Swing Shift

There are a couple of movies coming up on TCM that I recorded during a previous showing, so I've been sitting down to watch them in order to be able to do a post on here. The first of them is Swing Shift, which will be on TCM tomorrow afternoon at 4:45 PM.

The movie opens up with idyllic scenes of Los Angeles on December 6, 1941, ultimately showing up married couple Jack Walsh (Ed Harris) and his wife Kay (Goldie Hawn). They live in one of those bungalow developments where everybody lives cheek-by-jowl. Of course, if you saw the opening date, you'll know that the following day is the one on which the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, sending the US into World War II.

World War II was a "good" war, so of course, everybody signed up to fight. Well, at least, all the men did. Jack is one of those who signs up, joining the navy. He'll send Kay his allotment checks, telling her to be frugal because it's not going to be a whole lot of money and he doesn't want her to be forced to go to work. (What should she do, just spend all day at home alone?)

Jack is so obvious about not wanting Kay to have to work that you just know she's going to. To be fair, there's a war on and she wants to do her part for the war effort, and the other women in her social circle are going to do the same thing, so it's fairly obvious that she ought to go off to work too, in a defense plant making aircraft. The women are at first intimidated by the riveting machines, but as will all those other women working in the war effort movies, you know they'll quickly adjust.

Kay works near her best friend Hazel (Christine Lahti), who lives next door and has dreams of singing at the local nightclub. One of their supervisors at the plant is Lucky Lockhart (Kurt Russell), who tried to enlist but was discovered to have a heart defect that rendered him more valuable on the home front, despite what everybody is going to think seeing a seemingly healthy-looking man not fighting. Lucky is a trumpeter who has dreams of making it in music, too.

Because of how little there is to do and everybody's common interests, it's not surprising that Kay, Hazel, and Lucky should see more of each other. This is especially true when Kay misses the plant's bus back to the housing, and is forced to accept a ride with Lucky in his motorcycle sidecar. One thing leads to another, and before you know it, there spending the overnight together -- in bed. Of course, this ought to be a big problem since Kay has that husband serving in the Navy. But Jack is half an ocean away, and who knows how much longer the war is going to go on?

Unsurprisingly, you can probably guess that Jack is going to get leave and show up at the most inopportune time. He finds Kay at Hazel's bungalow, together with Lucky in a way that makes it clear Lucky is an item with Kay and not with Hazel, although Hazel tries to help out Kay. But she makes matters worse when she decides to go to Lucky's trailer and spend the night with him. Will everybody be able to stay together once the war finally ends?

For the most part, I liked Swing Shift. It's a fairly simple, unprepossessing story that isn't trying to do too much. It's not a comedy, but for the most part it's a fairly light drama. Goldie Hawn is appealing enough as Kay, other than a terrible hairstyle that doesn't suit her. Lucky seems a fairly undemanding role for Russell, who handles it well. Lahti probably has the most serious part, and she's more than up to the job, too.

If there was one thing I'd mark down, it would be the production design. I mentioned Hawn's hairdo, but there's also sets that reminded me of Pennies from Heaven in being too sterile. The opening song, sung by Carly Simon, seemed like the writers were going for a retro World War II vibe but really didn't succeed; it sounded much too modern.

But all of those are minor gripes and don't really take much away from Swing Shift. Hawn shows she could do light drama, and the story, while nothing new, is definitely worth a watch. Swing Shift has received a DVD release courtesy of the Warner Archive.