This Is the Army

Most of Irving Berlin's shows on Broadway were revues and not book type shows. For that reason they're not frequently revived. All of them contain topical jokes that only history majors like myself would get now. But the extreme topicality of This Is The Army and its World War I predecessor Yip Yap Yaphank guarantee you don't see this one revived too often no matter how many good songs come from it.

Even to do This Is The Army we have a threadbare plot of sorts. George Murphy is a song and dance man doing the lead in the Ziegfeld Follies when he gets his draft notice for World War I. Like Irving Berlin in real life, he offers to put his entertainment talents at the army's disposal. Murphy also marries Rosemary DeCamp at the same time he goes in the army.

Flash forward to a new World War and Murphy's son Ronald Reagan is going out with Joan Leslie who's the daughter of Charles Butterworth another performer from the Yip Yap Yaphank show back in the day. Reagan gets his draft notice just like dear old dad and he says let's put on a show for the boys. Of course dear old dad volunteers to help as do other veterans of the World War I show.

One thing that Warner's was smart about, they didn't give Ronald Reagan any singing or dancing to do. Reagan's talents such as they are were confined to behind the curtain.

A lot of Hollywood regulars are mixed with members of the original cast of actual soldiers who put on This Is The Army on Broadway. The score is also a mixed one with Irving Berlin allowing several of his older numbers mixed in with the Broadway score of This Is The Army. Most particularly God Bless America which Kate Smith had introduced in 1939 and sang in the film. It dwarfs all the other numbers in the score by comparison, in fact it's only rival in popularity in this film is Irving Berlin's soldier's lament of Oh How I Hate To Get Up In The Morning. And that originally comes from Yip Yap Yaphank. And of course that other barracks ballad telling what civilians will have to do without, the title song of the show and the film.

This Is The Army is dated flag-waving to be sure, but as Irving Berlin said in another song in another show, do you know of a better flag to wave? Both Yip Yap Yaphank and This Is The Army are the product of an immigrant kid who escaped poverty and persecution in the old world of Europe. If Irving Berlin's life isn't the American success story than I don't know a better example. He was grateful to his adopted country and these shows were his way of payback.

I doubt if B picture actor Ronald Reagan had the remotest conception that he would be sitting in the White House as a tenant one day and that he would be giving the nation's greeting to Irving Berlin on his 100th birthday. But that's an American success story too.

I watch this movie often. I love the music. I wish I knew more about the man who sang the song ''Mandy''. I enjoy this movie every time like its the first time. I'm proud to own a video tape copy. I would like to see it available on DVD someday

This movie was produced as a fund-raiser and as a morale booster. At the time it was filmed we were on the verge of losing the war and the public needed a patriotic lift. The songs are not, perhaps, the best Irving Berlin ever wrote, but they speak of the era in which they were written. For those who are politically-correct, I agree that African-Americans are not shown in the best light, but, right or wrong, that was the attitude then. The minstrel show was still a popular entertainment and the idea of white actors in black-face was considered simply show business. This show was actually staffed by real, honest-to-goodness soldiers with a few actors tossed in for the starring roles. Even if you dislike the movie, appreciate it for the look it gives into American life during the 40s. I, for one, enjoy it a lot and have watched it a half-dozen times. By the way, the sound on the VHS tape is better than on several of the DVD versions that are available.

As a twenty-year resident of Yaphank, New York, which is on Long Island about 60 miles east of Manhattan, I've learned some of the background of this movie.

Irving Berlin wrote "Yip, Yip, Yaphank" while stationed at Camp Upton in Yaphank during WW I. (Camp Upton is now the Brookhaven National Laboratory.) For this show, which was indeed written to be performed by the soldiers, Berlin wrote "Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning" and the melody of "God Bless America," which was actually cut from the show in its original form.

The show even ran briefly on Broadway in 1918 with a Camp Upton cast, according to the Internet Broadway Data Base.

After the war ended, the songs were put away, then brought out for the morale-boosting efforts of WW II. Berlin frequently rewrote and reused his songs; he revised the lyrics of "God Bless America" for Kate Smith and the rest, as they say, is history.

Just watched again this, the third of the "war musicals" I'm reviewing for these next few days of which Something for the Boys and Thank Your Lucky Stars were the first two, having seen This is the Army previously during the summer of 1987 on USA Network and again several years later on a Diamond Home Video VHS tape. With the Warner Bros. DVD providing a much better print than the last couple times I've seen this, I managed to have a much better time watching it. In fact, the only times I've cringed were during the blackface "Mandy" number (though the dances-led by Gene Kelly's brother Fred-were enjoyable) and during the "Stage Door Canteen" sketch where we get lame banter of one man dressed as Lynn Fontaine and another as her husband Alfred Lunt, not to mention having another man impersonating European thespians praising the hamburger. Otherwise, this movie had mostly enjoyable comedy especially whenever Alan Hale, Sr.-who is very much like his "Skipper" son in lovable blustery-is on screen, drama with Lt. Ronald Reagan and Joan Leslie debating the merits of marrying before leaving for battle, and musical highlights-like when Kate Smith sings her stirring and iconic rendition of "God Bless America" or even when composer Irving Berlin makes his entrance in his old uniform singing "Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning" (not to mention an additional song filmed exclusively for English audiences called "My British Buddy" which is an extra on the disc). And the number "That's What the Well-Dressed Man in Harlem Will Wear" isn't all that offensive concerning the African-American performers though I don't think it really was necessary to have boxer Sgt. Joe Louis in this as he just punches a bag during it. All in all, this was a rousingly patriotic show that really delivered. P.S. I have to note that co-screenwriter Capt. Claude Binyon came from my birthtown of Chicago, Ill. And when I first watched this, during the commercials, I switched to other channels and saw live coverage of President Reagan and his wife Nancy consoling various people on the death of loved ones. I'm guessing this was related to the event of May 17 of that year (two days before I graduated from Belaire High School) when 37 American sailors were killed on the U.S.S. Stark after it was set afire by two missiles from an Iraqi airplane. Talk about coincidence...