Utopia. The story is about two fast-talking guys cast away on a desert shore and sold into slavery to a princess.
Why It Rocks
- The "Road To..." films are some of the most beloved buddy movies in film history, with the films bringing a new kind of naturalness and improvisational spirit to Hollywood comedy, mostly thanks to the unique yet charming screen relationship between Hope and Crosby. Compared to earlier films containing interplay with an abstract, almost surreal quality, or witty repartee that's too polished and stylized to be mistaken for anything but movie dialogue, Hope and Crosby seemed by ordinary guys perfectly attuned to each other’s thoughts, moods, obsessions and vulnerabilities. Road To Morocco might just be the most fondly remembered in the series.
- Johnny Burke’s lyrics, batted back and forth by the two stars, are a high point of the Road films’ self-parodying, in-joke humor.
- The film’s title number, sung by the boys while riding on the back of a two-humped camel is an iconic moment for the series — particularly for image of the raffish camaraderie that sparked the films. It also references how Dorothy Lamour would have a pivotal role in the film, and how Crosby and Hope's characters couldn't die or be severely harmed because Paramount had film rights to the stars for five more years.
- The first two "Road To..." films (...Singapore, and ...Zanzibar) were light, easygoing escapist comedies with a few tunes and some romance in the form of Dorothy Lamour. After that point, the films developed an unhurried, friendly working style, with the zanier aspects becoming more elaborate. For this film, the comic plot is a satisfying pile-on of schemes and counter-schemes. First, to make some money, Bing sells Bob into slavery. When Bob winds up being pampered in a harem and engaged to marry a desert princess, Bing tries to horn in on the action. Then, when Hope finds out that any man who marries the princess is cursed to die, he tries to con Bing into taking his place. The thrust and parry of their back-and-forth has been polished to a fine edge.
- Road to Morocco is the wackiest and most anarchic Road picture yet.
- There are talking camels and fourth-wall-breaking gags (making this one of the earliest films to break the fourth wall), like a scene near the end in which an exasperated Hope quickly recaps all the troubles that Bing has gotten them into. “I know all that!” (Bing); “Yeah, but the people who came in the middle of the picture don’t.” (Bob); “You mean they missed my song? (Bing)
- Plus, the movie has one of the only truly ad-libbed moments in the entire Road series. In the middle of a scene with a camel they’ve found in the desert (the one they’ll hop onto for the “Road to Morocco” number), the beast suddenly spits in Hope’s face. As Hope reels back out of camera range, Crosby laughs and pets the animal: “Good girl, good girl.” The camel improvised the spit — but when director Butler saw the spontaneous reaction, he kept it in the film.
- Incredible Burke-Van Heusen score which might just be the best of all the Road films.
- "Moonlight Becomes You" might just be the best song in the Road to series, and it became yet another hit Bing Crosby recording
- The film revitalized Crosby's film career, to the point where he eventually began appearing in non-singing roles.
Trivia
- The movie’s titular song “Road to Morocco” will go on to be parodied twice by two animated series, Family Guy, in the episode, Road to Rhode Island and My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, in the episode, On the Road to Friendship.