Anchors Aweigh

Much like "Holiday Inn" being remembered today only for the inclusion of the song "White Christmas" or "The Seven Year Itch" being remembered as the movie in which Marilyn Monroe stands over the subway grate with her skirt billowing up, "Anchors Aweigh" is remembered mainly as the film in which Gene Kelly dances with Jerry the Mouse. Considering the dramatic advances in motion picture technology in the past 60 years, this sequence still is extremely impressive, and was one of the first seamless on-screen pairings of animation and live action. And while this sequence is rightly remembered, the rest of the film is a lot of fun too. Done while MGM was still working on the perfect formula for their musicals, "Anchors Aweigh" shows a bit of the fat that would subsequently be trimmed from more streamlined product in later years; the film's running time is a bit much at around 145 minutes, and at times it plays almost as an MGM catalog musical instead of an actual narrative film. There is still plenty of things to enjoy here though, mainly its two main stars: Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly, ostensibly playing their sailor roles they would reprise four years later in "On the Town", are wonderful together, displaying great chemistry and each showcasing their respective talents (Sinatra sings, Kelly dances). The plot is light, two sailors get shore leave in Hollywood for a few days and plan on finding girls, but instead get involved in a pretty young singer and her dreams of becoming famous. Kathryn Grayson plays the young singer, Susan, and despite she too being largely forgotten over the years, actually gets billing above Gene Kelly in this film. MGM was still trying to figure out what to do with Kelly, and after he scored big with Columbia's "Cover Girl" the year before, the studio developed this as a vehicle for him to show off his dancing. Of course Kelly would go on to great acclaim, laregly thanks to his role here, yet still, "Anchors Aweigh" is mostly written off, despite featuring two legendary actors, launching the career of one. Oh the fickle nature of a film's legacy.

Upon first landing in Los Angeles, ladies man Joe (Kelly) plans on meeting up with his hot time girl, Lola, while his buddy Clarence (Sinatra) is too shy to actually chase girls, so seems content with just looking at them. After being brushed off by Lola, Joe agrees to help Clarence get a girl, and sets him up with a pretty singer after they inadvertently end up in charge of her young nephew. Joe promises her Clarence get can her an audition with Jose Iturbi, a famed conductor of the time who plays himself in the movie, as a ploy to keep her and Clarence together. Clarence however, is clueless in terms of how to talk to girls, and how to go about getting for Susan what Joe promised her he could. Stuck in a dive Mexican restaurant having a cheap dinner, Clarence bemoans his present situation with the song "I Fall In Love Too Easily", which gave audiences their first real sense of the power and clarity of Frank Sinatra's incredible voice. It is there however that he meets a girl from Brooklyn (oddly, the film does not give her a name, Clarence merely refers to her as "Brooklyn") and finds himself falling for her because they both are so homesick. This soon presents a problem though, because he is supposed to be helping Susan because he likes her, and Joe, who begins to have feelings for Susan, has to refrain from letting her know how he feels to honor his friend's alleged intentions. The two happen upon Jose Iturbi after sneaking onto the MGM lot and convince him to let Susan audition for him, which makes Susan extremely grateful to Clarence, even though it was Joe's cocky nature and fast talking which got them this far. Joe too has his moments of reflection towards the love triangle (soon to become a disjointed quadrangle type shape as "Brooklyn" and Clarence see each other again), and gets to express his feelings in two knockout numbers, the aforementioned dream sequence where he dances with Jerry the Mouse, and another elaborate set piece back at the Mexican cantina to the song "I Begged Her". Eventually everything is straightened out, as Clarence and Brooklyn inevitably end up together, and Susan, who nails her audition with Iturbi and is given a part in his show at the Hollywood Bowl, ends up with Joe, the duos locked in each others arms on screen together as the credits roll.

Considering this film as an early attempt at the big, colorful, splashy musicals MGM would ultimately go on to make to great critical and commercial acclaim, you can see a number of the themes established here. The silly circumstances which keep the two lovers apart, Sinatra's soft spoken, "simple life" kind of a guy character, and Kelly's out going, skirt chasing foil, which would be revived in "On the Town" as well as "Take Me Out to the Ball Game", to smaller things like the MGM art direction department's "look" of these musicals (always sets, but exquisitely dressed ones) and of course, a fine collection of songs. What interests me most about this movie is how the actors on screen personas were so different from their real life ones. Frank Sinatra might have early on been the shy kid with the great voice that he would play in a number of MGM musicals, but apparently the fame went to his head, as by all accounts he became a domineering, diva like force of nature on both movie sets as well as in his infamous stints in Las Vegas, and this was reflected in his later film roles. From the mid 1950's on, pretty much after he won his Oscar for playing Maggio in "From Here to Eternity", the MGM Frank Sinatra was gone, and the new one was born. Playing only hard boiled tough guys, from his non-musical roles in such classics as "The Manchurian Candidate", "Von Ryan's Express" or much later in "The Detective", even into his later musical films. After becoming the ring-a-ding leader of the Rat Pack (or the Clan as they called themselves), even his characters in musicals were tougher, more confident in their role as leader as well as with the ladies, and while not necessarily less charming or sympathetic, definitely less "gee whiz, aw shucks" cute. Gene Kelly also was by all accounts quite different from his on screen persona. While I am sure he had his romances, Kelly, like Fred Astaire, was in love with one thing: his craft. A consummate perfectionist and innovator, Kelly often quarrled with his studio assigned leading ladies who were not classicaly trained dancers (he famously clashed with Debbie Reynolds during the filming of "Singin' in the Rain"). The fast talking Joe Brady, or dashing Don Lockwood, his signature role in "Singin' in the Rain" were mere development department facades. None of this though, should take away from the fine performances Sinatra and Kelly give here, it merely serves as an interesting slice of film lore, and "Anchors Aweigh", a film unfairly forgotten today, is a film steeped in it.