Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		2.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		1.5
Overall		2.5

Anchors Aweigh Blu-ray Movie Review

The Mouse That Danced

Reviewed by Michael Reuben May 8, 2015

Anchors Aweigh was released in July 1945, shortly after the German surrender to Allied forces but with the battle against Japan still raging in the Pacific. (Japan surrendered the following month.) Although the film maintains the light-hearted texture of a romantic musical comedy, it has a serious subtext signaled by the title, which is taken from the U.S. Naval Academy's fight song. Most filmed musicals dispense with the traditional overture, but Anchors Aweigh has one, in the form of a Navy band performing on an aircraft carrier in a formation that spells "NAVY". The admiral thanks the guest conductor, who replies: "Along with every other civilian, it is I who am grateful to you, and to all the men in the United States Navy." Only then is everyone allowed to get silly.

With a screenplay by Isobel Lennart (Funny Girl), inspired by a short story by teenage author Natalie Marcin, Anchors Aweigh is loaded with the kind of improbable devices and contrived excuses for song-and-dance performances that have often given musicals a bad name. Its most famous sequence, in which star Gene Kelly appears to be dancing with Jerry Mouse from the Tom and Jerry cartoon series, serves no purpose in the plot, but it was such a dazzling technical feat that no one cared—and it has inspired so many works mixing animation and live action that it overshadows the rest of the film.

Director George Sidney (Kiss Me Kate, Bye Bye Birdie) provided his usual solid craftsmanship, but the movie is overstuffed. Between its songs, its romantic plot, its military tributes and its incongruous inclusion of classical music, Anchors Aweigh expanded to a running time of two hours, twenty minutes. Even the charms of Dean Stockwell, making his film debut as a child actor, wear thin by the end. (Extra points if you can recognize in the kid's cherubic face the future visage of spooky Ben the Sandman in David Lynch's Blue Velvet.)

The film's "overture" is conducted by Spanish musician José Iturbi, who, in real life, was a noted pianist and conductor but, for purposes of Anchors Aweigh, plays himself as a mogul at MGM, a combination composer, producer and director. With his thick accent and deadpan reactions, Iturbi becomes the story's fairy godfather, who magically makes everything come out all right in the end.

Two sailors, Joe Brady (Kelly) and Clarence "Brooklyn" Doolittle (Sinatra) depart on a four-day leave in Hollywood. Joe, the braggart and ladies man with a girl in every port, has plans with a hot number named Lola, but Clarence begs Joe to teach him how to talk to women. Having saved Clarence's life in battle, Joe now feels responsible for him; so he postpones his date. Before they can even get started on Clarence's "education", the local police dragoon them into helping with a difficult case. A young boy, Donald Martin (Stockwell), has been picked up wandering the streets. He insists that he's off to join the Navy and won't say who he is or where he lives. The cops have hit on the ruse of bringing in some genuine swabbies to persuade the boy to tell the truth.

Thus do Clarence and Joe meet Susan Abbott (Kathryn Grayson, Kiss Me Kate), Donald's aunt and his only family since the death of his parents. An aspiring singer and actress, Susan has been desperately trying to get a screen test at MGM and has agreed to date a dull man named Bertram Kraler (Grady Keller) who can get her an audition with—guess who?—José Iturbi. Joe, who is trying to match-make Susan and Clarence, scares off Kraler, then falsely assures Susan that Clarence and Iturbi are the best of friends.

As if matters weren't already confused enough, Clarence ends up falling not for Susan, but for a waitress (Pamela Britton) at a Mexican restaurant to which Susan invites the two sailors. Why the waitress? Because, like Clarence, she's from Brooklyn; Clarence even nicknames her "Brooklyn", and we never do learn her real name. Meanwhile, Lola (who is never seen) has grown tired of waiting for Joe and stopped taking his calls, but Joe find himself unexpectedly falling for Susan.

Anchors Aweigh belongs to the pre-Rodgers & Hammerstein school of musicals, in which the songs are often inserted on the flimsiest of pretexts, rather than being essential components of the story. For example, the famous sequence featuring Joe and Jerry Mouse dancing and singing "The Worry Song" grows out of a fairy tale that Joe tells to Donald Martin's classmates at school. An extended performance of Liszt's "Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2" is included simply because Clarence and Donald try to approach Iturbi during a rehearsal at the Hollywood Bowl (and they fail). Don't get me wrong: The songs written by Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn are wonderful, and the Oscar-nominated "I Fall in Love Too Easily" became a jazz standard. But the soundtrack and the film might as well be running on separate tracks, even if Anchors Aweigh did win the Oscar for "best scoring". The only truly essential piece of music is the title song that opens and closes the picture with its firm note of reassurance that, however goofy they may be on shore leave, the fighting men of the U.S. Navy remain solidly committed to the challenges before them.

Anchors Aweigh Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Two venerable cinematographers shared credit on Anchors Aweigh, MGM's Robert H. Planck (Royal Wedding) and Charles P. Boyle (Old Yeller), who spent much of his career at Universal and Disney. Both of these veterans must be spinning in their graves at what Warner Home Video has done to their work on this 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray, which crams a 140-minute movie packed with complex scenes of song and dance onto a BD-25. Was no one sufficiently brave (or knowledgeable) to stand up to the bean counters to explain why this was a bad idea? For those interested in statistics, the average bitrate is 17.96 Mbps, but the real problem is what's on screen.

As with On the Town, another title new to Blu- ray and included in the Frank Sinatra Collection, the image is soft and lacking in fine detail, and this becomes particularly evident in long shots with multiple sailors on the battleship or large numbers of dancers in the Mexican restaurant where Susan sings or in any of the musical performances conducted by Iturbi. But in addition to the obvious high-frequency rolloff and absence of grain structure that marred On the Town, Anchors Aweigh adds a parade of compression artifacts to the mix. These are most readily observed in skies and other light backgrounds, which too often become unstable fields of shifting pixels. (Some viewers might mistake this for film grain, but it looks nothing like it.) About the only favorable point to this presentation is that its colors are vibrant. Whether they are accurate is another question. When both the police and the Navy uniforms look black more often than navy blue, one can legitimately question the reproduction.

As I noted in reviewing On the Town, there will no doubt be fans who find this presentation of Anchors Aweigh acceptable on the ground that "This is the best it's ever looked!" That may be true, especially on screens under 65", but it doesn't make the presentation a good one deserving of a favorable review. If that were the test, almost every Blu-ray would get a one-sentence video review and a five star rating.

Anchors Aweigh Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The film's original mono track has been encoded as lossless DTS-HD MA 1.0. The source is in great shape for the era, and the musical numbers and vocal performances have remarkably good presence, even the big numbers featuring a huge military band or a dozen pianos. The dynamic range is somewhat limited, but the highs aren't harsh and the lows aren't boomy. Both dialogue and lyrics are clearly rendered, including the cartoon voices.

Anchors Aweigh Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The extras have been ported over from the DVD edition of Anchors Aweigh first released by Warner in 2000, then re-released in 2008. The only omissions are the trailers for other features, but as compensation Warner has added a short and a cartoon.

• Hanna & Barbera on the Making of "The Worry Song" [from MGM: When the Lion Roars] (480i; 1.37:1; 2:09): The animators and several executives discuss how the sequence was created.



• Football Thrills of 1944 (480i; 1.37:1; 8:30): This 1945 review of highlights from the previous season confirms one thing: Sports commentary hasn't changed much.



• Jerky Turkey (480i; 1.37:1; 7:32): This 1945 cartoon offers Tex Avery's twisted take on the pilgrims and Thanksgiving. An initial disclaimer notes that some ethnic and racial stereotypes may be considered offensive by today's standards.



• Trailer (480i; 1.37:1; 2:30): "2 Hours of Star-Spangled Entertainment!"

Anchors Aweigh Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

As a film, Anchors Aweigh hasn't aged as well as On the Town, but its score is superior and its historical importance is undeniable. The film deserved better treatment than it's been given here. Maybe someday it will be redone. If you're a diehard fan, you will want this disc regardless of reviews, and if you buy the Frank Sinatra Collection, it's part of the package, but I don't recommend buying it separately.