Bob Hope, left, and Bing Crosby in the opening to The Road to Hong Kong
Five months before the debut of Dr. No, the final Bob Hope-Bing Crosby “Road” movie came out, The Road to Hong Kong. The film, we suspect by coincidence, provided a road map to the future of 007 movies.
The 1962 movie had some major departures from previous “Road” movies. It was produced in the U.K. and was released by United Artists. The earlier films in the series had been produced in Hollywood and released by Paramount. Dorothy Lamour, the female lead of the previous Road movies, makes a cameo as herself but Joan Collins is the main female lead.
The change in locale meant the Norman Panama-Melvin Frank production (both would write the script, Panama directed and Frank produced; the duo had written the 1946 Road to Utopia) would take advantage of U.K. movie talent: Syd Cain was one of the art directors. Maurice Binder designed the main titles. Walter Gotell is one of the main lieutenants of a mysterious organization — stop us if you’ve heard this before — trying to take over the world. Bob Simmons shows up late in the movie as an astronaut in the employ of the villainous organization.
What’s more, there are “animated” sets (designed by Roger Furse) at the villain’s lair that would do Ken Adam proud. Two future participants in the 1967 Casino Royale (Peter Sellers and David Niven) show up in cameos. Did we mention Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin making cameos at the end? Well, they do.
If you’ve never seen The Road to Hong Kong, you can CLICK HERE and watch the 91-minute film on YouTube (at least until it gets taken off that Web site). While a comedy, it is a preview of the more fantastic Bond movies that would emerge a few years later, starting with 1967’s You Only Live Twice.
Filed under: James Bond Films, The Other Spies | Tagged: Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Bob Simmons, David Niven, Dean Martin, Dorothy Lamour, Frank Sinatra, James Bond Films, Joan Collins, Maurice Binder, Melvin Frank, Norman Panama, Peter Sellers, Syd Cain, The Other Spies, The Road to Hong Kong, United Artists |
The Spy Command 
I brought this up a year ago. The plot is very similar to Dr. No and that film was being made while this film was being shown at the theaters. Also, Bob Hope would be working with Saltzman and Broccoli a year later. So it is possible that Eon saw an advanced copy and was inspired by the mysterious villanous organization to use that same idea for the hopelessly difficult Dr. No script.
Hope you don’t mind, but I ripped off this inspired post and claimed it as my own idea on Facebook.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/007-MAGAZINE
[…] 1962, the final Bob Hope-Bing Crosby Road film, The Road to Hong Kong, provided a kind of preview to what would soon be seen in James Bond […]