Give Me a Sailor

I had a movie set to blog about today, but it turns out that it's not back on TV until next Tuesday, so I had to look through what I've watched recently but haven't blogged about. With that in mind, I picked another movie off my Bob Hope box set, Give Me a Sailor.

The plot to this one is relatively simple. Hope plays Jim Brewster, one of a pair of brothers together with Walter (Jack Whiting) who are serving in the navy together on the same ship. The ship is about to get into port, and Walter informs Jim that he's finally going to ask Nancy (Betty Grable) to marry him.

That's no big deal, except that Jim is also in love with Nancy. Jim's obviously known about Walter's feelings for Nancy, as he has a contingency plan for this: he sends Nancy's sister Letty (Martha Raye) a coded message telling her about it and to do something to break up the impending marriage! What a nice guy.

Of course, you can probably figure out fairly early in that Letty is really the right one for Jim. But it's going to take a little while for Jim and Letty to figure this out, much to Letty's consternation, as she has to bear the brunt of Jim's schemes to separate Walter and Nancy that don't work. Letty, for her part, would prefer Walter (spare a thought for her when you consider that neither of the brothers wants her).

It's all a pleasant enough B movie, and you can see why Paramount would have plans for Bob Hope and Martha Raye. But it's also not without some serious problems. One is when we first meet Letty, who's making a cake for the two sailors' return home. She's accosted by an obnoxious young cousin Ethel who frankly should have been smacked like Jane Withers at the end of Bright Eyes. There's also a subplot about Letty's legs -- not Nancy's, which is humorous when you consider that Grable would be the pin-up girl in World War II -- and a contest that doesn't work.

Bob Hope and Martha Raye have both been in my opinion acquired tastes, and while Raye generally works, Hope often strays a bit too close to the Woody Allen nebbishness we'd see 30 years later. He's not nearly as likeable as Raye here, but would fortunately get better material.

The box set is relatively cheap considering how many movies you're getting, so if you don't like this one there's probably something else on the set that you'll like.