Road to Utopia

Road to Utopia (1946)

Paramount's most riotous "Road" show!

While on a ship to Skagway, Alaska, Duke and Chester find a map to a secret gold mine, which had been 'stolen' by thugs. In Alaska to recover her father's map, Sal Van Hoyden falls in with Ace Larson, who secretly wants to steal the gold mine for himself. Duke, Chester, the thugs, Ace and his henchman chase each other all over the countryside—for the map.

Date of release
1946-02-27
TMDB
6.8 / 10 (51)
Runtime
1h 30m
Genres
Adventure, Comedy, Music, Family
Director
Hal Walker
Collection
Road to... Collection

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Awards: 0 · Nominations: 1

Road to Utopia is a 1946 American musical comedy film directed by Hal Walker and starring Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, and Dorothy Lamour. Filmed in 1943 but not released until 1946, Road to Utopia is the fourth film of the "Road to ..." series. Written by Melvin Frank and Norman Panama, the film is about two vaudeville performers at the turn of the twentieth century who go to Alaska to make their fortune. Along the way they find a map to a secret gold mine. In 1947, Road to Utopia received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay.

Production

Filmed from December 1943 to March 1944, the film is the only Road to … film without a real place in its title, though Alaska with its gold mines is referred to as "Utopia" several times in the film. Bob Hope, Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour starred, as they did in all but one of the series.

As a “narrator”, humor essayist Robert Benchley provides some wry commentary that is interspersed throughout the movie (Benchley died several months before the film's release). There are also jabs at Paramount Pictures (the studio that originally released the film) and a reference to Frank Sinatra, not to mention many instances of "breaking the fourth wall" and general wackiness.

In her autobiography, Dorothy Lamour said that Paramount may have delayed the release of Road to Utopia for fear of jeopardizing the public's—and the Academy Awards committee's—acceptance of Crosby in the role of a priest in Going My Way. Crosby did win the 1944 Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of Father “Chuck” O'Malley

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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