BING AND SCOTCH TAPE

Tis the season for Christmas - and Bing! Here is a cute ad featuring Bing, Bob Hope, and Dorothy Lamour as they were promoting 1952's The Road To Bali. They are selling scotch tape - just in time for the holidays!

 

MOVIE REVIEW: THE ROAD TO BALI

I am not sure the name of the channel, but now that I switched cable providers, I get a nostalgia channel that shows some old movies and television shows. A few weeks ago they aired “The Colgate Comedy Hour” with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, and the other night while going to bed I got to watch The Road to Bali again. The Road to Bali is a 1952 comedy directed by Hal Walker and starring Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, and Dorothy Lamour. Released by Paramount Pictures on November 1, 1952, the film is the sixth of the seven Road to … movies. It was the only such movie filmed in Technicolor and was the first to feature surprise cameo appearances from other well-known stars of the day.

George (Bing Crosby) and Harold (Bob Hope), American song-and-dance men performing in Melbourne, Australia, leave in a hurry to avoid various marriage proposals. They end up in Darwin, where they take jobs as pearl divers for a prince. They are taken by boat to an idyllic island on the way to Bali, Indonesia. They vie for the favours of exotic (and half-Scottish) Princess Lala (Dorothy Lamour), a cousin of the Prince (Murvyn Vye). A hazardous dive produces a chest of priceless jewels, which the Prince plans to claim as his own.

After escaping from the Prince and his henchmen, the three are shipwrecked and washed up on another island. Lala is now in love with both of the boys and can't decide which to choose. However, once the natives find them, she learns that in their society, a woman may take multiple husbands, and declares she will marry them both. While the boys are prepared for the ceremony, both thinking the other man lost, plans are changed. She's being unwillingly wed to the already much-married King (Leon Askin), while the boys end up married to each other.

Displeased with the arrangement, a volcano god initiates a massive eruption. After fleeing, the three end up on yet another beach where Lala chooses George over Harold. An undaunted Harold conjures up Jane Russell from a basket by playing a flute. Alas, she, too, rejects Harold, which means George walks off with both Lala and Jane. A lonesome Harold is left on the beach, demanding that the film shouldn't finish and asking the audience to stick around to see what's going to happen next.

Among the celebrities who made token "gag" appearances in this film are bandleader Bob Crosby (Bing's brother), Humphrey Bogart, by way of a clip from The African Queen, Jerry Lewis, Dean Martin, and Jane Russell, as her character from the 1952 film Son of Paleface. The cameo by Martin and Lewis was part of a 'comedy trade' whereby they made an appearance in this movie while Hope and Crosby appeared in Martin and Lewis's Scared Stiff the following year. Martin and Lewis also made films for Paramount at the time.

The movie is in public domain due to it not being registered properly by Paramount, Bing Crosby Enterprises, and Bob Hope Productions. The three companies co-financed the film. As a result, there have been at least a dozen DVD releases from a variety of companies over the years. However, both CPT successor Sony Pictures Television and what is now Fremantle Media hold ancillary rights to this film, and official video releases have been issued under license from Fremantle Media (and its predecessor companies All-American Television and Pearson Television), the most recent DVD and HD-DVD releases coming from BCI Eclipse.

By the time this Road movie was made, Bing and Bob were beginning to look long in the tooth to play swinging bachelors. The storyline on the film was flimsy at best, but it provided the backdrop for the singing of Bing Crosby, the laughs of Bob Hope, and the beauty of Dorothy Lamour. Bing and Bob sang a lot of duets in the film, but the best of their vocal pairings was the opening number “Chicago Style”. Bing sings one love song “To See You Is to Love You”, which is not the best song, but Crosby was in fine voice. It is great to see the trio in technicolor, and despite the movies failings I have a soft spot for this film. The Road to Bali was the first of the Road movies I saw growing up. So if you want to have a fun trip, by all means join Bing and Bob for this Road trip. You will not be disappointed…

MY RATING: 7 OUT OF 10

RIP: HAL KANTER, WRITER FOR BING

Hal Kanter, an Emmy Award-winning comedy writer, and a director and producer whose career included writing for Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, directing Elvis Presley and creating a landmark 1960s TV series starring Diahann Carroll, has died. He was 92.

Kanter, who for decades was a writer for the annual Oscar telecast, died Sunday of complications from pneumonia at Encino Hospital in Los Angeles, said his daughter, Donna Kanter.

"What a dear man," longtime friend Carl Reiner said Monday after learning of Kanter's death.

"He was considered one of the wits of the industry; there's no question about it," said Reiner, noting that Kanter was master of ceremonies for the Directors Guild of America's awards dinner for many years. "Any time he was called upon, he always could make the audience laugh.

"He was a funny elder statesman, and there's nothing better than having a witty elder statesman."

After launching his comedy writing career in radio in the late 1930s, Kanter moved into television in 1949 as head writer for "The Ed Wynn Show," a live comedy-variety show.

He went on to create, produce and head the writing team on "The George Gobel Show," another live comedy-variety program for which he shared an Emmy Award in 1955 for best written comedy material.

In the 1960s, Kanter made TV history when he created and produced "Julia," the 1968-71 NBC sitcom starring Carroll as Julia Baker, a young widowed nurse and the mother of a young son, Corey (played by Marc Copage), whose best friend is white.

Eighteen years after Ethel Waters debuted as the star of the TV version of "The Beulah Show," an ABC situation comedy about a stereotypical black maid, Carroll became the first black actress to star in her own TV sitcom playing a character who was a professional woman rather than a domestic worker.

Although "Julia" was not carried on some TV stations in the South the first couple of weeks, "eventually, the show became such a hit, they were forced to carry it," Kanter recalled in a 1997 interview with the Television Academy Foundation's Archive of American Television.

Carroll's Julia "opened a door," Kanter said in a 1969 Los Angeles Times interview. "Bill Cosby in 'I Spy' first opened it (in 1965), but Julia opened it wider."

Kanter said "Julia" had been criticized for not dealing in depth with any social issues. "But that was not our purpose," he said. "We wanted to create an entertaining comedy, nothing more.

"You see, I feel that if we had starred (white actress) Hope Lange in 'Julia' and Diahann Carroll in 'The Ghost and Mrs. Muir,' the results would have been about the same. I also feel that if we made social comment within our context, our show would have been a failure."

On the other hand, he said, "there is a fallout of social comment. Every week we see a black child playing with a white child with complete acceptance and without incident. One of the recurring themes in the thousands of letters we get is from people who thank us for showing them what a black child is like - he's like any other child."

Kanter, who also created the TV series "Valentine's Day" and "The Jimmy Stewart Show," was a writer and producer on "Chico and the Man" and had a brief 1975 stint as executive producer of "All in the Family."

Among his movie credits as a writer are Hope and Crosby's "Road to Bali," Hope's "Bachelor in Paradise" and Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis' "Money from Home" and "Artists and Models" - as well as the movies "Pocket Full of Miracles" and "Move Over, Darling."

He also directed Presley in the 1957 movie "Loving You," which Kanter co-wrote; and he wrote the screenplay for Presley's 1961 film "Blue Hawaii." And in a change of pace from comedy, he collaborated with Tennessee Williams on the 1955 screen adaptation of Williams' drama "The Rose Tattoo."

Kanter's longest-running writing job was the annual Academy Awards ceremony. Beginning in 1952, a year before the broadcast moved from radio to television, he wrote for the Oscar show at least 33 years.

In 1991 and 1992, Kanter was among the Oscar show writers who shared Emmys for outstanding writing in a variety or music program.

"Giving some actors a joke is like handing a straight razor to a baby," Kanter, who was a member of the Academy's Board of Governors, told Newsday in 1994. "You can never give an actor a blank piece of paper. You have to give him something with words on it before he can destroy it."

Many presenters and hosts, however, had a way with Kanter's words.

When The Associated Press asked him in 2001 for his favorite line from past Oscar telecasts, Kanter recalled: "On one of the shows, Walter Matthau announced that the broadcast was being seen simultaneously in 300 countries. I had him say, 'If my tailor in Hong Kong is watching, it still doesn't fit.'"

For decades, Kanter was the go-to wit to act as master of ceremonies or speak at Hollywood functions and other events.

At a testimonial dinner, he introduced comedy writer Sherwood Schwartz by saying: "Sherwood Schwartz. He sounds like Robin Hood's rabbi."

He even enlivened memorial services, including one for playwright Robert E. Lee, at which Kanter introduced himself by saying, "I'm the internationally famous writer-director who's known to his barber as 'Next!'"

Kanter was born Dec. 18, 1918, in Savannah, Ga., and moved to Long Beach, N.Y., when he was about 16. Or as he liked to say, he moved "from the deep South to the shallow North."

His Russian-born father, Albert, who exposed his children to great literature and was a humorous storyteller, later created and published "Classic Comics," a popular comic-book series featuring adaptations of famous literary works that became known as "Classics Illustrated."

At age 11, while living in Florida, Kanter began writing Boy Scout news for The Miami Herald. At 14, he was freelancing as a cartoonist and selling cartoon gags. And he was not quite 18 in 1936 when a job for a comic strip ghost writer took him to Hollywood, where he got his start in radio.

Kanter, who also contributed topical jokes to Olsen and Johnson's long-running hit Broadway revue "Hellzapoppin," served in the Army during World War II. As part of Armed Forces Radio Service in the South Pacific, he helped build an AFRS station on Guam and hosted his own shows.

After the war, he resumed his career in radio, including several years writing for Bing Crosby's show.

Kanter, who titled his 1999 memoir "So Far, So Funny: My Life in Show Business," received the Paddy Chayefsky Laurel Award for Television from the Writers Guild of America in 1989.

In addition to his daughter Donna, he is survived by his wife of 70 years, writer Doris Kanter; his other daughters, Lisa Kanter Shafer and Abigail Kanter Jaye; his sister, Saralea Emerson; and a granddaughter...

CHICAGO STYLE

Bing and Bob Hope's duet of "Chicago Style" is one of the best duets they did. Sadly, it is a largely forgotten song. It was recorded by the duo on Decca Records, and it was also featured in their move THE ROAD TO BALI in 1952...

BING CROSBY ON TCM

Unfortunately the next few months on TCM does not have much Bing Crosby scheduled. With the month of May being the birth months of both Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, you would think there would be more scheduled: JUNE 7TH - THE ROAD TO BALI - 7:45AM JULY 17TH - ROAD TO MOROCCO - 8PM