Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.5

Hit the Deck Blu-ray Movie Review

Three Singing Swabs Are We!

Reviewed by Michael Reuben April 27, 2014

The latest Blu-ray rarity from the Warner Archive Collection is the1955 musical Hit the Deck, a lavish production from the tail end of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's reign as the king of musicals. The film was a remake of a 1930 RKO picture of which all known copies are lost. Warner owns the remake, along with the rest of of MGM's pre-May 1986 library, as a result of its acquisition of Turner Entertainment in 1996.

Despite an appealing cast and solid craftsmanship, Hit the Deck was a flop, and in hindsight the reason is obvious. The Broadway production on which it was based dated from the early part of the 20th Century, an era when musicals were a series of song-and-dance extravaganzas loosely connected by a story. In the intervening decades, the American musical evolved to the point where audiences expected songs to serve the story. No one was more responsible for this development, both separately and as collaborators, than Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. As luck would have it, in the same year that MGM released Hit the Deck, the first film of a Rodgers & Hammerstein creation, Oklahoma!, premiered on American screens. Unlike Hit the Deck, Oklahoma! did strong business; it also won two Academy Awards and remains a classic.

Still, Hit the Deck has its charms, if approached with the right expectations. Its cast of musical stars is impressive, including Debbie Reynolds, Ann Miller, Vic Damone and Russ Tamblyn. It was choreographed by Hermes Pan, who was responsible for numerous classics, including most of the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers films. The songs by Vincent Youmans (the original Broadway producer) are easy on the ears; some of them are even memorable. And the entire production was photographed in CinemaScope by George J. Folsey, the cameraman behind such classics as Meet Me in St. Louis and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. If you love old Hollywood, the film is hard to resist.

Hit the Deck follows the misadventures of three tuneful sailors, each of whom has (or finds) a female counterpart. Chief Mate William Clark (Tony Miller) is a career Navy man, who has been stringing along Ginger (Miller), the woman he loves, for six years with one excuse after another about why they can't get married. Ginger is the headliner at a nightclub in San Francisco, and she's ready to tell Clark goodbye.

Seaman Danny Xavier Smith (Tamblyn) is also a career Navy man, but he's been keeping a secret from his buddies. He's the son of Rear Adm. Daniel Xavier Smith (Walter Pidgeon) and is paying his dues as an enlisted man before applying to the Naval Academy at Annapolis. If Danny's buddies knew he was a future officer, they wouldn't let him be "one of the guys". So he keeps the family connection to himself. On shore leave in San Francisco, Danny discovers that his sister, Susan (Jane Powell), is auditioning for a slick theatrical producer and performer, Wendell Craig (Gene Raymond). Justifiably suspicious of Craig's intentions, Danny goes to the theater where Craig's latest musical is rehearsing and collides with the leading lady, Carol Pace (Reynolds). Sparks fly between them.

Seaman Rico Ferrari (Damone) has no one special in his life besides his widowed mother (Kay Armen). But when Danny Smith asks his buddies for help saving his sister from the clutches of the dastardly Wendell Craig, Rico responds to the call, as does Clark. The result is an unseemly brawl in Clark's hotel suite, and it becomes Rico's job is to hustle Susan out of there as quickly as possible. Susan, of course, protests vociferously, and as an argument erupts between her and Rico, the ironclad laws of romantic comedy swoop down and require that they fall in love. It only takes a song or two.

Much of Hit the Deck involves elaborate efforts by Clark, Rico and Danny to evade pursuit by the shore patrol, after Wendell Craig lodges a formal complaint against them. (The chief representatives of the shore patrol are played for laughs by Henry Slate and a very young Alan King.) The guys alternately take refuge in Ginger's club; in the home of Rico's mother; at the store of Mr. Peroni (J. Carrol Naish), the very proper florist who is courting Rico's mother; among the chorus of dancers dressed as sailors surrounding Carol Pace on stage (which doesn't go well); and at a local amusement park, where Carol and Danny find themselves dancing through the funhouse in an elaborately choreographed routine that took days to shoot. Every problem is eventually solved. In comedies, love always triumphs.

As in so many early musicals, the script (adapted by multiple screenwriters from the original musical book by Herbert Fields) incorporates several singing venues, such as Ginger's club and Craig's musical production, so that virtually any song can be used. For example, Ann Miller's performance of "The Lady from the Bayou" is a standout, but it has nothing to do with any event in the story. For this vintage of musical, though, no excuse is needed for a song. When Rico's mother, Mrs. Ferrari, sees everyone moping around her apartment, she insists that they cheer up. Being Italian, she is, of course, musical by birth and gets everyone singing to a tune from the Old Country ("Ciribiribin"). In vain does the upstairs neighbor pound on his floor protesting the late hour. He might as well come downstairs and join in.

Hit the Deck Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Warner Archive Collection's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray presents Hit the Deck in its full CinemaScope glory, which is essential to the lavish production numbers with their elaborate sets and expansive movements, often by large companies of dancers. The image is clean, sharp and detailed, though not free of the occasional "fattening" distortions associated with early generations of anamorphic lenses (the so-called "mumps syndrome"). The dark blues of the naval uniforms generally read as black, which may be a deliberate choice on the part of the cinematographer and/or costume designer, since black provides a better contrast for the eye-poppingly intense colors typically worn by the main female characters, all of whom either are or aspire to be in show business. The contrast levels are good enough to reveal fine detail without overwhelming it, which makes every backdrop and soundstage easy to identify—not that it matters. Musicals thrive on artificiality.

On a 72" screen, the film's grain pattern is so fine that it's barely visible, but I saw no signs of filtering or artificial sharpening. If anyone notices something amiss at larger sizes, please contact me. The average bitrate is a generous 37.92 Mbps, which prompts me to wonder why the people in charge of mastering for WAC can't have a word with their counterparts at Warner Home Video. WAC clearly has the right idea when it comes to compression, which is not to aim for the tightest possible rate. They routinely give the image plenty of bandwidth, and WHV should take the hint.

Hit the Deck Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The trailer for Hit the Deck boasts that the film features "stereophonic" sound, but in 1955 only a handful of theaters would have been equipped to reproduce anything other than mono. Still, the four individual tracks supported by CinemaScope must have been preserved, because they appear to have been the basis for the 5.1 remix presented on Blu-ray in lossless DTS-HD MA. While basic dialogue scenes remain in the front center, the musical numbers expand across the front soundstage to utilize the left, right and center, providing a rich sense of the unseen orchestra and clarity to the vocals. The rear channels do nothing more than expand the sense of presence. The track has good fidelity and surprisingly wide dynamic range, a testament to the quality of the original recordings.

(Note: The DVD release described under "Extras" offered a choice between 5.1 and 5.0 soundtracks.)

Hit the Deck Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The only extras are the film's badly yellowed trailer (480i; 1.85:1, non-enhanced; 4:14) and a song selection feature that is really nothing more than a chapter listing labeled by song title. Warner previously released Hit the Deck on DVD in 2008 as part of Classic Musicals from the Dream Factory: Volume 3. An owner of that disc has advised me that it contained an isolated 5.1 music track, an audio-only alternate version of the song "Sometimes I'm Happy", a Pete Smith Specialty comedy short entitled "The Fall Guy" and a classic cartoon, "Field and Scream".

Hit the Deck Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Hit the Deck is fluff, the musical equivalent of a popcorn movie. But it's well-made fluff, and any fan of the genre will appreciate what the stars bring to their performances. The MGM musical may not have gone out with a bang, but it certainly didn't leave with a whimper. WAC has created a fine Blu-ray presentation. For fans of classic Hollywood musicals, highly recommended.