Daily Archives: January 5, 2015

Anchors Aweigh
Directed by George Sidney
Written by Isobel Lennart suggested by a story by Natalie Marchin
1945/USA
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Anchors Aweigh, my boys,/ Anchors Aweigh. Farewell to foreign shores,/ We sail at break of day-ay-ay-ay./ Through our last night ashore,/ Drink to the foam,/ Until we meet once more./ Here’s wishing you a happy voyage home.[/box]

Take out Gene Kelly’s dancing, and there’s not a whole lot left.  But what dancing!

Joe (Gene Kelly) and Clarence (Frank Sinatra) are awarded the Silver Star and four days leave in Los Angeles as the movie starts.  Seems that Joe rescued Clarence after a firefight in which both displayed conspicuous bravery.  Joe is the kind of sailor with a girl in every port and is anxious to hook up with his LA lady Lola.  Clarence, on the other hand, is shy around women and is looking for Joe to provide him with some leads and tips.  He figures that, since Joe saved his life Joe is responsible for him.

Joe can’t shake Clarence.  Then the two sailors get stuck seeing home a lost little boy (Dean Stockwell) who wants to join the navy.  The boy’s Aunt Susie turns out to be the girl of Clarence’s dreams.  She aspires to be a professional singer and Joe gets Clarence to promise her an audition for Jose Iturbe.  Complications ensue.

This is one of those musicals that feels more like a contrived way to showcase various talents than an integrated story.  Even if the plot did matter, though, it is fairly trite.  Kelly has three boffo numbers, Sinatra sings the Original Song nominee, Grayson trills through two, and Iturbi leads the orchestra in the title tune.    It all doesn’t add up to much in my opinion.

George Stoll won the Academy Award for Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture.  Anchors Away was nominated for Oscars in the categories of Best Picture; Best Actor (Kelly); Best Cinematography, Color; and Best Music, Original Song (“I Fall in Love Too Easily” by Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn).

Trailer

Objective, Burma!
Directed by Raoul Walsh
Written by Ranald MacDougall and Lester Cole; original story by Alvah Bessie
1945/USA
Warner Bros.
First viewing/Errol Flynn Adventures DVD

[box] Pvt. Nebraska Hooper: It’s sure peaceful so far.
Cpl. Gabby Gordon: That’s the way I like it… peaceful. I already said when I starved to death, I want it to be peaceful.[/box]

Raoul Walsh puts together some unusual and effective combat set pieces.  Otherwise, it’s routine Warner wartime material, including the ever-present George Tobias as the token Brooklynite.

Captain Nelson (Errol Flynn) is selected to head a force of paratroopers on an important mission into Japanese-held Burma to knock out a radar station.  Journalist Mark Williams (Henry Hull) insists on tagging along even though he is well along in middle age and inexperienced in such matters.  The affable Nelson agrees.

Things go swimmingly at first.  The men parachute in undetected and wipe out 30 Japanese and the radar station with no loss of life to themselves.  This looks like it will be a cakewalk.  The plane sent to retrieve them is getting ready to land when they detect a Japanese patrol looking for them.  The plane drops some supplies and returns to base.

The men struggle to reach the next rendezvous point.  But by then the brass has decided that it is too dangerous to for a plane to land anywhere and orders the men to walk out through about 150 miles of jungle.  Finally, the orders are changed again and the men have to change direction away from the base and simply wait.  Then the radio is lost, supplies are exhausted, and Nelson and his men must get through on pure guts.

The sequences with the dozens parachutes are beautiful and there is an ambush at night that is really striking.  Otherwise, I’ve seen a few too many combat movies now and this one was nothing special.  I always like Flynn but he seemed a little tired here.  On the other hand, my husband stayed awake throughout the entire thing, a rare tribute, and enjoyed it.

Objective, Burma! was nominated for Academy Awards in the categories of:  Best Writing, Original Story; Best Film Editing; and Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture (Franz Waxman).

Clip