Ship Ahoy

Red Skelton was TCM's Star of the Month in April 2025, which means I'm getting to the point where the movies TCM ran as part of that salute are about to start expiring from the DVR. So to get around to finally watching them before they expire, I watched Ship Ahoy.

Ship Ahoy was made early enough in Skelton's career that he's not quite the star here, although he's technically the male lead. The star is tap-dancer Eleanor Powell. She plays Tallulah WInters, who is a dancer with Tommy Dorsey's orchestra (Dorsey and most of the rest of the orchestra play themselves). After a performance in New York, Dorsey reminds his troupe that they have to be on time for the ship that's about to set sail for San Juan, Puerto Rico, where they're booked for a series of performances. Meanwhile, showing up backstage is Skip Owens (Bert Lahr), who has the hots for Tallulah's friend and singer Fran Evans (Virginia O'Brien), although she doesn't show any interest in Skip. Not that Virginia O'Brien ever showed any interest with her face.

Before Tallulah can leave the theater, she's waylaid by a couple of agents, who take her to an office where they tell her they have a national security job for her. Apparently the government has developed a magnetic mine which they need to get to Puerto Rico. But they can't use any of their regular agents to deliver the mine since there's that war on and enemy agents are sure to be following the regular agents. So could Tallulah hide it somewhere in her luggage and transport it?

Unfortunately, what Tallulah doesn't know is that these aren't US government agents transporting the mine, but agents working for the Axis powers. This is revealed almost as soon as Tallulah leaves, so it's not as if I'm revealing much here. The agents got the idea for this from a comic book written by Merton Kibble (that's Red Skelton). So the scene immediately cuts to Merton's apartment, where we learn that Skip Owens is also Merton's personal assistant. Merton is an inveterate hypochondriac, and asks Skip to call his doctor because Merton is afraid he's about to panic or something from having to try to write three comics at the same time. Skip uses this call as an excuse to tell a little white lie, or a fairly big one: Merton should take some rest, which means a sea cruise (even though Merton gets seasick). This is really a ruse for Skip to show up on the same boat as Fran.

Now, if you've seen any movie like this, the rest of the bare bones of the plot shouldn't be too hard to figure out. Merton and Tallulah run into each other, and fall in love, although they're going to fall back out of love before all the misunderstandings are resolved in the final reel. Merton is also going to be instrumental in foiling that fiendish enemy plot, albeit not without facing down some personal danger. That foiling the plot is going to involve a fair bit of comedy. And with the presence of Eleanor Powell and Tommy Dorsey, there's going to be dancing and singing involved too. Frank Sinatra was still with Tommy Dorsey's orchestra at the time, so he gets to perform a musical number very early in his career.

Ship Ahoy is the sort of movie that Hollywood was putting out during World War II: patriotic, but also fairly light-hearted to help the audiences on the home front escape from what was going on out in the real world. Skelton is funny enough here while people who aren't his biggest fans will find he's not overused since he's in a supporting role. Powell shows she was an excellent tap dancer, including a notable scene where she tap dances out a message in Morse code. As for the story? Well, once again, don't pay too much attention to it.