The All-Star Bond Rally

Bob Hope is the master of ceremony of this short subject intended to get audiences to buy war bonds. There are plenty of other show business personalities from radio, like Fibber Magee & Molly, to half a dozen pin-up girls who talk briefly to the servicemen who have them posted on their walls. There's a musical number starring Betty Grable to start the show rolling, Frank Sinatra at the halfway mark singing "Saturday Night Is The Loneliest Night of the Week" and Bing Crosby to close out the show singing about how the audience should buy a bond.

It's mostly clips of the celebrities stitched together with Hope's wisecracking. But it's pretty good.

My main interest in watching this WWII musical short was in seeing Harpo Marx without his brothers performing another harp solo number. After chasing a pretty woman, he stops on stage for that number when he sees the instrument. A beautiful number, as always. The writer is one Don Quinn which explains the participation of Jim Jordan and his wife, Marian, as they're playing Quinn's creation Fibber McGee and Molly from the radio show of the same name. Popular comedian Bob Hope is the MC and where he is, Bing Crosby is not far behind! There's also Bing's rival Frank Sinatra singing with the Harry James Orchestra, Betty Grable and her female backups on song and dance, and a bevy of pin-up photos talking back to various enlisted men! The last two sentences mention the contract players of Darryl F. Zanuck whose studio 20th Century-Fox helped produce this short in conjunction with the War Department. I'll just now say this was quite an entertaining revue from way before I was even born...