The Road to Singapore

Don't get the idea that this was an early version of a series that Hope and Crosby made famous. Based on a play entitled Heat Wave by British author Roland Pertwee when it got to Broadway mid the Depression it only ran for 15 performances. From what I see it might not have had a better run in more prosperous times.

The parts that William Powell, Louis Calhern, Doris Kenyon, and Marian Marsh play were done on Broadway by Basil Rathbone, Henry Daniell, Selena Royle, and Betty Lawford. All of the Broadway players had substantial careers in film as well though none were really box office names. Might have been interesting to see how they did the parts though I doubt the material would have been improved.

Former colonial resident William Powell is returning to a dreary corner of British held Malaysia and the news is not met with enthusiasm. Here as in London Powell had the reputation of a rake so its husbands lock up your wives.

Sure enough Powell goes after Doris Kenyon who is married to the local doctor Louis Calhern. Calhern makes it very easy for him as he is one drip of a human being. He looks on his very patients like lab rats who are just interesting cases to him. He's disappointed that a trip to Ceylon, now Sri Lanka doesn't materialize because he was called in on a consultation for a rare tumor and the poor man died. Poor Calhern didn't get a chance to see it and be written in the medical journals. What a romantic.

So the cast gets to spout a lot of romantic drivel except for Calhern. Funniest moment is Powell dancing with Alison Skipworth at the club where she wrecks his feet. That could have been from one of the comedies he later did at MGM. Would there had been more moments like that in The Road To Singapore.

A lot of flop plays and unsold to theater work wound up made into films in those early days of sound. The studios bought everything with dialog in it in their quest for subject matter. I doubt The Road To Singapore will better remembered than that other famous Road To Singapore.