I was searching around for a topic for this week’s Flashback Friday column and had a few ideas but never really settled on anything. Then I saw Noel Murray’s great article at The A.V. Club on the Hope/Crosby Road movies and decided to write about my favorite of the series: The Road to Utopia.
If you’re not familiar with this movie – which would mean you aren’t a fan of great comedy and/or didn’t grow up in the Chicago area, where this was regularly featured during WGN’s “Family Classics” show, which broadcast classic movies of all types – Bob Hope and Bing Crosby play Chester and Duke, respectively, a couple of song-and-dance men who head to Alaska to make their fortune mining for gold. On their way they assume the identities of two crooks they meet on their travels. That lands them in the middle of a dispute involving Sal (Dorothy Lamour), the hostess at a mining town bar, a map to a massive gold claim and more. This being the fourth entry in the popular “Road Show” series, hijinks ensue and there’s never a dull moment as Chester and Duke try to not only strike it rich but also talk themselves out of the uncomfortable and dangerous situations they face on the road to that goal.
The theatrical poster uses a slightly-altered scene from the movie as its primary image. The trio are seen on a dogsled, cruising through a snowy landscape. Crosby is seated while Hope is driving, with Lamour holding on to him at the rear. In the movie itself Lamour is also seated with Crosby, but considering her flirtations with Hope (which usually turned out badly for him) were such a big part of the series’ regular beats perhaps this was a move by the studio to play that up a bit more than it really was in the film. A crossroads sign displays the title and the names of the stars, again establishing the wilderness setting of the story. Copy in the corner promises this is “Paramount’s most riotous “Road” show.”
Being from the age it is, the movie also had a number of “lobby cards” created. Three out of four available on TCM’s page for the movie show all three of the cast, though notably one of them features Lamour not in Yukon-ready furs but her signature sarong, obviously in an attempt to up the sex appeal of the star. The only one to not feature Lamour shows Hope and Crosby in the middle of the traveling show their characters are part of in the beginning of the film. That appears to be the studio establishing that yes, there’s plenty of the familiar song-and-dance routines fans had come to expect.
When you watch the trailer you can immediately get a sense of the kind of humor that’s on display, that unique Vaudeville-perfected kind of banter and timing that Hope and Crosby were so well known for. We see Hope as the butt of jokes, Crosby crooning and Lamour bringing the sex appeal. There’s nothing about the story here but that’s beside the point. The series and the stars were so well known at this point the audience knew exactly what they were getting when they walked in, so the promise here is that all the familiar beats will be hit.
What I love most about the trailer is that it shows how self-aware the series had become by this time. Early on Crosby warns Hope against sledding without hands by saying “No teeth!,” to which Hope makes a crack about his sponsor, which fans of the comedian at the time would know was Pepsodent, a toothpaste brand.
As I said, there’s not much about the story in the trailer. We get that Hope and Crosby will be embarking on yet another adventure and can see from the setting and clothing that it’s set this time in the Yukon. But that’s about it. The rest is devoted to a handful of gags, some singing and the promise that the pair at the center of the action will fit into familiar roles.
You can see elements of the different parts of the campaign here – I’m sure there were plenty of press stories as well as Paramount exercised its considerable muscle – that are very similar to how sequels and other franchise extensions are sold today. As I mentioned a couple different times above, the trailer plays to audience familiarity quite a bit, though it’s important to remember these Road movies weren’t actually sequels; Hope, Crosby and Lamour always played different, unrelated characters in each installment. It was the actors the audience was coming to see, though, and that’s why the marketing took the approach of focusing on them.
