Stage Door Canteen [VHS]

"Stage Door Canteen" comes up with a wartime romance to showcase the talented stars who served food to the troops and provided entertainment at the Stage Door Canteen. There are about five dozen stars in this film, from Judith Anderson to Ed Wynn, with Edgar Bergn & Charlie McCarthy, Helen Hayes and Gypsy Rose Lee, Count Basie and Benny Goodman, Harpo Marx and Johnny Weissmuller, in between. At one point Katharine Cornell does the balcony scene with young Lon McCallister while in the serving line. The romantic plot has Eileen (Cheryl Walker), a junior hostess at the New York City Canteen, meets Private Ed "Dakota" Smith (William Terry). Despite her best intentions, she falls in love with Dakota, even though she loses her pass at the Canteen because she breaks the rule about dating service men. Katharine Hepburn, the Officer of the Day, allows Eileen to wait inside for her fiance, but then word comes that the boys sailed that morning. Hepburn then consoles Eileen gives an inspirational speech on the importance of the Canteen's work. It is certainly interesting to have this dramatic moment pop up at the end of this film, but the cause was certainly worthwhile. Eighty percent of the profits from this 1943 film directed by Frank Borzage went to the Canteens operated by the American Theater Wing across the country. "Stage Door Canteen" is a fun little film to watch, especially if you remember who Xavier Cugat and Paul Muni were way back when.

What to make of this wartime, home-front morale movie, which is loaded with star players and character actors? It has a slight story-line about four young American soldiers. They're about to ship overseas any day, but manage to visit the Stage Door Canteen just off Broadway, where the stars entertain, dance and talk with soldiers, cook and serve and wash the dishes. The four, of course, all have states as nicknames. One, the innocent California, longs for his first kiss; Tex meets a down-home girl at the Canteen; Jersey isn't seen much as he manages to marry his girlfriend; and Dakota, a young womanizer, meets at the Canteen a woman who's out for a career and they surprise each other by falling in love. All the while we have comedy bits from lots of actors, ranging from Harpo Marx to the distinctively odd couple of Franklin Pangborn and Johnnie Weismuller. We have any number of grande dames -- Helen Hayes, Lynn Fontanne, Judith Anderson, Katharine Cornell, among others, doing their home-trained impression of gracious American aristocracy.

We follow our four while they find that first kiss, relax with and long for the wholesome young ladies they talk and joke with, and rededicate themselves to fight for our American values. Of course, all of the soldiers in the packed Canteen are wholesome and white, and so are all the stars. More startling after nearly 65 years, with all that talent around, is how dated and corny the movie is. This is emotional propaganda, designed to entertain Americans at home, show them how all of America's stars support the war effort, and leave the audience tearing up over the possible fate of the soldiers they've just met...but determined to rededicate themselves to the war effort that will bring the soldiers back safe and victorious. All those heart strings Hollywood pulls, however, are so visible we know when we're being manipulated into a sob or a smile.

Equally unnerving is how dated so many of the comedy bits and musical numbers seem now. Ray Bolger does a specialty number written for him by Rodgers & Hart, singing and dancing to "The Girl I Love to Leave Behind." The dancing is great but the song sure isn't. Amidst all the comedy and the soldiers' love stories we suddenly have Yehudi Menuhin pulling out his violin and playing a carefully lighted Ave Maria...followed by the frenetic Flight of the Bumble Bee. Even odder is Gracie Fields, that dynamic English musical hall star. She does a raucous, energetic, mugging specialty song about "killing Japanese," (she uses the now-offensive shortened version of the word), which has the boys cheering...then announces she's been requested by one young soldier to sing "The Lord's Prayer." Huh?

There are a number of highlights, and seeing all these stars and entertainers doing their stuff is probably worth the price of the movie. A young Peggy Lee fronts the Benny Goodman Orchestra with "Why Don't You Do Right?," Charley McCarthy and Edgar Bergen have a funny routine, Ethel Waters sings with the Count Basie Orchestra, and Lannie Ross, a long-forgotten orchestra crooner sings a great and long-forgotten WWII ballad...the poignant and romantic "We Mustn't Say Goodbye," lyrics by Al Dubin and music by James V. Monaco.

In dreams we'll always be together
Beneath the moonlit sky
We mustn't say goodbye

Each night I'll push aside the mountains
I'll drain the oceans dry
We mustn't say goodbye

I promise you that when the postman rings
My heart will be inside
The envelope he brings

Oh, don't you know the memories we gathered
Can never, never die
We mustn't say goodbye

If you have a chance to hear the Jo Stafford version, you'll be in tears.

Last but not least in oddity, we have the Kate Hepburn closing. Dakota and Eileen decided to get married at the Canteen, and she shows up to meet him there. He never appears. Then a soldier appears and tells her and her friends that Dakota's unit unexpectedly shipped out that morning. Dakota told him to find Eileen and tell her that he loves her. He'll return from the fighting and they'll be married then. Eileen starts to run from the Canteen in tears, when suddenly this mannishly dressed, angular woman stops her. With her face about three inches from Eileen's, Hepburn delivers an understanding but extremely firm lecture that Eileen's duty now is to return to the Canteen and do her job, just as Dakota is doing his job, and that we at the home-front can do no less than what our soldiers are doing fighting for us. Eileen wipes away the tears, and with a tremulous smile walks towards the waiting solders to dance and talk and just listen to their dreams and hopes. Fade to black.

This is a public domain title. The version I saw was barely watchable, so buyer beware.

Stage Door Canteen - An opportunity for people of my generation (I was born in 1932)to relive or remember what entertained us in the early 1940s. In the event this DVD was disappointing, for this viewer what was amusing then is not amusing now and it did not stand the test of time. The idea of introducing personalities of the time into a format of them entertaining, and acting either as waitresses or very very platonic hostesses, for free, members of the armed forces in a New York services club might have worked if the material had been better or at least more familiar. The best music of that era has survived, and survived very well, the less-good has not, and what we have here is mostly the less-good. The contributions of popular entertainers of that era are often embarrassing, mawkishly sentimental and insincere, the brief shot of Tarzan helping with the washing up - presumably because he had no otherwise talent - prompted this viewer to speculate, perhaps unkindly, what he had been paid for his cameo appearance, and those unworthy thoughts surfaced again and again. It was mildly interesting to see again some of those film stars of the period in an unfamiliar setting, but it is not a DVD I ever want to see again and now regret the waste of time seeing it for the first time. Not recommended except for the very curious with time on their hands.
ROBERT WARDELL