ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, September 23, 1996 TAG: 9609230094
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A3 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES
TYPE: NEWS OBIT
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DOROTHY LAMOUR made more than 60 movies, but her films with Bob Hope and Bing Crosby made her famous.
Dorothy Lamour, the sultry, sarong-wearing sidekick of Bob Hope and Bing Crosby when they went on the ``Road,'' died Sunday. She was 81.
Lamour's cause of death was not immediately determined, said longtime friend and former publicist Frank Liberman. He said she died at her North Hollywood home.
``She had been ill,'' he said. ``She was a very popular, sweet lady.''
A New Orleans native, she often was typecast as a sort of female Tarzan in a string of island-theme movies in the late 1930s and early '40s.
She first donned the wraparound garment that made her famous in her very first film, the 1936 movie ``Jungle Princess.'' She went on to play similar parts in the 1937 John Ford spectacular ``The Hurricane,'' ``Typhoon'' and ``Beyond the Blue Horizon.''
She also wore her sarong in the first of the Hope-Crosby ``Road'' pictures, ``The Road to Singapore,'' in 1940. It was the start of a fertile comic relationship.
The trio went on ``The Road to Zanzibar,'' 1941; ``The Road to Morocco,'' 1942; ``The Road to Utopia,'' 1945; ``The Road to Rio,'' 1948; ``The Road to Bali,'' 1953, and ``The Road to Hong Kong,'' 1962. (She liked to quip: ``We only count six, because `Hong Kong' created a bomb.'')
The films combined adventure, slapstick, zany ad libs and inside-show-biz satire. Lamour played the exotic brunette who fell in league with the playboy with the ski-jump nose and his smooth-voiced pal who vied for her attentions.
``It's a picnic working with Bob - and Bing, too,'' she said in a 1942 Associated Press interview. ``I never know what's going to happen next. They'd rather tease me than eat, and anything goes.
``Once, I decided to top one of their gags. It was kind of dirty, but I let fly. You should have seen them. They nearly sank through the floor. They've been pretty good ever since then.
``I was the happiest and highest-paid straight woman in the business.''
She saw herself as more than a sarong-wearer, though.
``I made 60 motion pictures and only wore the sarong in about six pictures, but it did become a kind of trademark'' she said. ``And it did hinder me. They expect you to always be the young girl leaning against the palm tree. Why should you want to act?''
Among her more serious films were the 1940 crime melodrama ``Johnny Apollo'' and the 1945 film ``A Medal for Benny.''
More recently, in the 1987 film ``Creepshow 2,'' she played a sloppily dressed housewife who gets murdered.
``Well, at my age you can't lean against a palm tree and sing `Moon of Monakoora,''' she said. ``People would look at that and say, `What is she trying to do?'''
While ``Creepshow 2'' was her only film role in two decades, she was frequently seen on television, doing guest shots on ``The Love Boat,'' ``Murder, She Wrote'' and, naturally, a few Bob Hope specials.
She also toured in stage shows such as ``Hello, Dolly!''
Lamour got her start in show business as a singer before going into movies in the mid-30s.
LENGTH: Medium: 68 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP/File 1984 Lamour was ``was the happiest andby CNBhighest-paid straight woman in the business.''