Watching this thing -- with Esther Williams, Red Skelton, Harry James, Xavier Cugat, et all -- is like poring over the contents of a time capsule from 1944. My uncle, a professional trumpet player, collected all of Harry James' records. My favorite was "Trumpet Blues." As a kid, I played the old 78 record into oblivion. And I never knew until seeing this that the number was from a movie.
Harry James was really distinctive, and a great musician in his own vernacular way. Red Skelton, the central figure, has some amusing moments too, doing pratfalls in a pink tutu, forced into a class in Eurythmics because he's enrolled in a woman's college to be near his wife. ("Eurythmics", meaning something like beautiful movements, was evidently a tough word for the set dressers because they spelled it wrong on the classroom door.) Probably most of the numbers will be familiar, at least to the more perspicacious of modern audience members. Not just "Trumpet Blues" but a couple of numbers con sabor Latino, a medley of waltzes while we watch a bevy of dolls in synchronized swimming -- not nearly as smutty as Busby Berkeley's numbers, sad to say. And then, at the climax, there is Esther Williams doing her thing over, under, and around soaring water fountains in a proper exhibition of the height of vulgarity. The height, not the depth. This Philistine depravity is exhilarating.
It's cheerful. It's colorful. It will be shown to the members of our Armed Forces overseas, compliments of the Motion Picture Assocation, and it has Basil Rathbone struggling valiantly with a light-hearted comic role.
What's not to like?
Harry James was really distinctive, and a great musician in his own vernacular way. Red Skelton, the central figure, has some amusing moments too, doing pratfalls in a pink tutu, forced into a class in Eurythmics because he's enrolled in a woman's college to be near his wife. ("Eurythmics", meaning something like beautiful movements, was evidently a tough word for the set dressers because they spelled it wrong on the classroom door.) Probably most of the numbers will be familiar, at least to the more perspicacious of modern audience members. Not just "Trumpet Blues" but a couple of numbers con sabor Latino, a medley of waltzes while we watch a bevy of dolls in synchronized swimming -- not nearly as smutty as Busby Berkeley's numbers, sad to say. And then, at the climax, there is Esther Williams doing her thing over, under, and around soaring water fountains in a proper exhibition of the height of vulgarity. The height, not the depth. This Philistine depravity is exhilarating.
It's cheerful. It's colorful. It will be shown to the members of our Armed Forces overseas, compliments of the Motion Picture Assocation, and it has Basil Rathbone struggling valiantly with a light-hearted comic role.
What's not to like?