1h 31min || 11 April 1941
Director: Victor Schertzinger
Stars: Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Dorothy Lamour, Una Merkel, Eric Blore, Douglass Dumbrille.
LeRoy Prinz ... stager: musical numbers
Genres: Adventure | Comedy | Musical | Romance
6+ songs in the Soundtracks, but I don't remember them immediately after watching this. The plot/antics are what stand out.
FFWDing through it again to find dancing: there is a dance sequence at one show with chorus girls; H&C join them onstage to evade authorities.
We have the BC/BH duo traveling the African continent performing danger acts (Hope is endangered, Crosby is the barker) at carnivals. Why Africa? So they can get into tribal trouble, I suppose.
Eric Blore's appearance is all too brief, as the diamond heir who sells them a bogus lost mine. When they turn that purchase around to a local gangster, they must flee. Then they're hoodwinked by Merkel & Lamour, who further convince H&C to take them into the jungle. During this trip Lamour sings romantically to Hope. M&L slip out of the story (I don't know where), and H&C are captured by natives with such elaborate face and body paint that you don't think about the race of the actors, but the Chief is Noble Johnson, African American, and the Hall Johnson Choir is in the credits.
After Hope wins a wrestling match with a gorilla, the boys are freed, return to local modernity, find the girls, and now have a 4-person carny act. Curtain.
It's an ok bit of fluff, but don't watch this thinking you're gonna get a rousing musical. Comedy is the focus.
Paramount, dir. Schertzinger; 6
