Thursday, July 22, 2021

Thank Your Lucky Stars

Warner Bros, 1943
Starring Dennis Morgan, Eddie Cantor, Joan Leslie, and SZ Sakall
Directed by David Butler
Music by Arthur Schwartz; Lyrics by Frank Loesseur

This was the first Warners contribution to the "all-star musical semi-revue" genre. We've already seen their second, Hollywood Canteen, but this one gets away from the servicemen to focus on the studio and its star roster. In the 30's and 40's, Warners specialized in action and adventures, thrillers, gangster films, and the occasional wise-guy comedy. Busby Berkeley moved to MGM in 1939...and his kaleidoscopic fever dreams gave way to more typical backstage shenanigans, without the major talent of musicals at other studios of the time. How did Warners get around this? By bringing in their dramatic stars as well. Let's start with Dinah Shore on the real-life Eddie Cantor radio show to see how well they did with integrating their tough guys and gals into a patriotic revue...

The Story: Theater producers Dr. Schlenna (Sakall) and Mr. Farnsworth (Edward Everett Horton) want Dinah Shore to appear in their big theater revue for the troops, but she's under contract to Eddie Cantor and he won't let her appear without him. Cantor, however, has a reputation for taking over any production he appears in...and proceeds to do just that, shutting out the producers and drilling everyone until they're ready to throttle him. 

Meanwhile, aspiring songwriter Pat Dixon (Leslie) falls in with singer Tommy Randolph (Morgan) and dramatic actor Joe Simpson (Cantor). Simpson is a dead ringer for Cantor and can't get an acting job because everyone expects comedy from him. Randolph wants to be on Cantor's show, and then in the revue, but Cantor's beefy flunky Olaf (Mike Mazurki) throws him out. Pat finally comes up with the idea to replace Cantor with Joe and allow the show to go on, with a vast array of Warners stars.

The Song and Dance: Warners keeps surprising me with their musicals of late. This one was a lot cuter and funnier than I expected.Warners has a field day making fun of Cantor's image as a hilarious and yet hard-nosed and egotistical ham. He has a great sequence in a sanitarium when they nearly remove part of his brain. Leslie and Morgan also have a lot of fun as the duo who do most of the scheming...and I appreciate that Pat comes up with most of the schemes and it's the guys following her wild ideas, rather than the other way around. 

I also like how Warners gets around most of their star roster not being musically inclined and find ways for them to stay in character and appear in the show. Errol Flynn and Bette Davis are the winners here, but Humphrey Bogart gets a great bit where Sakall manages to intimidate him. 

Favorite Number: John Garfield spoofs his image as the resident Warners young and tragic hoodlum with his attempted rendition of "Blues In the Night." Cantor tells his unimpressed staff and the producers how "We're Staying Home Tonight" with his baby due to wartime restrictions. Comic orchestra Spike Jones and His City Slickers liven up Gower Gulch with the wacky "Ridin' For a Fall." Alan Hale Sr. and Jack Carson are vaudevillians who claim "I'm Goin' North," no matter how bad the weather is. We hear "The Dreamer" twice, first with Shore as a farm girl lamenting she's missing her sweetheart, later from George Tobias with Olivia DeHaviland and Ida Lupino dressed as 40's hipsters in striped swingy dresses and a scaled-down zoot suit. Leslie and Morgan get an entire restaurant to understand why there's "No You, No Me." Hattie McDaniel and a host of chic Harlem residents encourage "Ice Cold Katie" to marry the handsome soldier courting her in another big number.

Ironically, the biggest hits came from the stars with no musical talent at all. Errol Flynn sings pretty well and sounds like he's having the time of his life telling a pack of Brits in a pub "That's What You Jolly Well Get" when you've lead a life of wild adventure like he has. The standard here is "They're Either Too Young Or Too Old," performed by, of all people, Bette Davis as a woman who is very tired of men her age having gone off to war. Davis basically talks through the number, but the song is so good and the boys and old guys she dances with are so funny, it hardly matters.

What I Don't Like: For most people nowadays, Eddie Cantor is an acquired taste at best...and there's a lot of him in this movie. If you don't like him or his style of manic slapstick, you probably won't enjoy this. Also, while the plot is less overtly patriotic and goofier than Hollywood Canteen or This Is the Army, it's still pretty thin. We never even get to hear the sentimental ballad Pat's trying so hard to push to the studios in the early part of the movie. Some folks might be more offended by the Native Americans who grab the real Cantor to get him out of the show mid-way through, but like everything else, they're played for comedy and acknowledge the stereotypes. 

The Big Finale: This is probably my favorite of the three movies on that Warners Homefront Collection DVD set. Hilarious and filled with unique performances you won't see anywhere else, this is recommended for major fans of Cantor, World War II, or 40's musicals.

Home Media: Currently disc-only; the Blu-Ray is from the Warners Archive. 

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