Turkey: I can't go on! No food, no water. It's all my fault. We're done for! It's got me. I can't stand it! No food, nothing! No food, no water! No food!
Jeff: What's the matter with you, anyway? There's New York. We'll be picked up in a few minutes.
Turkey: You had to open your big mouth and ruin the only good scene I got in the picture. I might have won the Academy Award!
The third in the famous Road to series starring Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, and Dorothy Lamour, Road to Morocco is considered by most fans and critics alike to be the best of the bunch. The film took the improvisational attitude of the first film and perfected it, including more topical jokes like those frequently heard on Bob Hope’s radio show. As with the other pictures, material was brought in from other projects, most notably in this case being routines from Ralph Spence’s From Rags to Rhythm. But perhaps the biggest difference came not in the stars but in the director.
David Butler had cut his teeth at Mack Sennett’s slapstick comedy studio when silent films were king. Butler’s background gave him acute insight into the fickle nature of comedy, and he proved quite adept at knowing when to follow the structure of a scene and when to trust the instincts of the comedians. Butler’s belief was that rehearsal was the antithesis of spontaneity, the key ingredient to good comedy. “I’d always let the camera run,” Butler once said, “and we got some of our funniest stuff after the scene was over. I’d even let the camera roll until they got off the set, or walked out, or whatever happened.”
Butler’s approach was rewarded throughout the film but particularly in one scene where a camel unexpectedly spit in Hope’s eye. Crosby laughed in genuine surprise and improvised a line about the camel having good taste. The bit stayed.
The film followed fun-loving, fast-talking friends Jim Peters (Crosby) and Turkey Jackson (Hope) who end up washed up in Morocco. In order to make a little self-preserving cash, Jim sells his best friend Turkey into slavery, ignoring the deathbed plea of his aunt to watch over him. But after his ghostly aunt (also played by Hope) comes back from the dead and reprimands him, Jim goes in search of his friend only to find him in lavish comfort awaiting his astrologically dictated marriage to the beautiful princess Shalimar (Dorothy Lamour). And just as the friends get ready to butt heads over the lady love, a jealous suitor by the name of Mullay Kasim (Anthony Quinn) storms in to shake things up.
The film was nominated for Academy Awards in Sound Recording and Writing and in 1996 was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. But as in all the Road to movies, the music was one of the highlights. Hope and Crosby’s duet “(We’re off on the) Road to Morocco” became one of the signature songs for the series (and would later be parodied on an episode of Family Guy called “Road to Rhode Island”). And Crosby’s velvety baritone made a hit out of “Ain’t Got a Dime to My Name” and “Moonlight Becomes You.”
