Star Spangled Rhythm (1942)

A sailor (Eddie Bracken) thinks his father (Victor Moore) is the head of Paramount Pictures in Hollywood when in reality, he's a guard at the studio's entrance gate. When he gets shore leave, his girlfriend (Betty Hutton), who's a telephone operator at the studio, contrives to make the father look like a studio head by setting him up in an empty office on the lot. Directed by George Marshall (DESTRY RIDES AGAIN), this is yet another of those all star WWII morale boosters for the troops overseas and the civilians back home. Fortunately for contemporary viewers, this is one of the better examples. It's actually pretty funny and the musical numbers are good. The songs are by Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen and the film introduced two standards, Hit The Road To Dreamland (sung by Dick Powell and Mary Martin) and That Old Black Magic (sung by Johnny Johnston and danced by Vera Zorina with choreography by Balanchine). The sketches are amusing and there's an amusing comedy sequence when Betty Hutton gets physically entangled with two guys trying to help her scale a wall. Alas, the film ends on a deadly note with Bing Crosby singing a jingoistic dirge. The massive cast includes Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Fred MacMurray, Ray Milland, Susan Hayward, Alan Ladd, Paulette Goddard, Veronica Lake, Dorothy Lamour, Franchot Tone, Macdonald Carey, William Bendix, Ellen Drew, Marjorie Reynolds, Anne Revere, Eddie Rochester Anderson, Katherine Dunham and Walter Abel.