>Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, fondly remembered for their history-making partnership as the stars of Paramount Pictures' uproarious Road pictures, were unique in that they bore little if any resemblance to a "comedy team," certainly when compared to their peers or predecessors. Unlike Abbott and Costello or Laurel and Hardy, two classic pairings in which neither partner could (or would) stand without the other, Crosby and Hope were regarded as successful performers and had long-established solo careers at the time of their mutual venture (though it's worth noting Bing was a much bigger star initially -- in 1940 Crosby was ranked by Variety magazine as Paramount's #1 male star, Hope was #10.) Bob and Bing first (briefly) shared the stage for two weeks in 1932 at the Capitol Theater in New York after first meeting near the Friars Club. They would meet again only one more time (in 1935, in Saratoga) before Bob's arrival in Hollywood in the fall of 1937 to prepare for his role in The Big Broadcast of 1938. Almost immediately, Paramount put Hope to work in a publicity stunt -- a golf match between himself and seasoned tinseltown veteran Crosby. The comic contest (in which the loser was to act as the winner's unpaid stand-in for a day) gave fans their first glimpse of the rivalry that would form the comedic center of the Road pictures. Hope, as if in preparation for his perpetual role as the outfoxed loser, carded an 84 to Crosby's 73.

>In August of 1938, Bing invited Bob and wife Dolores to the horse track at Del Mar for his monthly weekend clambake. Master of Ceremonies Bing invited Bob onstage, where they performed comedy bits and revisited their onstage antics at the Capitol some six years earlier. Paramount executives in the audience, including producers William LeBaron and Harlan Thompson, were amazed by the onstage chemistry and unaware that the seemingly ad-libbed banter was in fact anything but. The astonished and entertained Paramount suits immediately set out to pair the two stars in some kind of appropriate vehicle.

>Hope credited Crosby, who had far more clout at the time, for keeping the momentum going as the search for the aforementioned vehicle dragged on. While Hope's star began to rise at a more rapid rate, courtesy of his tremendously popular Pepsodent radio program, Paramount screenwriters Frank Butler and Don Hartman were busy repurposing a script with Hope and Crosby in mind. Originally tailored for Bing alone in 1936 under the title Follow the Sun, it had been reworked two years later for Fred MacMurray and Jack Oakie with a new working title, The Road to Mandalay. Butler and Hartman adjusted the pacing and timing of the script for gags and songs, added a female lead to create tension in the form of Dorothy Lamour, and, charged with selecting a more menacing locale, settled on Road to Singapore (1940), which was so popular it would spawn six sequels spanning two decades -- quite an accomplishment for a comedy team that wasn't.