March 14 movie: Reveille with Beverly. Ann Miller plays a swing music lover who hosts an early morning radio show dedicated to GIs. This was a very silly movie with fabulous music. Frank Sinatra, the Mills Brothers, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Bob Crosby, and Ella Mae Morse all appear. None of them were characters in the movie; instead Ann Miller would put on a record and then it would cut to a performance by the band. Georg was annoyed that Ellington played "Take the A Train" but his performance was staged not on the A train, rather on a train, that looked like it was out in the Midwest somewhere. I don't know, I thought it was funny.
I was also amused by Miller's terrible DJ skills: she would announce a song, then pick up a record, stroll over to the turntable, cue it up and turn it on. Ack, the dead air! It was like that bad dream where I'm trying to get to the board, moving in slow motion, and the dead air just drags on and on.
We enjoyed this so much that we found ourselves laughing at even the silliest jokes. We laughed the most when we were able to call out the punchline just before it happened. IMDB says this movie was based on a real wartime radio show called "Reveille with Beverly." Strangely, the host of the real show wasn't named Beverly.
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