Hollywood Canteen

Hollywood Canteen (1944) tells the story of the eponymous club for enlisted men and women formed in the aftermath of America's entry into World War 2. While the movie - as well as the contemporary press - focused on the contributions of actors and actresses in its founding, the movie does highlight the important contributions of the craftspeople behind the camera - and their guilds - in bringing the Hollywood Canteen to fruition.

To tell the story of the Hollywood Canteen, write Delmer Daves - who is also the director - employs two actors, Robert Hutton (Slim) and Dane Clark (Sgt. Nowland). They play GIs wounded in the Pacific Theater who come home on a hospital ship. They have a few days' leave in LA before heading off to San Francisco for further assignment. Slim's girl back home stopped writing to him, so he has transferred his affections to starlet Joan Leslie (whom you may remember playing Jimmy Cagney's sister, Mary, in 1942's Yankee Doodle Dandy). Since this is Hollywood, Slim gets to meet Ms. Leslie on his first night at the Hollywood Canteen. He returns the next night and, as coincidence still would have it, is the canteen's Millionth Customer, which wins him a bunch of smooches from admiring actresses, use of a car for the weekend, and a date with Joan Leslie. (What are the odds!)

His buddy, Sgt. Nowland, is having much less luck with the ladies, and indeed swears off women for the duration. However, his luck turns as he next dances with our heroine, none other than Ms. Joan Crawford! Joan's cameo - her initial role for a new studio, Warner Brothers - is about halfway through the movie, which clocks in at a little over 2 hours. After a few steps across the ballroom, Nowland inquires of his dance partner as to whether "Anybody ever tell you you look like Joan Crawford?" to which she replies, "Why yes, my husband has." (Given the time this was filmed, that would be Philip Terry.) After a little more dancing, JC lets him in on a secret "Don't look now, but, I AM Joan Crawford," at which point our hero faints. (Can't say I blame him; I would have done the same thing!)

Joan made 4 similar movies in her career. In chronological order: The Hollywood Revue of 1929 (1929), The Stolen Jools (1931), this movie, and 1949's It's a Great Feeling. But in my estimation, Canteen is less entertaining than Joan's other similar efforts. Canteen is more like Revue than anything else Joan did. However, Revue was a true variety show with an MC introducing the segments and no unifying plot; in Canteen, the adventures of Slim and Sgt. Nowland provide a thin thread to string together the song and dance scenes and the cameos. The Stolen Jools has a similarly thin story line, but it's only, appropriately, 20 minutes long. IAGF is a fun movie and Joan's poking fun at her own image is hilarious. And, although Revue also clocks in at 2+ hours long, Joan's bit is only 6 minutes in, and it occupies an important place in the Joan filmography - her first talking role - making it a definite must-see for Joan fans.

There are a few amusing bits here in Canteen. For example, I enjoyed the Roy Rogers and Trigger rendition of "Don't Fence Me In." (I wonder if Mr. Rogers realized that Joan's 1931 movie, Montana Moon, introduced the concept of the singing cowboy. Hope he thanked her!) Old school vaudeville pros like Eddie Cantor and Joe E. Brown seem to be in their element in Canteen. Jack Benny - who was one of the MCs in Joan's Hollywood Revue of 1929 - appears here, as well, although his bit goes on a bit too long. (And in other Joan-centric news, Robert Hutton, who plays GI Slim, has the distinction of being in Trog [1970], Joan's last big screen effort.)

As mentioned above, Delmer Daves had what I am guessing were the thankless jobs of writing and directing this film. I don't know much about Daves apart from the fact that he appears several times in the diary of one of my other favorite classic Hollywood divas, Kay Francis. Ms. Francis - the queen of the lot at WB before Bette Davis came along - had a long string of lovers and gave Delmer high marks for his performances. Not sure his screenplay/directing performance here is up to the same standard, but I am also not sure how much can be done with such a "cast of thousands"-type movie.

I gave Revue 2 stars. I gave It's a Great Feeling 3 stars. This is closer to the former, so 2 stars it is. And that's being generous.

In late June 1943, Joan left MGM after 18 years. Two days later, she was put on the Warners payroll with a 6-year contract for a 3-picture, $500,000 deal. (Joan would stay under contract at Warners until 1952.)

Hollywood Canteen, a WW II "Support the troops!" propaganda picture, was the first film Joan made for her new studio, although she only appears for less than 2 minutes, along with dozens of other top Warners stars. The film is based on the goings-on at the real-life Hollywood Canteen, founded by Bette Davis and John Garfield and located at 1451 Cahuenga Blvd in Hollywood from 1942 through 1945.

To get right to the Joan-gist: Joan's brief cameo occurs about an hour into the film; she's wearing a blouse with a hideous cartoon cat sprawled across both the front and back. After overhearing soldier Dane Clark say that he's "off women for the duration," Joan says: "Isn't that an unfortunate attitude to have at the Hollywood Canteen?" After she asks him to dance, he first offers to name the cat on her shirt, then: "Has anyone ever told you you look like Joan Crawford?" She replies: "Well, yes, my husband has." Clark doesn't really think she's Joan, but when she reveals she actually is, he literally faints. Thus is Joan's uber-bland beginning of her new Warners career---which thankfully would soon get more exciting with the next year's Mildred Pierce!

The whole film is primarily a series of cameos by Warners stars (e.g., wisecracks by Joe E. Brown and Eddie Cantor; funny menacing by Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre; soldiers flirting with the likes of Barbara Stanwyck, Jane Wyman, Ida Lupino) interspersed with a variety of musical numbers that include the following:

Jack Carson and Jane Wyman: "What Are You Doin' the Rest of Your Life"
Golden Gate Quartet: "General Jumped at Dawn"

Sons of the Pioneers ("Tumbling Tumbleweeds"---after which the Middle American main character Slim Green [played by Robert Hutton] says "I really go for that Cowboy music." Responds Brooklynite Dane Clark: "Yeah, it reminds me of Flatbush.")

Roy Rogers and Trigger: "Don't Fence Me In." (With Trigger doing tricks before and after.)

Andrews Sisters: "Corns for My Country" and "Don't Fence Me In."
Dennis Morgan (joined by Joe E. Brown): "You Can Always Tell a Yank." (Patriotic group dance/sing-a-long. Song definitions of a True Yank = Honest, Hates a crank!)
Joan Leslie: "Sweet Dreams, Sweetheart" (reprised at end by Kitty Carlisle)

A "violin battle" of "Souvenir" between classical violinist Joseph Szigeti and Jack Benny.

Actual Canteen founders Davis and Garfield pop up time and time again to sign autographs, do dishes, announce winners of contests, etc. Bette closes out the movie as a ghostly presence superimposed on the screen over a shot of the Canteen, intoning to all Allied soldiers (including "our own colored boys," Russians, Philippinos, et al): "Wherever you go, our hearts go with you..."

The musical numbers are mildly entertaining enough, with a wide selection of styles (from schmaltz to modern swing to country to classical) designed to appeal to all segments of the population. But I did get mightily annoyed with a few things:

Stereotypical Middle-American Boy (played by Robert Hutton as "Corporal Green") and his stereotypical wisecracking Brooklyn buddy (Dane Clark) get a 3-day leave in Hollywood, where Hutton sincerely expresses to one and all his puppyish devotion to Warners starlet Joan Leslie. Lo and behold! Here she is at the Canteen! And she sings to him! And they fall in love! And she takes him home to meet, and pray with, her parents! At the end, she sees Corporal Green off at the train station after his leave is up, implying that, though she's an up-and-comer in Hollywood, she will, nonetheless, wait for him to come back from the war. I found all of this pretty unrealistic and condescending to the viewing public, as in: "See! You, too, Average Joe, can really have a Hollywood star fall in love with you!" Dane Clark's wise-guy does provide some needed relief from the saccharine love of Hutton and Leslie, with his kvetching and ongoing pursuit of a starlet-wannabe who claims "I live for my art!" (while actually working as a studio messenger girl).

All of the Big Warners Stars at the Canteen are a bit too self-congratulatory about being so utterly patriotic and "democratic." Aside from the numerous patriotic speeches, this overwrought aspect of the film is stated outright when Dane Clark's lowly Brooklyn man is oh-so-grateful for "all the famous people being friendly and democratic." Most of the Warners stars that appear, both male and female, are overtly portrayed as "good eggs" who aren't too big to wait tables or do the dishes but are, nonetheless, pretty condescending, as if seemingly thinking to themselves: "Oh, look how kind we are to the Little People who can't properly dance or speak French!" Even Joan looks askance at poor Dane!

This bit occurs when Hutton and Clark are given a tour of the Warners lot. Hutton sees a love scene with Joan Leslie and Zachary Scott (after which Scott unpleasantly wipes his mouth) and gets jealous (OK, that's still kind of relevant to the boring plot), while Clark's Messenger Girl takes him to McCracken performing a lengthy pouting and bow-legged dance--- "Ballet in Jive." McCracken (of recent Oklahoma! fame and wife of Jack Dunphy, Capote's later long-time lover) was, of course, a recent acquisition of Warners, which they felt the need to show off here. There's absolutely no reason for this sequence being in the film.

Hollywood Canteen's director Delmer Daves also wrote the weak screenplay for the film (in addition to writing the previous year's Stage Door Canteen, the similar Broadway-star version of entertaining the troops). Despite its blatant shortcomings, Hollywood Canteen was Warners' top-grossing film (and the nation's 5th-grossing) for 1944.