Many of the same production personnel from the Bond films were also used, including editor Peter Hunt and composer Monty Norman, who is noted for originating the famous "007 Theme." Their Bond influence comes through in Call Me Bwana's tongue-in-cheek presentation of gadgets, spies, and gorgeous girls. No (1962) and From Russia with Love (1963). The producers of Call Me Bwana, Albert Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, are the same team behind the first seven hugely popular James Bond films, beginning with Dr. The problem? Matthew Merriweather is a total fraud who has never been to Africa in his life! Edie Adams plays a sensible CIA agent sent to accompany Hope, and Anita Ekberg (of La Dolce Vita fame) is a sexy foreign spy out to charm Hope with her feminine wiles.
In it, the United States government sends famed anthropologist and expert on Africa, Matthew Merriweather (Hope), deep into the African jungle to retrieve a valuable moon probe that has gone off course and crashed. Share Call Me Bwana (1963) is one of Bob Hope's solo efforts from his later career and a pleasant diversion for his fans. Reaching it, they take off and arrive safely in Florida. But they are captured and prepared for that night's dinner, as Luba, who has fallen in love with Matt, joins him and his party in racing to the capsule. After Matt has received a royal welcome in honor of his late uncle, Mungo and his henchman try to steal the capsule.
When they finally stumble into Ekele territory, they discover that the natives regard the capsule as a divine symbol dropped by the gods. Overcome by Luba's charms, Matt invites her to join his safari, professedly searching for a rare elephant and, though he has several nearly fatal accidents, he never suspects his companions. Ezra Mungo, her "missionary father"-who have orders to obtain the capsule at any cost. Also on the scene are two foreign agents-Luba, a voluptuous blonde, and Dr. Equipped with a do-it-yourself suicide kit and accompanied by an attractive security agent, Frederica Larsen, Matt arrives in Africa. Consequently, when an American moon capsule containing vital data crashes into an uncharted region inhabited by the savage Ekele tribe, Matt is assigned the task of recovering the capsule because of his supposed expert knowledge of the locale.
It would turn you off movies forever.Matt Merriwether has built up a phony reputation as an intrepid explorer of darkest Africa by writing books based on the secret diaries of his uncle. Gordon Douglas directed Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy in Saps at Sea (1940), the classic sci-fi film Them! (1954), James Coburn in In Like Flint (1967), Frank Sinatra in Young at Heart (1954) and The Detective (1968), and Elvis Presley in Follow That Dream (1962), making him the only film-maker to have directed both Sinatra and Presley. Douglas recalled: ‘I have a large family to feed and it’s only occasionally that I find a story that interests me. Don’t try to watch all the films I’ve directed. It is shot in Technicolor by Ted Moore, scored by Monty Norman and Muir Matheson, and designed by Syd Cain.
It is only the second non-Bond movie produced by Eon until Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool (2017).Īlso in the cast are Percy Herbert, Paul Carpenter, Orlando Martins, Al Murock, Bert Johnson, Peter Dyneley, Robert Nichols and Robert Arden. It is made by Eon Productions by the James Bond producers Harry Saltzman and Albert R Broccoli in the same year as their Dr No. There they find a couple of unlikely foreign spies – Russian secret agent Luba (Anita Ekberg) and Dr Ezra Mungo (Lionel Jeffries, replacing Terry-Thomas).Īs you can see all the jokes coming a mile off in the screenplay by Nate Monaster, Johanna Harwood, Mort Lachman and Bill Larkin, there are only some smiles but very few real laughs among the daft goings-on. Hope stars as phoney explorer and African authority Matt Meriwether, who takes off with special agent Frederica Larsen (Edie Adams) to retrieve a space module in the Pinewood studio jungle. Call Me Bwana ** (1963, Bob Hope, Anita Ekberg, Edie Adams, Lionel Jeffries) – Classic Movie Review 6550īob Hope is pleasantly enough showcased in director Gordon Douglas’s 1962 British-made farcical comedy, which turns out to be adequate though rather low-fun entertainment.
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