This Is the Army

This Is the Army (1943)

It's your own army - in the army's own show!

In WW I dancer Jerry Jones stages an all-soldier show on Broadway, called Yip Yip Yaphank. Wounded in the War, he becomes a producer. In WW II his son Johnny Jones, who was before his fathers assistant, gets the order to stage a knew all-soldier show, called THIS IS THE ARMY. But in his pesonal life he has problems, because he refuses to marry his fiancée until the war is over.

Date of release
1943-08-14
TMDB
5.7 / 10 (25)
Runtime
2h 1m
Genres
Comedy, Music, War
Director
Michael Curtiz

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Based on: This Is The Army
  • Awards: 1 · Nominations: 3. Including: Academy Award for Best Original Musical Score

This Is the Army is a 1943 American wartime musical comedy film produced by Jack L. Warner and Hal B. Wallis and directed by Michael Curtiz, adapted from the wartime stage musical of the same name, designed to boost morale in the U.S. during World War II, directed by Ezra Stone. The screenplay by Casey Robinson and Claude Binyon was based on the 1942 Broadway musical written by James McColl and Irving Berlin, with music and lyrics by Berlin. Berlin composed the film's 19 songs, and sang one of them.

Production

Some location shooting for the film took place at Camp Cooke in central California. The Warner Bros. Ranch in Calabasas, California was used for the World War I battle scenes.

The title of the movie is the same as the title of the stage version of the show. The movie features star appearances by Irving Berlin, Kate Smith, Frances Langford and Joe Louis as themselves. Smith's full-length rendition of Berlin's "God Bless America" is arguably the most famous cinematic rendition of the piece.

George Murphy was not the first actor considered for the role of Jerry. Fred Astaire, Joseph Cotten and Walter Huston were all considered first. George Brent was also offered the role of Major (then Colonel) Davidson, which was played in the film by Stanley Ridges, but Brent refused to work without being paid. Ginger Rogers was considered for the role of Eileen, played in the film by Joan Leslie.

One of the film's highlights is Irving Berlin himself singing his song "Oh! How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning", a scene borrowed from Yip! Yip! Yaphank!. Alan Anderson, a young army sergeant, who worked on the film, remembered Berlin's rendition. He told American Legends website: "He'd done the song all across the country, but Berlin loved doing it in the movie. Here was a chance for it to be on film-for posterity."

The celebrity impersonation "hamburger" sequence includes accurate spoofs of Broadway stars Jane Cowl, Lynn Fontanne, Alfred Lunt and Ethel Barrymore, and film stars Charles Boyer and Herbert Marshall. The Cowl, Fontanne and Barrymore impersonations are all performed as drag (entertainment).

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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