Six Hits and a Miss

Today, this Vitaphone movie short from World War II plays like a big band swing music video spotlighting the Harry Warren/Al Dubin ditty, "You've Got To Know How To Dance." The one-reeler begins with The Six Hits and a Miss warbling the lyrics, the Miss singing lead, the Six Hits surrounding her as backup chorus and harmony. The Six Hits and A Miss were popular rivals to such swing acts as The Andrews Sisters until the war intervened and took two of the Six Hits away to join Uncle Sam overseas. Somehow, The Four Hits and a Miss just didn't jell with the public. As a result, the top of their career, performing in the Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney extravaganza, "Girl Crazy," was also their swan song.

Though the Six Hits and a Miss begin and end the short, most of the film consists of inserts from the lackluster musical "Colleen," featuring Ruby Keeler and Paul Draper emulating Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire with some showy tap dancing. The choreography utilized in the "Colleen" sequence is obviously influenced (or maybe copied is a better word) by that of the inimitable Busby Berkeley.

"Six Hits and a Miss" is recommended for big band swing fans who enjoy the music of the World War II era. Others beware.

Jean Negulesco first rose to prominence as a director of Vitaphone musical shorts. Earlier efforts had been largely simply staged and shot, but Negulesco livened up the staid proceedings with moving cameras and frequent cuts. Here's one.

The title refers to the singing group of the same name. Rudolph Friml Jr. And his orchestra provide the music for the piece, and we soon find ourselves in Busby Berkeley territory, with an overhead camera showing off the dancers. It's pleasant, if a bit overproduced.

It's very difficult for most of us to write a fair review on any kind of musical, because we all see things from the viewpoint of the standards of our era.

To modern-day audiences, big band musicals of any sort are hard to watch, but one must "turn over the coin": how many wartime audiences would have been able to watch modern rap music videos for more than a few seconds, without reaching for smelling salts?

But one must, indeed, try to shed that modern viewpoint to review this movie fairly. Having done that, it's not difficult to see that this short is not badly done at all; in fact, it's quite entertaining. Featured by a slick production, and smooth, tight harmonies that are bridged by a dance sequence of impressive choreography, it must have been high entertainment to wartime audiences. The only drawback was that the dance sequence was just a little bit too long.

In 1942, this short would have certainly been a big hit. I quite enjoyed it. Try to get yourself in the wartime mood, and you will enjoy it, too.

7 & 1/2 stars

This is one of the newest of the Vitaphone shorts--known as a "Melody Master". These later musical shorts generally had been more straight forward and had simpler sets and no real story to tie it all together--just a famous band of the day doing their stuff. However, starting during the war years these shorts began to have a narrator and purported to give a bit of background on the band leader.

"Six Hits and a Miss" is very unusual for a Melody Master in that the film is not named after a band leader and he and his band are really NOT the stars of this short. The title refers to a rather dull septet--with five neat guys singing along with a lady. The film also features the Dancing Colleens. I must admit that this routine was pretty spectacular--like one from an old Busby Berkeley musical. However, when the couple dance, the tapping sound appears to have been provided by the band--not their shoes. Finally, you see Rudolf Friml Jr. and his band. Overall, one of the duller entries into the series and why they named the short after this group, I have no idea.

It's hard to believe there was a time in our movie culture when audiences would have been entertained by short films like this.

Six Hits and a Miss was apparently an actual singing/dancing group in the 1940s, and this film is just 10 minutes or so of them performing while complex dance numbers unfold on screen. It goes on and on, with no real differentiation between the songs or dances, so that everything blends together.

It was a surprise to me to see fairly big-time director Jean Negulesco at the helm of this. He must not yet have made the transition to feature director, but he would be responsible later in his career for films like "Johnny Belinda" and "Three Coins in the Fountain."