Lamour, Dorothy

The Greatest Show on Earth

The Greatest Show on Earth is a heaping helping of flapdoodle served up by one of Hollywood's canniest entertainers: producer-director Cecil B. DeMille. This overripe melodrama purports to be life inside the Ringling Brothers Circus; maybe it's not, but the circus ought to be like this. The actors wrestling with the purple dialogue are: early-career Charlton Heston, as the tough-as-nails circus manager; Cornel Wilde and Betty Hutton as trapeze artistes; and Gloria Grahame (who won an Oscar), dangling from elephants. Best of all, James Stewart plays a clown who--for mysterious reasons--never removes his makeup. (Stewart took the supporting role simply because he'd always wanted to play a clown.) This is a fried-baloney sandwich of a movie: it ain't sophisticated, and probably isn't good for you, but once you start you can't stop. It was the box-office champ of 1952, and it shocked everybody by winning the best picture Oscar. --Robert Horton

Donovan's Reef

John Wayne's last film with mentor and long-time collaborator John Ford (The Searchers) is a 1963 comedy about a group of war veterans settled on a South Pacific island. When the daughter of one of them (Jack Warden) comes for a visit, the freewheeling status quo between the boys is disrupted. This is Ford in his chummy, amiable, roughhousing mode--think of Victor McLaglen's drunken fight scene in Ford's She Wore a Yellow Ribbon--and it is entirely pleasurable. Wayne is comfortable in his man's-man role, and Lee Marvin (who played Wayne's nemesis in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance) is effectively roguish. --Tom Keogh

On the Road With Bob Hope and Bing Crosby Collection (Road to Singapore/Road to Zanzibar/Road to Morocco/Road to Utopia)

They are some of the best-loved film comedies ever created. Now, four of the most popular "Road" pictures, starring the unbeatable screen duo of Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, are here together in this deluxe DVD collection. Join Bing and Bob as they travel the world and experience rollicking, fun-filled misadventures in the company of the alluring Dorothy Lamour in such screen gems as Road to Singapore, Road to Zanzibar, Road to Morocco and Road to Utopia. You'll laugh yourself silly with four of the titles that made Hope and Crosby one of the most successful comedy teams of the 1940s and which continue to charm and entertain audiences of all ages today.

Creepshow 2

Join our old friend the rotting Creep himself as he introduces this horror anthology which presents gruesome looks at three tales of horror: a hit-and-run driver in "The Hitchhiker" a wooden Indian in "Ol' Chief Wooden Head" and four friends whose vacation on a secluded lake turns into a nightmare in "The Raft". CREEPSHOW 2 is a deliciously wicked roller coaster ride that will plunge you into the heart of darkness and to the very brink of madness. Just when you thought it was safe to come back to the movies along comes a fright-fest like CREEPSHOW 2!System Requirements:Starring: Lois Chiles George Kennedy Dorothy Lamour Tom Savini Director: Michael Gornick Producer: David Ball Running Time: 92 Min.Format: DVD MOVIE

What is it about hitchhikers that makes them such a sure-fire bet for horror? This question is addressed in the final segment of Creepshow 2, another Stephen King-George Romero collaboration. "The Hitchhiker" is the simplest and best of the three tales on display here, with Lois Chiles as a cheating wife who just can't seem to get rid of a hitchhiker... no matter how hard she tries. The collection gets off to a slow start with "Old Chief Wood'n Head," a sleepy story of Native American justice. "The Raft" is a passable teens-in-peril number, but it worked better on the page than on screen. Romero adapted the King stories but emphatically did not direct, which accounts for the drop-off from the kicky fun of the first Creepshow. King appears as a dimwitted truck driver--a foreshadowing of Maximum Overdrive? In any case, this one's for diehard fans only. --Robert Horton

The Road to Hong Kong

"The laughs come thick and fast" (Variety) in this seventh hilarious Road movie from Bing Crosby and Bob Hope. Cavorting through a series of madcap adventures with Joan Collins Dorothy Lamour and Robert Morley as well as Peter Sellers Frank Sinatra Dean Martin and David Niven Crosby and Hope dish out a "fricassee of jokes and gags" (Los Angeles Times) in what may be the wildest entry in their popular film series!Vaudevillians Harry (Crosby) and Chester (Hope) travel to Tibet to search for a drug to restore Chester's memory. Once they find the cure Chesters memory becomes so good that he accidentally memorizes a secret formula for space navigatio n. Soon the two meet up with a beautiful spy (Collins) and get slightly sidetracked to another planet!System Requirements:Running Time: 91 Min.Format: DVD MOVIE

Bob Hope Tribute Collection - The Road Show Series (The Road to Morocco / The Road to Singapore / The Road to Utopia / The Road to Zanzibar)

Road to Singapore
Here's the first trip in what would become one of Paramount Pictures' most profitable film series of the '40s. When this comedy was released in 1940, Bing Crosby and Bob Hope had separately achieved stardom, though Crosby was an established power and Hope still a hot comedian new to movies. In fact, Hope is billed third in Road to Singapore, below Der Bingle and Dorothy Lamour. The script establishes what would be a constant in the Road series: a ramshackle plot, a handful of songs, and plenty of irreverent banter between the two boys. Crosby plays Josh Mallon, scion of a wealthy family, who prefers the vagabond life to his stuffy family; his pal Ace Lannigan (Hope) is only too happy to escape. They end up sharing a waterfront shack in Singapore and vying for the affections of a sarong-clad local (Lamour), amidst stabs at conning the natives with a dubious elixir variously known as "Spot-O" (stain remover) and "Scram-O" (cockroach killer). Singapore isn't as loose as some of the wacky subsequent entries in the series, but it already shows Crosby and Hope grooving to each other's perfectly timed burlesque rhythms in scenes that clearly depart from the script. They specialized in muttered asides, show-biz in-jokes, and gratuitous insults--and this one's got a song and dance number with an ocarina. No wonder it became a franchise. --Robert Horton

Road to Zanzibar
The second Road movie from Paramount Pictures finds barnstorming con artists Chuck Reardon (Bing Crosby) and Hubert "Fearless" Frazier (Bob Hope) at liberty after their act goes haywire. (In these movies, Crosby generally lures the suckers into the tent, while Hope is always stuck getting shot out of the cannon.) A phony map to a diamond mine brings our boys into the middle of Africa, which means there's a good chance they'll end up sitting in a cauldron while natives perform a cannibal dance around them. These stereotypes would be offensive if the movie wasn't actively parodying the kind of jungle movie popular in 1941 (just as Road to Morocco would satirize the Arabian nights picture). Dorothy Lamour is along for the ride, of course, and her scene in a tight clinch with Hope established a tradition of steamy comic exchanges through the series (as she croons a love song to him, he checks to see if his wallet is still in his pocket). This is the first Road movie to actively wink at the audience; in one scene, Lamour mocks the way movies always have characters break out into song in the middle of nowhere with a full orchestra backing--which is exactly what happens next. The chatter between Crosby and Hope already feels improvised, and it should be noted that the secret of their chemistry is not a sentimental friendship but a cheerfully hostile rivalry between the two characters, a cheeky approach that must've delighted audiences used to the Andy Hardy niceness of most Hollywood movies of that era. Oh, and they do their patty-cake routine, too. --Robert Horton

Road to Morocco
Road to Morocco, number three in the series of breezy comedies teaming Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, may be the funniest of the bunch. Bing and Bob find themselves Morocco-bound ("like Webster's dictionary"), caught in an elaborately faked-up world of harems, palm trees, and other Arabian Nights bric-a-brac. Naturally, Dorothy Lamour is also there, as she was the customary target of male rivalry in the Road scenarios. There is something so loose and ingratiating about the patter between Hope and Crosby that it doesn't ultimately matter if half the jokes don't land; these guys had their own comfortable rhythm, fueled by cheerful one-upmanship. Their sense of spontaneity broke the fourth wall between movie and audience in a way only the Marx Brothers had really accomplished before, and audiences--feeling in on the joke--ate it up. Songs (including "Moonlight Becomes You"), topical references, and ancient vaudeville routines fill out the program. --Robert Horton

Road to Utopia
I feel sorry for people who can't appreciate Hope and Crosby Road pictures. This is the fourth in the series, and has the boys masquerading as the killers Sperry and McGurk, from whom they've stolen the map to a gold mine, but which really belongs to Dorothy Lamour, but which... and you know it really doesn't matter anyway. The point is they've got this thin plot on which to hang a series of hit-and-miss jokes, coming fast enough to make it just all right and a certain amount of time to see who gets Dorothy Lamour, while maintaining their fierce and friendly and wisecracking rivalry. They're in the Klondike this time around, which doesn't stop the film from working in a glimpse of Dorothy in her sarong. Along the way, animals talk, including the humorist Robert Benchley, whose thoroughly dispensable introduction and running commentary I wouldn't dispense with for anything. This is arguably the goofiest of the road pictures. My favorite joke is when Bob is bested in fishing with Bing. Bob remarks, "My worm must have B.O." Bing comes back with "Couldn't B.U." You may not care where you're going, just as long as you're with them. Put it there, pal, put it there. --Jim Gay

Road to Bali

Bob Hope Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour team up in their sixth "Road" picture Road to Bali which was the only film in the series to be shot in color. Hope and Crosby star as two out-of-work vaudeville performers who are on the lam. The two are hired by a South Seas prince as deep-sea divers in order to recover a buried treasure. They meet beautiful Princess Lala (Lamour) and vie for her affections. Of course the boys run into the usual perils such as cannibals a giant squid and numerous cameos from some of Hollywood's biggest stars. Director Hal Walker was no stranger to the three actor having directed the trio in Road to Utopia. The final "Road" picture Road to Hong Kong would be released 10 years later with Lamour making a brief cameo appearance.System Requirements:Starring: Bob Hope Bing Crosby Dorothy Lamour with Dean Martin Jane Russell and Murvyn Vye. Directed by: Hal Walker. Runtime 90 minutes. Copyright 1949 Columbia Pictures Television.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY UPC: 090096098395 Manufacturer No: 60983-9

Pajama Party

The John Wayne Adventure Collection (The High and the Mighty / In Harms Way / Island in the Sky / Hatari! / Donovans Reef)

The Big Broadcast of 1938 / College Swing Double Feature