RKO had the popular comedy team of Wheeler and Woolsey in the 1930s, at least until Robert Woolsey up and died. With tastes changing from Laurel and Hardy to Abbott and Costello, RKO decided they needed another comedy pairing of their own and came up with the bargain-basement partnership of Wally Brown and Alan Carney, as can be seen in movies like Seven Days Ashore.
Brown and Carney get top billing here, although they're really in service to the other characters. And we first see a couple of those other characaters. The movie was made smack in the middle of World War II, a time in which a bunch of men were away and women took on many roles that men had had, including the musicians in nightclub big bands. Two such women, Carol (a young Virginia Mayo) and Lucy, play in San Francisco, and also try to keep the servicemen's morale up by dancing with them. Except that both of them tell their dance partners that things can't go any further, because each of them is engaged to be married. Except that each of them, unbeknownst to the other, claims to be engaged to San Francisco scion Dan Arland Jr. (Gordon Oliver).
Dan is away because he's doing his part for the war effort by being in the merchant marine, somewhere in the middle of nowhere because the security situation tries to give the crews as little information as necessary. Dan has made a couple of friends among the crew in the form of Monty (Wally Brown) and Orval (Alan Carney), who has gotten the nickname "Handsome" for obvious reasons. The crew finds out that their next destination is actually stateside, in San Francisco, where the ship will be provisioning giving the men the titular week's leave.
This will give the crew a chance to see their families, which is of course an issue for Dan, since he's got two girlfriends. Well, technically three. Before going off to war his parents were trying to get him engaged to someone of his social class, Annabell Rogers. Officially, the engagement is broken off, but Annabelle still lives with Dan's parents because they're on her side, considering Dan a bit irresponsible. Dan worries about which of his two musician "fiancées" to tell about his presence, writing a letter to each and having only one delivered at random. Except when the other letter gets thrown away, the ship's captain finds it and, thinking that it fell out of the mailbox or something, does his good dead by posting it for delivery. So when the ship reaches shore Dan has multiple girlfriends all expecting him.
Dan tries to remedy the situation by... setting Monty and Handsome up with Carol and Lucy, lying to the women that these are fellow millionaires. Meanwhile, the women all figure out what's going on, and Annabelle decides that she's going to teach Dan a lesson. She enlists the help of Carol and Lucy in this scheme, and they're only too happy to help considering the way Dan's treated them. But it's a wartime movie, so everyone is going to come out happy in the end.
As I suggested above, Seven Days Ashore, having been made during World War II and dealing with timely war topics, is the sort of movie that was conceived as a homefront morale booster. The comedy is supposed to be gentle; also, since the movie revolves in part around a big band, there are going to be musical numbers. The only problem is, Carney and Brown are slightly more irritating than comedic, while Gordon Olvier is a drip. It's easy enough to see the studio's intentions here; it's just that those intentions don't always succeed.
Still, I always like to suggest that people judge for themselves, so once again watch Seven Days Ashore and draw your own conclusions.
No comments:
Post a Comment