Caught In the Draft & Give Me A Sailor… Bob Hope Double Feature DVD Review!

Caught In The Draft / Give Me A Sailor
2002, Universal Studios Home Video

This double feature DVD was “lost” in my collection for about a year or so. I felt like I owned it but I didn’t even have it checked off in my “Bob Hope DVD” Word document! Luckily, I found it a few weeks ago while sorting through the DVDs in my closet. I had rented this collection from Netflix before but I don’t think I ever watched the movies once I owned them. I had seen Caught in the Draft a few times courtesy of AMC (Remember when American Movie Classics used to show classic movies… in B&W no less?) but I had viewed Give Me A Sailor just the one time when renting it.

Caught In The Draft
1941, Paramount Pictures

This is a typically funny Hope movie from the 1940s. Other than Hope, this is a great cast: Lynne Overman (who previously was in The Big Broadcast of 1938 with Hope) & Eddie Bracken (who would later be in Star Spangled Rhythm) are great as Hope’s friends and flunkies and Dorothy Lamour brings her usual mix of class & sex appeal to the screen. She’s super-adorable in this one and I love the scene where she’s down at the Army recruiter’s office and they do a close-up of her winking.

In this one, Bob plays a big Hollywood actor that is trying to dodge the draft by getting married to Dorothy’s character Tony (whose father is a colonel), whom he recently met on set while filming a war movie. Problem is, she figures out his true motives, gets mad and then when Hope tries to win her back and impress her by setting up a fake enlistment, it turns out he signs on for real!

Comedy ensues as Hope gets his buddies to sign up too and as they try to make it through basic training, Bob tries to win the love of Tony while also also trying to impress her father.

One of Bob’s better movies that doesn’t feature Bing (not even a cameo this time!).

Give Me A Sailor
1938, Paramount Pictures

Not really a Bob movie at all this is more a vehicle for Martha Raye though Hope does co-star with her. It’s based on a play called Linger Longer Betty and has Letty (Raye) longing for Jim’s (Hope) brother Walter and Jim longing for his brother’s girlfriend Nancy (a hot Betty Grable). They try to break them up and eventually succeed. Letty gets engaged to Walter and Jim dates Nancy but then Letty & Jim discover what they really want is each other. Reading that back, they don’t really sound like likable characters and neither really suffers any consequences for breaking up Walter & Nancy but oh well. It worked for the time. I don’t think you could pull something like this off in a movie today without the characters coming across as huge jerks.

Not a great movie but worth watching once or twice to see Bob acting instead of constantly spitting out one-liners. Martha Raye is pretty cute in an odd way.

Overall:

A worthy DVD to add to the collection of any Bob Hope fan!

Buy ‘Caught in the Draft/Give Me A Sailor’ at Amazon.com

Star Spangled Rhythm (1943) Review

Star Spangled Rhythm (1943, Paramount Studios)

I bought this movie as a part of a Bob Hope Tribute Collection Double Feature DVD with My Favorite Blonde but just recently got around to watching Star Spangled Rhythm (though I must’ve watched the first 10 or 15 minutes at some point because I remembered those scenes).

Star Spangled Rhythm is a big time Hollywood comedy-musical that was put on by Paramount Studios during World World II as a morale booster. And when I say Paramount Studios, I mean Paramount Studios! Literally every signed star at that point was in this movie: Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Fred MacMurrary, Ray Milland, Victor Moore, Dick Powell, Betty Hutton, Marjorie Reynolds, Veronica Lake, Alan Ladd, William Bendix, Jerry Colonna, Dorothy Lamour, Paulette Goddard, Vera Zorina, Mary Martin, Eddie “Rochester” Anderson, Dona Drake, Eddie Bracken, Susan Hayward, etc., etc….! Even a few directors (Cecil B. DeMille, Preston Sturges and Ralph Murphy) appeared on camera and a couple of Paramount studio execs were spoofed as well.

I’m not a big fan of musicals, certainly not a fan of anything modern, but I’m slowly starting to appreciate these old Hollywood musicals. I attribute my appreciation mostly to the ”Road Pictures” that featured musical numbers but were primarily zany comedies. Also, it helps that Bob Hope & Bing Crosby were in Star Spangled Rhythm as well but to be fair the DVD packaging is a bit misleading. Although Bing & Bob receive top billing over all the other stars, neither shows up until a little more than halfway into the movie.

The movie is put together in a neat way. The first half of the is a comedy that focuses on a Paramount Studios gatekeeper (Victor Moore), his son that’s in the Navy (Eddie Bracken) & Paramount phone operator/son’s girlfriend (the adorable Betty Hutton). It’s a flimsy but legitimately funny and wacky story that builds up to all of Paramount’s stars putting on a show for a bunch of sailors in the second half of the movie as a benefit. That’s where Moore, Bracken and Hutton are given a rest and Paramount pulls out the big guns with songs, dances and more comedy skits. Bob emcees the benefit and is featured in a comedy skit while Bing closes the movie with a “Old Glory”, a patriotic number.

There are a number of highlights in this movie, Betty Hutton being one of them. She’s so adorable and cute in this movie I wanted to pinch her cheeks (and do other things to her as well). She’s a great comedian and was a show-stealer. I especially enjoyed her wall climbing scene. Lots of physical comedy.

Bing & Bob typically put on great performances as did Eddie “Rochester” Anderson (from Jack Benny’s radio troupe) with his musical number “Sharp As A Tack”. Seeing Dorothy Lamour and Paulette Goddard (both frequent co-stars of Bob Hope) sharing the stage together was a real treat as well. Along with Veronica Lake, they poked fun at their sex symbol status with the song “Sweater, Sarong & Peekaboo Bang”.

Big stars, great comedy and songs… Star Spangled Rhythm needs to be seen by fans of classic Hollywood.

Buy the My Favorite Blonde / Star Spangled Rhythm Double Feature DVD at Amazon.com