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''Call Me Bwana'' is a 1963 British
Technicolor Technicolor is a family of Color motion picture film, color motion picture processes. The first version, Process 1, was introduced in 1916, and improved versions followed over several decades. Definitive Technicolor movies using three black-and ...
farce Farce is a comedy that seeks to entertain an audience through situations that are highly exaggerated, extravagant, ridiculous, absurd, and improbable. Farce is also characterized by heavy use of physical comedy, physical humor; the use of delibe ...
film starring
Bob Hope Leslie Townes "Bob" Hope (May 29, 1903 – July 27, 2003) was an American comedian, actor, entertainer and producer with a career that spanned nearly 80 years and achievements in vaudeville, network radio, television, and USO Tours. He appeared ...
and Anita Ekberg and directed by Gordon Douglas. Largely set in
Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surfac ...
, it was the only film made by
Eon Productions Eon Productions Limited is a British film production company that primarily produces the ''James Bond'' film series. The company is based in London's Piccadilly and also operates from Pinewood Studios in the UK. ''James Bond'' films Eon wa ...
not about the fictional
MI6 The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 ( Military Intelligence, Section 6), is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of human intelligenc ...
agent
James Bond The ''James Bond'' franchise focuses on James Bond (literary character), the titular character, a fictional Secret Intelligence Service, British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels ...
until the 2014 film '' The Silent Storm''. It was made by most of the same crew as '' Dr. No''.


Plot

Bob Hope Leslie Townes "Bob" Hope (May 29, 1903 – July 27, 2003) was an American comedian, actor, entertainer and producer with a career that spanned nearly 80 years and achievements in vaudeville, network radio, television, and USO Tours. He appeared ...
plays Matt Merriwether, a New York writer who has passed off his uncle's memoirs of explorations in Africa as his own. Merriwether lives his false reputation as a great white hunter to the point of living in a
Manhattan Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...
apartment furnished to look like an African safari lodge complete with
sound effects A sound effect (or audio effect) is an artificially created or enhanced sound, or sound process used to emphasize artistic or other content of films, television shows, live performance, animation, video games, music, or other media. In m ...
records of African
fauna Fauna (: faunae or faunas) is all of the animal life present in a particular region or time. The corresponding terms for plants and fungi are ''flora'' and '' funga'', respectively. Flora, fauna, funga and other forms of life are collectively ...
. Based on his false reputation as an "Africa Expert", he is recruited by the
United States Government The Federal Government of the United States of America (U.S. federal government or U.S. government) is the Federation#Federal governments, national government of the United States. The U.S. federal government is composed of three distinct ...
and
NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...
to locate a missing secret
space probe Uncrewed spacecraft or robotic spacecraft are spacecraft without people on board. Uncrewed spacecraft may have varying levels of autonomy from human input, such as remote control, or remote guidance. They may also be autonomous, in which th ...
before it can be located by hostile forces. Hope's co-stars include Edie Adams and Anita Ekberg playing secret agents. Golfer
Arnold Palmer Arnold Daniel Palmer (September 10, 1929 – September 25, 2016) was an American professional golfer who is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most charismatic players in the sport's history. Since embarking on a professional career in ...
also makes a brief cameo, playing a crazy round of golf with Hope—a scene revisited in the film '' Spies Like Us'' where Hope makes a cameo appearance and plays golf through a tent. A scene involving an unseen President John F. Kennedy in his famous rocking chair is parodied with his Russian counterpart
Nikita Khrushchev Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (– 11 September 1971) was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and the Premier of the Soviet Union, Chai ...
rocking in a chair that squeaks loudly.


Cast

*
Bob Hope Leslie Townes "Bob" Hope (May 29, 1903 – July 27, 2003) was an American comedian, actor, entertainer and producer with a career that spanned nearly 80 years and achievements in vaudeville, network radio, television, and USO Tours. He appeared ...
as Matt Merriwether * Anita Ekberg as Luba (Anita Ekberg's spoken dialogue was dubbed by voice actress Nikki van der Zyl) * Edie Adams as Frederica *
Lionel Jeffries Lionel Charles Jeffries (10 June 1926 – 19 February 2010) was an English actor, director, and screenwriter. He appeared primarily in films and was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy, Golden ...
as Ezra Mungo *
Arnold Palmer Arnold Daniel Palmer (September 10, 1929 – September 25, 2016) was an American professional golfer who is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most charismatic players in the sport's history. Since embarking on a professional career in ...
as himself * Orlando Martins as Tribal chief * Percy Herbert as First Henchman * Paul Carpenter as Col. Spencer * Al Mulock as Second Henchman * Bari Jonson as Uta * Peter Dyneley as Williams * Mai Ling as Hyacinth * Mark Heath as Koba * Robert Nichols as American Major * Neville Monroe as Reporter * Mike Moyer as Reporter


Production

According to Albert R. Broccoli's autobiography ''When the Snow Melts'',
Eon Productions Eon Productions Limited is a British film production company that primarily produces the ''James Bond'' film series. The company is based in London's Piccadilly and also operates from Pinewood Studios in the UK. ''James Bond'' films Eon wa ...
was originally contracted by
United Artists United Artists (UA) is an American film production and film distribution, distribution company owned by Amazon MGM Studios. In its original operating period, it was founded in February 1919 by Charlie Chaplin, D. W. Griffith, Mary Pickford an ...
to make two films a year for them: one ''James Bond'' film and one non-''Bond'' film. Many original suggestions were meant to showcase
Sean Connery Sir Thomas Sean Connery (25 August 1930 – 31 October 2020) was a Scottish actor. He was the first actor to Portrayal of James Bond in film, portray the fictional British secret agent James Bond (literary character), James Bond in motion pic ...
, who turned them all down, as he did not want his career totally in the hands of Eon. When asked by journalist and close Broccoli affiliate Donald Zec if they had any ideas for their non-''Bond'' film, Harry Saltzman, who had previously made '' The Iron Petticoat'' with Hope, suggested a Bob Hope movie. Zec replied that he had seen a British
rock and roll Rock and roll (often written as rock & roll, rock-n-roll, and rock 'n' roll) is a Genre (music), genre of popular music that evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s. It Origins of rock and roll, originated from African ...
group called
The Beatles The Beatles were an English Rock music, rock band formed in Liverpool in 1960. The core lineup of the band comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They are widely regarded as the Cultural impact of the Beatle ...
that had sellout crowds and thought about featuring them in a film. Saltzman laughed and asked why he would want to make a film about four young long-haired kids from Liverpool when he had Bob Hope. United Artists made the Beatles film with Walter Shenson and '' A Hard Day's Night'' was more successful than ''Call Me Bwana''. The film was originally intended to be shot entirely on location in
Kenya Kenya, officially the Republic of Kenya, is a country located in East Africa. With an estimated population of more than 52.4 million as of mid-2024, Kenya is the 27th-most-populous country in the world and the 7th most populous in Africa. ...
but the problems of the
Mau Mau Uprising The Mau Mau rebellion (1952–1960), also known as the Mau Mau uprising, Mau Mau revolt, or Kenya Emergency, was a war in the British Kenya Colony (1920–1963) between the Kenya Land and Freedom Army (KLFA), also known as the Mau Mau, and the ...
led the producers to only have
second unit A second unit is a discrete team of filmmakers tasked with filming shots or sequences of a production, separate from the main or "first" unit. The second unit will often shoot simultaneously with the other unit or units, allowing the filming s ...
cinematography Cinematography () is the art of motion picture (and more recently, electronic video camera) photography. Cinematographers use a lens (optics), lens to focus reflected light from objects into a real image that is transferred to some image sen ...
led by John Coquillon. Edie Adams thought that she was actually going to Africa and had painful inoculations. She remembered that the film seemed to be written as it went along; initially her character was a nuclear scientist, then a big-game hunter. One day on the set, she met a stuntwoman dressed like her character, throwing a male stuntman in a jiu jitsu throw; Adams realised that now her character was a secret agent. Adams' original role was given to Anita Ekberg, but as Hope had promised Adams a role, the script was rewritten to add a new female character. In fact, the film was indeed being written during shooting. In October 1962, after being in production for two weeks, producer Broccoli hired novelist Paul Jarrico to do a "fast rewrite." Six writers had already worked on the script, "hundreds of jokes had been written about a bumbling explorer and a CIA agent searching for a U.S. space capsule in Africa, but no filmable story had emerged." Jarrico believed the script needed logic. Broccoli subsequently paid Jarrico $2,500 for four weeks' uncredited work. Production director Syd Cain recalled that originally wild African animals from British zoos were to be released onto the golf course sequence but the idea was shelved when they caused expensive damage. Spoofing a scene from ''Dr. No'', Hope's character is asleep in a tent when a
tarantula Tarantulas comprise a group of large and often hairy spiders of the family Theraphosidae. , 1,100 species have been identified, with 166 genera. The term "tarantula" is usually used to describe members of the family Theraphosidae, although ...
begins crawling up his leg. A similar thing had happened to James Bond in the first 007 film, played seriously, rather than for laughs. ''Call Me Bwana'' is "plugged" in Eon Productions' 1963 ''Bond'' film '' From Russia with Love'' during a sequence where Ali Kerim Bey assassinates the Russian agent Krilencu with a sniper rifle. Krilencu attempts to escape through a window, which is situated in Anita Ekberg's mouth, on the wall-sized poster: "She should have kept her mouth shut," Bond says. In the original novel by Ian Fleming, published in 1957, the scene happens in a
trapdoor A trapdoor or hatch is a sliding or hinged door that is flush with the surface of a floor, ceiling, or roof. It is traditionally small in size. It was invented to facilitate the hoisting of grain up through mills, however, its list of uses has ...
situated in Marilyn Monroe's mouth on a poster for '' Niagara''. Production of ''From Russia with Love'' actually began three days prior to the UK release of ''Call Me Bwana''. The next non-Bond Eon Productions release would not be until the 2014 film ''The Silent Storm'', followed by '' Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool'' in 2017.


Soundtrack

The film was scored by Monty Norman. John Barry claimed that Norman contacted him to orchestrate his theme ''The Big Safari,'' but the film's orchestration was eventually credited to Muir Mathieson. Barry released a recording of ''The Big Safari'' as well as another United Artists comedy ''
The Mouse on the Moon ''The Mouse on the Moon'' is a 1963 British comedy film, the sequel to ''The Mouse That Roared (film), The Mouse That Roared''. It is an adaptation of the 1962 novel ''The Mouse on the Moon (novel), The Mouse on the Moon'' by Irish author Leona ...
'' under a
pseudonym A pseudonym (; ) or alias () is a fictitious name that a person assumes for a particular purpose, which differs from their original or true meaning ( orthonym). This also differs from a new name that entirely or legally replaces an individual's o ...
of "The Countdowns". Bob Hope sang the title song over the end credits.


Home media

''Call Me Bwana'' was released to VHS by MGM/UA Home Video on 2 March 1993, which was available exclusively through
Warner Home Video Warner Bros. Discovery Home Entertainment, Inc. (doing business as Warner Bros. Home Entertainment; formerly known as Warner Home Video and WCI Home Video and sometimes credited as Warner Home Entertainment) is the American home video distribution ...
worldwide and was also released to DVD by
20th Century Fox Home Entertainment 20th Century Home Entertainment (previously known as Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, LLC. and also known as 20th Century Studios Home Entertainment) was a home video distribution arm that distributes films produced by 20th Century Stud ...
on 27 June 2011 via MGM Limited Edition Collection as a MOD (manufacture-on-demand) widescreen Region 1 DVD.


References


External links

* {{Harry Saltzman, state=autocollapse 1963 films British comedy films Films directed by Gordon Douglas United Artists films Films shot at Pinewood Studios Films about writers Films set in Africa British films set in New York City 1960s adventure comedy films Films with screenplays by Johanna Harwood Films produced by Albert R. Broccoli Films produced by Harry Saltzman Cultural depictions of Nikita Khrushchev Eon Productions films 1963 comedy films Films scored by Monty Norman 1960s English-language films 1960s British films English-language adventure comedy films