Anchors Aweigh **** (1945, Frank Sinatra, Kathryn Grayson, Gene Kelly, Dean Stockwell, José Iturbi, Pamela Britton) – Classic Movie Review 3623

Gene Kelly returns to MGM as a favoured star and with a contract to choreograph too after becoming a hot star when they loaned him out to Columbia Pictures to appear in Cover Girl (1944) with Rita Hayworth. So, ironically, MGM’s main musicals stalwart became a star through another studio. And he is third billed in Anchors Aweigh, after Frank Sinatra and Kathryn Grayson.

Director George Sidney’s appealing, Oscar-winning 1945 MGM Technicolor musical comedy Anchors Aweigh is a precursor to 1949’s similarly themed but even better classic On the Town (in which three sailors go on leave in New York). This time, though, two sailors go on leave in Hollywood, meet a boy (Dean Stockwell) and his aspiring young singer aunt (Kathryn Grayson), whom they help get an audition at MGM.

Kelly and Frank Sinatra give highly pleasing performances as Joseph ‘Joe’ Brady and Clarence ‘Brooklyn’ Doolittle, a couple of love-lost sailors on a four-day leave in Hollywood, and the nine-year-old Dean Stockwell plays Donald Martin, Kathryn Grayson’s nephew, a little lad who wants to become a sailor too.

Grayson also pleases as the boy’s Aunt Susie Abbott, the gal Kelly falls for and romances, and then he pretends that Sinatra is a pal of singer José Iturbi (as Himself) to help her singing career by landing an audition. Then the duo have to try to contact Iturbi, while Sinatra meets falls for a girl from Brooklyn (Pamela Britton).

This Kelly career highspot may be long (at 143 minutes) and somewhat patchy, but it is also sprightly, inventive and colourful as well as delightfully tuneful thanks to the charming songs by Jule Styne (score) and Sammy Cahn (lyrics), and Georgie Stoll’s Oscar-winning best scoring of a musical.

Stoll was the winner of the film’s sole Academy Award – for Best Original Music Score. There were four other nominations: for Best Picture, Best Actor (Gene Kelly), Best Cinematography (Color), and Best Song ‘I Fall In Love Too Easily’ (Words and Music by Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne.

Stoll recruited one of the first black arrangers at MGM, Calvin Jackson, with whom he worked on the original music, but Jackson went uncredited.

George E Stoll died on 18 January 1985 after nine Oscar nominations and a career resurrection in the Sixties, working with Elvis, Doris Day, Connie Francis and Ann-Margret. Stoll’s Amati violin was sold in October 2009 by Tarisio Auctions for $620,000, a world record. His Oscar statuette was offered in an estate sale at the Butterfields auction house in 2001. Kevin Spacey bought it anonymously for $156,875 and returned it to the Academy.

Kelly’s famous, often screened dance with animated mouse Jerry (without the cat Tom) to ‘The Worry Song’ is a showstopper, one of three that he enjoys. He also courts Grayson in a movie-set fantasy and dances the ‘Mexican Hat’ dance with Sharon McManus. Iturbi plays Tchaikovsky’s Paino Concerto No 1 and Liszt’s Second Hungarian Rhapsody.

The songs also include ‘Jealousy’, ‘Donkey Serenade’, ‘My Heart Sings’, ‘If You Knew Susie’, ‘We Hate to Leave’, ‘What Makes the Sunset?’, ‘The Charm of You’, ‘I Begged Her’, ‘I Fall in Love Too Easily’, ‘Cradle Song’ and ‘The Worry Song’.

Also notable in the cast are Carlos Ramirez, Rags Ragland, Billy Gilbert, James Flavin, Henry O’Neill, Grady Sutton, Leon Ames and Edgar Kennedy.

Isobel Lennart writes the screenplay from the story by Natalie Marcin, trying to mix and match some of the successful story elements and set-pieces from earlier MGM musical hits, including Meet Me in St Louis (1944).

The film offers rare colour glimpses of the wartime MGM studio, and there is a memorable exterior scene at the Hollywood Bowl, where Sinatra sings ‘I Fall in Love Too Easily’.

It was a huge hit, costing $2.6 million and taking $7.5 million at the box office, resulting in a profit of $2,123,000. MGM wanted more. It is the first of three buddy pictures teaming Kelly with Sinatra, followed by Take Me Out To The Ball Game and On the Town. All three films cast the actors against type, the cocky dancing Kelly and the shy singing Sinatra.

MGM wanted to use Mickey Mouse for Kelly’s dance with an animated character, but Roy Disney said no. So Kelly contacted the head of MGM’s cartoon studio, Fred Quimby, only to find he was not interested either. But Kelly persisted in person at Hanna and Barbera’s office.

Kelly’s dance sequence with Jerry was meticulously storyboarded. And, after Kelly’s dance was filmed, the animators used rotoscoping to match Jerry’s movements to Kelly’s, including their shadows on the polished dance floor. The animation is by Kenneth Muse, Ray Patterson and Ed Barge. Kelly may dance with Jerry and without Tom, but Tom has a brief cameo appearance as Jerry butler.

José Iturbi Báguena (28 November 1895 – 28 June 1980) appeared in several Hollywood films of the 1940s, notably playing himself in the musicals Thousands Cheer (1943), Music for Millions (1944), Anchors Aweigh (1945), That Midnight Kiss (1949), and Three Daring Daughters (1948).

The cast are Frank Sinatra as Clarence ‘Brooklyn’ Doolittle, Kathryn Grayson as Susan ‘Susie’ Abbott, Gene Kelly as Joseph ‘Joe’ Brady, José Iturbi as Himself, Dean Stockwell as Donald Martin, Pamela Britton as Girl from Brooklyn, ‘Rags’ Ragland as Police Sergeant, Billy Gilbert as Café Manager, Henry O’Neill as Admiral Hammond, Carlos Ramirez as Carlos, Grady Sutton as Bertram Kraler, Leon Ames as Admiral’s Aide, Sara Berner as voice of Jerry Mouse, Charles Coleman as Butler and Lester Dorr as Assistant Director, James Flavin, and Edgar Kennedy.

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