Canción del amanecer

Reveille With Beverly is one of Columbia Pictures all star war time contributions for the boys in the service. But not having a really big studio with a lot of contract players like MGM or Paramount, what was Harry Cohn to do.

The answer is take your stars from that other medium, that of swing music. Ann Miller plays a young lady named Beverly who works the telephone switchboard at an easy listening radio station. She'd like to break into radio on the air, but the boss Tim Ryan won't give her a break. Besides he's not into current musical tastes.

But the resourceful Beverly gets her chance when she gets the hypochondriacal Franklin Pangborn who plays classical music in the wee small hours around dawn into thinking he's down with something terrible. She subs for him and plays the current swing bands and the rest is history. The new draftees at a nearby army base like her music so much the program is dubbed Reveille with Beverly.

Of course there's a silly subplot involving a pair of draftees who used to be millionaire and chauffeur who are rivals for Ann Miller. These two parts are played by William Wright and Dick Purcell in a plot situation that is totally ripped off from Abbott&Costello's Buck Privates. They are a bit friendlier than Lee Bowman and Alan Curtis from the Universal classic.

But all of this is just so we can get to hear such bands as Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Bob Crosby and Freddie Slack's respective orchestras. The Mills Brothers are also on hand. And a young singer who had just left the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra sings Night and Day with an all girl band. Frank Sinatra and the rest of the acts were brought into the film by Ann Miller as she introduces the record and it starts spinning and the screen dissolves into a performance by the performers.

So other than a toe tapping finale by Ann Miller this certainly was doing one of those all star extravaganzas on the cheap. Ann's number was clumsily introduced into the proceedings since at no time during the film was it mentioned she had any dancing talent. But Ann's fans bought tickets to see her dance so I guess it was understood there would be a dance number.

Reveille with Beverly is a great piece of World War II nostalgia and definitely for fans of swing music.

Beverly Ross (Ann Miller) is a switchboard operator at a radio station. She dreams of hosting a program for swing music. She gets her chance and transforms an early morning boring classical music show. She becomes the favorite of many soldiers on their way to the front.

I love the music. Frank Sinatra sings Night and Day which is probably my least favorite. I'm more interested in the big band swing music. I even like the Cow song and some of the weirder performances. As for the actual movie, I can mostly leave it. It doesn't help that it gets chopped up by the music interludes. By the time they get back to the story, I had forgotten what was going on. This is better off without a story. It's really only compelling as a performance for the troops and that's what happens in the end. During wartime, that's all that's truly needed.

Built around a thin plot which serves as an excuse to parade a bunch of then current pop bands, singers and comedy acts, this little programmer from Columbia spotlights ANN MILLER in the central role as a disc jockey who directs her show at the U.S. Armed Services.

She gets involved with two young soldiers--WILLIAM WRIGHT (who resembles John Carroll) and DICK PURCELL, has frequent disagreements with her radio boss, and ends up as the feature attraction in a service show where she displays her tap-dancing skills. The plot, almost non-existent, serves as a prop to show some of the performers whose records she plays for the soldiers--including Count Basie, Duke Wellington, Frank Sinatra, Bob Crosby, The Radio Rogues and The Mills Brothers.

In a strictly subordinate role is LARRY PARKS, only a few years away from stardom in "The Jolson Story", but here a virtual unknown as a fellow soldier. IRENE RYAN has a small role as a ditsy secretary.

The acts are standard stuff, except for singer FRANK SINATRA who does a standout job on "Night and Day" and performs before the camera with remarkable ease and poise a few years before becoming a major film star.

Pleasant WWII musical gets a lift from the musical numbers, but it's strictly second-rate as a substantial musical.

Ann Miller gets her chance on radio with a fill-in show when Franklin Pangborn takes off from his early-morning classical music show for a vacation. Miss Miller loves swing, and the spinning records turn into the actual performers doing their numbers: Ellington & band "Take the A Train"; Bob Crosby for "Big Noise From Winnetka; two helpings of the Mills Brother, and so forth. Meanwhile the plot has Will Wright and chauffeur Dick Purcell drafted, and both courting Miss Miller; to prove it isn't his money that makes women like him, they switch identities when she's around.

Good music, and Miss Miller goes a big tap routine at the end, so it's all good. What's astonishing to me is that there seems to be no way to cut the Black performers out without trimming the movie to a sub-second-feature length, and ruining the pacing. During this period, specialty numbers by Black performers were placed so they could be removed for the Whites-only theaters in the South.

This is a cheery movie with actual performances by famous bands and singers of the 1940's. It is a time capsule depicting aspects of the home front during World War II. It is very upbeat throughout the entire movie. There is one interesting goof. In the scene where Duke Ellington and his band plays "Take the A Train" there are scenes of a Chicago and Northwestern RR diesel powered streamlined train of the 1940's. The set on which the Ellington Band is playing recreates the interior of a streamlined train of the early 1940s. The "A Train" in the title refers to a New York City subway route that ran from Brooklyn to Harlem to Northern Manhattan. This mistake adds some fun to the movie. I watch for it each time I see it.