Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Original Screenplay 1942

The Contenders:

One of Our Aircraft is Missing
Road to Morocco
Wake Island
The War against Mrs. Hadley
Woman of the Year (winner)

On the Road Again

Film: Road to Morocco
Format: Streaming video from Hoopla Digital on The Nook.

A film like Road to Morocco is difficult to deal with from a modern perspective. It is at once both fun and frustrating, both funny and infuriating. All of the Bing and Bob road movies are entertaining and this one has the added bonus of being entirely self-aware. But they’re also racist to a certain extent and flush with the sort of whitewashing frequent of the era. What else can you call it when a movie has both Dorothy Lamour and Anthony Quinn playing Arabs?

Like all of the road movies, we get our heroes abandoned, shipwrecked, or otherwise tossed out into the wilderness. In this case, Jeff Peters (Bing Crosby) and Orville “Turkey” Jackson (Bob Hope) are tossed off a ship and after a little panic, wash up in Morocco. The boys are hungry and broke, but soon discover that the mentally afflicted are treated as holy they try to work up a mentally damaged act that backfires. Later, the two sit in a restaurant and gorge themselves with plans to run out on the check. Instead, Jeff is approached by a large man and arranges to sell Orville into slavery for $200 with plans to make enough money to eventually buy him back.