two girls and a sailor

Nov. 21 movie: Two Girls and a Sailor. This sounds like the punchline of a dirty joke, but actually it's the movie from last weekend that I forgot to write up. June Allyson, Gloria de Haven and Van Johnson star in an East Coast version of Hollywood Canteen. Allyson and de Haven are singers who run a wartime canteen -- an entertainment hall for the troops -- secretly funded by Johnson, a sailor they both have a crush on without knowing he's stupid rich. The canteen features performances by (starring as themselves): Harry James, Jose Iturbi, Xavier Cugat, Lena Horne, Gracie Allen, and another singer whose name I forget. The movie also featured Jimmy Durante as a washed up vaudevillian (not playing himself, I hope).

This movie was mostly forgettable but it had a couple of unintentionally funny moments: for one, at the very beginning, before Van Johnson bankrolls the big canteen, the two sisters host a nightly "private canteen," meaning that after their gig at the Flamenco Club, they walk up to random soldiers on the street and invite them over for an evening of singing, piano playing, sandwiches and soda pop. Which prompted me to yell at the screen, "Two women alone in an apartment with thirty military men? Are you insane? Haven't you ever heard of Tailhook?" Also, the big canteen had seating areas for soldiers, sailors and marines, but airmen got jack. Georg pointed out that there wouldn't have been many Air Force in New York, but then why were all those soldiers and marines hanging around the city for months on end? Rather than stopping in Manhattan for a day or two on the way to a base somewhere else, the same guys hang out at the canteen throughout the movie. Actually the war has pretty much no presence here. It's basically a "hey kids, let's put on a show" movie in which a lot of people happen to be wearing uniforms.