Navy Blues

... and a reminder how everything can change in an instant. This movie is about two American sailors (Jack Oakie and Jack Haley) on shore leave in Honolulu who find out that another ship's master gunner is actually transferring to THEIR ship before the gunnery competition begins between the two ships, and nobody knows but the two goofball sailors and the sailor who is transferring. They are always on the losing end of any bets, so here they finally have a no lose situation. They borrow 200 dollars from one of their more financially savvy shipmates - and believe me the way these two goofballs throw around money that could be just about anybody - and place bets on their ship winning at 15:1 odds. They figure they will clean up so they pawn off the ship's trophies to get even more betting money, figuring everyone is on shore leave and nobody will notice or mind. After they win they will buy the trophies back before anyone knows they are missing. They can't lose - right? WRONG. The Midwestern corn-fed dead-eye shot (Herbert Anderson) is due to have his enlistment run out 12 days before the competition, and he really is homesick for his farm, so the rest of the movie has to do with Oakie and Haley getting him to change his mind and reenlist.

At 108 minutes long, this movie is just TOO long. At a time when films often ran 80 minutes, that would have been a more appropriate running time. There are too many lame jokes, that are lame precisely because situations run on too long, and the subplots would have been funnier if they had been more to the point.

What's good about this movie? I really loved the big band big musical numbers with Ann Sheridan singing. The title song is particularly catchy. You also get a glimpse of Jackie Gleason when he is starting out, Jack Carson just as he arrives at Warner Brothers where he really perfects his somewhat unlikeable "gray guy" persona, and Martha Raye is used to good effect as the ex-wife of one of the goofball sailors who demands she gets her alimony.

As for me mentioning this film is a moment captured in time - consider this. The film was made three months before the attack on Pearl Harbor. As the sailors keep mentioning, they joined the navy "to see the world", which is what you did in peacetime which was about to end. Honolulu was the playground of that peacetime navy, just as depicted in the film (actually filmed in San Diego). Thus something I just couldn't get out of my mind as I watched this somewhat silly yet utterly enjoyable 1941 film about the Navy in Hawaii was that it gives no hint of the horror to come - how could it?, and probably thus had a very narrow window in time in which it was the least bit relevant before it would have to be put in mothballs for probably at least ten years or else it would appear almost flippant to those going through WWII and then afterwards, to those who had been through it and survived.

As another review pointed out, shortly after this comic romp set among Navy enlisted men in Hawaii was made, things took a dramatic and deadly turn with the attack on Pearl Harbor. So that fact needs to be overlooked in order to enjoy this silly movie. (The scene in which an air attack is faked is particularly unfortunate).

All that aside, the main problem with this film is that it's basically one joke extended to an absurdly long running time of over 100 minutes. These types of slight comedies more typically ran around 80 minutes, and with good reason. Even though the running time is padded by the many musical numbers, the comedy routines are repetitive and I found myself wanting to start fast forwarding through them, never a good sign.

On the plus side, we have the always lovely and talented Ann Sheridan, who looks great doing a hula routine. She was an amazingly versatile performer of the type that we just don't see to have anymore. There are also some gifted comic actors (Jack Oakie, Jackie Haley, Martha Raye), though the script is so thin it feels like they are working overtime to be funny. A young, relatively slim Jackie Gleason has some good moments, but one of my favorites, Jack Carson, has a thankless straight man role.

My rating of 6 is based on the fact that I can watch Ann Sheridan in anything. (And this comes pretty close to being "anything.") Also, the historical interest of having a nostalgic snapshot of a more innocent time in history, just before the world changed forever.

This is a surprisingly breezy, and brassy, little musical about U.S. Navy sailors in Hawaii. The plot, as is often the case, isn't anything unusual, but the songs are catchy, Ann Sheridan looks great in a hula skirt (and sings and dances surprisingly well), Jack Haley and Jack Oakie make a hilarious team--they should have made more pictures together--and everybody looks like they're having a great time. Also keep your eye on a very young Jackie Gleason. Even though he doesn't have very much of a part, he still stands out and you can see that he was going to be going places. It's not one of the great musicals of all time, but is definitely worth a look.

This is a lightweight musical produced by Warners who were lost finding something for Ann Sheridan to do, I am sure that she would not have classed it as one of her better films. Whoever came up with the hog-calling sequences, and that Anderson guy to do them definitely needed to get another job!! It was great to see two such beauties as Kay Aldridge and Marguerite Chapman supporting Ann Sheridan in the "Waikiki" number, which was clearly the highlight of the whole movie. Martha Raye and Jackie Gleason were good and certainly added to the fun, but Jack Oakie's double-take humour definitely wears thin over 90 minutes. Warners trotted out a lot of their stock players for this one, and they were all adequate in what was really a B- Film.

I was working in The Imperial Theatre in Charlotte,NC in 1941 when this movie was shown. It, along with The Fleets In, is the reason I joined the Navy and served 33 years. Jackie Gleason, even though he had few lines, did a good job and exibited what would become his trade mark in the future.