ROAD TO UTOPIA: Blu-ray (Paramount, 1946) Kino Lorber
Four years and
four resounding smash hit films made in rapid succession prevented Bing Crosby
from partaking in another installment in the popular ‘Road’ franchise. It seems
ludicrous that Paramount would have allowed such a sensation as Hope and Crosby
to languish after attaining near perfect box office bell-ringing results in Road to Morocco (1942). However, in the
interim, Crosby’s career did not languish. If anything, Crosby became even more
ensconced in the public’s estimation as the go-to seller of pop songs; thanks
to appearances in the all-star musical cavalcade, Star Spangled Rhythm (1943), the Technicolor period pic, Dixie (1943 – and also co-starring
Dorothy Lamour) and his Oscar-winning turn as the beloved Father O’Malley in Going My Way (1944). While Der Bingle
would primarily remain a Paramount star – their most profitable hit maker of
the war years, Bob Hope’s future in movies was far less assured. Indeed, Hope
maintained a breakneck schedule on the radio and touring with the USO. His
picture-making pull was thus on the wane by 1946. While Hope had also appeared
in Star Spangled Rhythm, he spent
the intervening years between Road to
Morocco and Road to Utopia
(1946) mostly on loan out to Samuel Goldwyn, with only one largely forgettable
comedy – 1943’s Let’s Face It – made
for Paramount. The re-teaming of Hope, Crosby and Dorothy Lamour for director,
Hal Walker’s Road to Utopia was
therefore most welcome – and proved yet another highly profitable installment
in studio’s franchise, proving that when it came to slickly packaged comedy,
these boys were the undisputed masters. Indeed, the picture was already in the
can by 1943, though repeatedly shelved by the studio – rumor has it, to procure
Crosby a respectable distance from such lighter fluff and drum up Oscar buzz
for the aforementioned Going My Way.
Whatever the reason, Road to Utopia
lay dormant for almost four years. Mercifully, this delay did not wreck the momentum
in Melvin Frank and Norman Panama’s screenplay, taking a rather unusual turn by
employing caustic wit, Robert Benchley as something of a Master of Ceremonies,
infrequently to interrupt the plot with benign commentary that neither enhanced
nor advanced the plot.
Road to Utopia was actually nominated for Best
Original Screenplay, and would remain the only ‘Road’ picture without an
actual place depicted in its title. For this one, Crosby and Hope were Alaska-bound,
in search of gold after acquiring a stolen map from a pair of ruffians. Road to Utopia is also unique; first, as
it is set at the turn of the century – and thus, a period pic, and second, as it
is told in flashback, with a ‘pro’ and epilogue, depicting a decrepit Hope and
an aged, though no less spry Crosby, still vying for the affections of the
white-haired Dorothy Lamour. Apart from making wry jabs about the
picture-making biz, Road to Utopia allows its featured players to infrequently address the audience
directly. In hindsight, the participation of humor essayist, Robert Benchley
seems the only unnecessary addendum – Benchley, prefacing the picture, even
before the credits, to suggest that whole portions have been left on the
cutting room floor, requiring his narration to fill in the gaps. Yet, what
follows is actually a straight forward plot with no explanation required. Not
that Benchley offers one. He merely appears, periodically interjecting his own
particular brand of smarmy ornamentation. Tragically, Benchley - an adamant
teetotaler in his youth, but a raving alcoholic in mid-life – would succumb to
cirrhosis of the liver before the end of 1945 and never see the picture’s debut. Released the same year as Crosby’s follow-up
to Going My Way – The Bells of St. Mary’s – Road to Utopia actually out grossed ‘Bells’
to become the 9th biggest box office hit of the year, and the number
one draw in the U.K., ahead of Hitchcock’s Notorious,
Hawks’ The Big Sleep, and, Wyler’s
Oscar-winner, The Best Years of Our
Lives. Even the harshest critics were left gushing. Noted New York Times wit, Bosley Crowther glowed,
“Not since Chaplin was prospecting for
gold in a Hollywood-made Alaska has so much howling humor been swirled with so
much artificial snow.”
After Benchley’s
brief introduction and the main titles, Road
to Utopia opens in the stately manor of aged marrieds, Sal and Chester
Hooton (Lamour and Hope). She’s a fussbudget; he, a wily old bugger, still leering
at pinups tucked in the financial section of the Wall Street Journal. The couple
are visited by Duke Johnson (Crosby), who has brought along two luscious ‘nieces’
he quickly encourages to attend him later at a nightclub. After all these
years, Chester is still suspicious of Duke’s motives. Only now, Sal implores
Duke to regale them with what he has been up to since last they saw each other
up in the Klondike, some forty years earlier. We flashback to the turn of the
century and the scene of a murder; Mr. Latimer (Will Wright), plugged by a pair
of bearded thugs, McGurk (Nestor Paiva) and Sperry (Robert Barrat). Discovering
the dying man next to his bed, saloon singer, Sal Van Hoyden (Lamour) is
informed by Latimer that her father’s secret map to an Alaskan gold mine has
been stolen. Latimer instructs Sal to make haste to the far north and look up
an ‘old friend’ of her late father, Ace Larson (Douglass Drumbrille), who will
actually turn out to be anything but. Meanwhile, spotted by police, McGurk and Sperry
take refuge in a Barbary Coast music hall where Vaudevillians, Chester and Duke
are entertaining a packed house. The boys shift into their scam, a ‘ghost’ game,
whereupon Duke pretends to be a swami, capable of channeling the spirits to turn
dollar bills into untold amounts of cold hard cash. This ruse is foiled when
the police burst in, chasing after McGurk and Sperry, inadvertently knocking
over the hiding spot where Chester is collecting all of the crowd’s money.
As the boys
hightail it back to their hotel to pack and flee, Chester informs Duke he has
had it with his schemes. He has decided to dissolve their act and go back to
New York, taking all of the money with him as severance for the many years
enduring Duke’s bait and switch, also, goading him to incur all of the
liabilities in their con games. Duke feigns accepting Chester’s terms, but then
manages to swipe his wallet at the docks, moments before Duke intends to sail to
Alaska in search of gold. Discovering the pickpocket, Chester leaps from his
adjacent ship and pursues Duke. Seizing the money, Chester reasons neither one will
carry the cash on their person, electing instead to keep it in the safe. What
Chester fails to realize is that the round door he perceives as their ideal
hiding spot, is, in fact, a porthole opening to the sea; all of their
ill-gotten gains taking a tumble into the ocean. As the boys are penniless and
cannot pay for their passage, they are put to work scrubbing the decks and
shoveling coal. Inadvertently, they stumble upon the stolen gold mine map and,
when confronted by McGurk and Sperry, nevertheless manage to pummel and bind
these ruthless cutthroats in their stateroom, assuming their identities as the
ship docks in the Alaskan port.
Sperry and
McGurk’s reputation has preceded them. Only a few of the locals are suspicious
of Chester and Duke’s disguise. But most – including Ace and his goon, Lebec
(Jack LeRue), and their ruthless gal-pal, Kate (Hillary Brooke) take the boys
at face value. Having arrived earlier on another ship, Sal implores Ace to help
her recover the map stolen by McGurk and Sperry, now in Chester and Duke’s
possession. Ace wants the map – but only for himself, setting up Sal as a
featured performer in his popular saloon. After Sal has left the room, Larson informs
Kate of his real plan to keep everything for themselves. The two conspirators
passionately kiss to seal the deal. Meanwhile, to ensure neither takes
advantage of the other, Chester and Duke tear the map in two, each taking a
half for safe-keeping. Entering Ace’s establishment, Chester and Duke are
courted by Sal. Each becomes instantly smitten. Still unaware Ace is working
against her, Sal reveals her own suspicions about these ‘killers’. Lebec
reminds Sal that whatever the cost, she must get the map. Courting the
dim-witted Chester, Sal learns Duke has hidden his half of the map in his fur-lined
hat. Promptly, she sends Lebec to retrieve it. Playing her percentage, Sal sets
up ‘a date’ with both Duke and Chester at midnight. But their rendezvous is cut
short when the real McGurk and Sperry burst into the hotel, out for blood;
also, to reclaim the map for themselves. Realizing the deception too late, Sal
escapes with Ace still hanging on to his half of the map. Meanwhile Duke and
Chester manage their escape via dog sled.
Furious to
discover he is missing the crucial half to the map, Ace sends Kate, along with Lebec,
after the other piece to the hidden treasure. Kate feigns a damsel in distress
to distract the boys; her ploy, interrupted by Sal’s arrival. Kate isolates Sal
and lays it on the line. Unless she can coax Duke and Chester into giving up
the map, at daybreak Ace and Lebec will take it by force, leaving Duke and
Chester for dead. Sal gets Duke to reveal Chester has hidden his half in his
undershirt. She plays to Duke’s greed, suggesting Chester is plotting to leave
him with nothing. Only Sal now realizes she is desperately in love with Duke
and does not want any harm to come to either of the boys. That evening, Duke,
Chester, Sal and Kate take up residence in a nearby cabin where Duke and
Chester are briefly accosted by a pair of passive grizzly bears. At the break
of dawn, Kate and Sal skulk off with the remaining map, leaving Duke and
Chester to be confronted by the real McGurk and Sperry. Again, the boys manage
to subdue their nemeses. The boys lead the killers on a spirited dog sled chase
through the mountains, scaling a narrow precipice on foot, and, narrowly
escaping an avalanche before finding their way back into town.
Sal tells Ace she
will only surrender the map if he agrees to leave Duke and Chester alone.
Instead, Ace forms a posse. Seemingly everyone in town wants a piece of the
action. With a miraculous spate of good
fortune, Duke and Chester hold onto the map, rescue Sal, diffuse the mob and finally
lighten themselves of the threat of McGurk and Sperry for good. The boys escape
by dog sled with the mob in hot pursuit. Alas, the sleds overturn down a steep
embankment. As the boys debate their next move, the ice beneath their feet splits
in two, creating a treacherous chasm. Chester and Sal are spared capture, separated
by the collapsing ice, but on the safe side and free to hurry to the mine. But
Duke is trapped, presumably to be taken prisoner by the mob. The flashback
ends, and we find the aged Duke finishing off his story to Sal and Chester in
the comfort of their living room, though without ever accurately explaining how
he managed to survive and escape the mob. Presumably, the wealth that Chester
and Sal now enjoy derives from the gold mine they were allowed to reclaim back
then. As Duke prepares to depart, Sal informs him of a son she and Chester have,
and whom she would like Duke to meet. A youthful Bing Crosby saunters down the
stairs as Chester nervously addresses the audience with a sheepish explanation. “We adopted him!”
Road to Utopia is a buoyant cut above from the
usual ‘Road’ picture fluff. Four of the Johnny Burke/Jimmy Van Heusen
songs featured in the movie (‘Personality’,
‘It’s Anybody’s Spring’, ‘Welcome to My Dream’ and ‘Would You?’) became hit parade standards; Crosby, re-recording ‘Personality’ (sung in the picture by
Lamour) and reaching the billboards with a No. 9 hit single for Decca. The
flashback is used effectively, with the ribald payoff at the end, suggesting
Sal was unfaithful with Duke to produce a son who is the spitting image of him –
not Chester, her husband. Exactly how Paramount flew this one under the radar
of the Hollywood censors remains open for discussion. Certainly, there had been
– and would continue to be – less obvious sexually innuendo, attempted in
other pictures, only to be vehemently shot down by Joseph Breen and his
hatchet-happy minions, nitpicking for the sinful and salacious. Perhaps only in
jest could such an inference be allowed to stand, with a wink-wink/nudge-nudge.
It also likely helped that Crosby and Hope’s public image as perfect gentlemen
was Teflon-coated. By this time, both stars were seasoned veterans in three popular
entertainments, having graduated from stage, to radio, and finally, the movies;
so completely in sync with each other’s comedic timing that the barbs,
one-liners and otherwise, loaded nuggets of wisdom trip effortlessly off the cuff,
seemingly, as casual afterthoughts, and always, with the most adroit genius at
play.
Kino Lorber
continues to mine the Crosby/Hope legacy with this new to Blu release of Road to Utopia. The transfer is similar
to the previously reviewed Road to Zanzibar,
intermittently suffering from age-related dirt, scratches and other damage. Zero
clean-up has been performed and occasionally gate weave and pixelization do
occur. But film grain looks indigenous to its source. The image is smartly
contrasted. When it does come together – in close-ups and medium shots, this
1080p image shows off Lionel Lindon’s deep focus cinematography to its best
advantage. Long shots can appear a tad soft and fuzzy. But overall, there is an
impressive amount of fine detail evident in skin, fabrics and background
information. I still wish Universal –
the custodians of Paramount’s pre-fifties film output would pay more attention
to remastering their back catalog in hi-def. The audio is a passable mono DTS.
Kino has licensed two extras that were part of Uni’s DVD release: the first,
skipping over the particulars of both Crosby and Hope’s respective careers and
how they came to make the ‘Road’ pictures (the same featurette
as on Road to Singapore, Zanzibar and Morocco), and another ‘Command
Performance’ short. We also get an older audio commentary from Greg Ford and Will
Friedwald. It meanders – at times, badly, with lots of personal reflection, but
precious little back story to make us care. This Blu-ray, while imperfect, is nevertheless
adequate. The movie is pure comedy gold. Judge and buy accordingly.
FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)
4.5
VIDEO/AUDIO
3.5
EXTRAS
1
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