Skirts Ahoy! *** (1952, Esther Williams, Vivian Blaine, Joan Evans) – Classic Movie Review 12,291

Star power. Esther Williams said she disliked MGM’s original ‘cotton sleeveless T-shirt’ swimsuits and designed her own swimsuit for Skirts Ahoy! (1952) and then persuaded the director of the US Navy to make it their swimsuit. 

‘Glorifying America’s Mermaids – the WAVES’

Director Sidney Lanfield’s 1952 Technicolor musical film Skirts Ahoy! stars Esther Williams, Vivian Blaine and Joan Evans, along with Barry Sullivan, Keefe Brasselle, Dean Miller, Debbie Reynolds, and Bobby Van.

This time it’s three lady sailors on the town – Evans, Blaine and Williams (who naturally gets to do an underwater ballet) – and on the lookout for men (Sullivan, Brasselle and Miller) after they sign up for training at a naval base.

Though likeable enough, and certainly campy and kitsch enough, it is an undistinguished MGM musical. But there is plenty of talent in evidence, as well as good-natured high spirits, and spots of undeniable entertainment emerge here and there. Reynolds and Van’s ‘Oh by Jingo’ routine, for example, is real fun. But there are too many dud new numbers in the movie.

Also in the cast are Billy Eckstine, Margalo Gillmore, Jeff Donnell, Thurston Hall, Russell Tongay, Kathy Tongay, Roy Roberts, Emmett Lynn, Hayden Rorke, Paul Harvey, Ruth Lee, Whit Bissell, Rudy Lee, Madge Blake, Mae Clarke, Byron Foulger, Juanita Moore, and William Haade.

Skirts Ahoy! is directed by Sidney Lanfield, runs 109 minutes, is made and released by MGM, is written by Isobel Lennart, shot in Technicolor and 35 mm by William Mellor, produced by Joe Pasternak, and scored by George Stoll, with music by Harry Warren and lyrics by Ralph Blane, and choreography by Nick Castle.

It was shot in the MGM studio and on location at Great Lakes Naval Training Station, Illinois, US.

It is the final feature film of Sidney Lanfield, whom Williams called ‘a tyrant’, particularly cruel to Vivian Blaine.

Williams said she disliked the original ‘cotton sleeveless T-shirt’ swimsuits and designed her own swimsuit for the film and then persuaded the director of the US Navy to make it their swimsuit. She worked with writer Isobel Lennart on extra swim sequences.

Williams swims in one sequence with Kathy Tongay, who tragically died from internal injuries a year after the film was released shortly before her sixth birthday after her swimming coach father got her to dive from a 33ft platform in Florida. Her father was sentenced to ten years in prison on child-endangerment related charges. Her older brother Russell ‘Bubba’ Tongay, also appears in the sequence. They performed as The Aquatots.

© Derek Winnert 2022 Classic Movie Review 12,291

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