For the one or two of you out there who get TCM, check this out Monday night at 8:00–just look at this cast!!
Looking through the cast, after like 75 listings of the star as “herself” or “himself,” I was far too amused for my own good by
I’d have watched anyway, but now I have to see it to see Australian!
Sure, an’ if Paddy O’Brien didn’t play the best Australians!
I’m dying to see Tallu, Ina Claire and Gypsy Rose Lee!
It has Katharine Cornell, who never did another film in her life, and it also has the team of Lunt and Fontanne, who did only one other film with each other (“The Guardsman”-Eve, where can I find it?).
How bad could it be?
I’ve seen The Guardsman . . . And, sadly, it’s petty unwatchabe. Slow, stagey, badly filmed. You can watch it for five minutes just to go, “ooooh, Lunt and Fontanne,” and then “the charm doth wear apace.”
"I left it there with my heart and my spleen . . "
Gee, what a swell movie–very sweet and naive. I even cried a couple of times, though the fact that I think I broke a couple of toes on my way home may have something to do with that. Great red-hot swing music–Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Kay Kyser . . . Katharine Cornell had a great scene doing Shakespeare with a soldier in a lunch line . . . Lunt and Fontanne ribbing each other in the kitchen . . . Tallulah Bankhead quoting from the bible (!) . . . Gypsy Rose Lee did a very funny strip and never actually showed anything . . . And I was pleased (and surprised) to see black and Asian soldiers in the Canteen! Nice to know it wasn’t segregated.
Eve I always knew you were ahead of your time, but I’m amazed that you’ve made it all the way through the film because I have about ten minutes left.
I’m enjoying the picture so far for the most part but the swings back and forth from light-hearted canteen acts to fairly bloodthirsty propaganda is kind of wigging me out. To have Gracie Fields go directly from “he shot down three jap planes” to “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us” was mind-boggling. The scene with the Russian sailors gave me pretty much the same reaction. “My hand would not tremble.” Wow.
I did love Katharine Cornell’s scene with California…and California is so gay!
oh, it just ended. Damn but that Katharine Hepburn is stalwart!
I don’t have TCM. The good news is that I have it on tape. The bad news is that the tape is in storage.
I like the bit with Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre. Classic.
Once again, Eve, I am green with envy of your getting TCM.
. . . That might have been Hollywood Canteen; Syd and Pete weren’t in this one.
Did you love Franklin Pangborn going all nelly with Johnny Weismuller?!
Dang. I get TCM but I didn’t see your post until this morning. Dang.
Oh, and didn’t Paddy O’Moore make a great Aussie? “Sure an’ be-crikey, mates!”
In all the excitement I didn’t even notice Australian. Which one was he?
And the first person who says “the Australian one” get a pop in the mush!
He was the one who read the Canteen Girls the good-bye notes from their boyfriends at the end, giving Kate Hepburn a chance to go all General MacArthur on Ilene. “We’re in a war we’ve got to win—so you go back in there and dance with those boys!”