Private Buckaroo

At just over an hour, this film does not exceed its welcome, despite the acquired taste of the Andrews Sisters. Patti, Laverne and Maxene were perky and certainly had good voices, but their screen personalities are either OTT (Patti) or dull (the others). To carry a film, it just doesn't work.

Elsewhere there's Harry James and his Music Makers; Harry gets drafted and the band go with him (even the one with a flat foot), and that's about all the plot is.

There's a funny restaurant sketch, and some nice songs and music, and the film passes the time without making the viewer cringe. It is a typical flagwaver, a patriotic morale-booster.

Oh, and it has a 16-year old Donald O'Connor, showing a flash of promise of what would come later, along with Peggy Ryan.

When Harry James is drafted, the rest of the band joins up in this sweet little Universal musical programmer. It's about half specialty numbers, and half minor plots, with singer Dick Foran thinking he shouldn't have to drill, and Harry James being baffled by having to play a bugle instead of a trumpet. Shemp Howard feuds with Joe E. Lewis over Mary Wickes, and so forth.

There are a lot of songs in this one, but the big production number is the Andrews sisters singing "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree", which breaks into a nicely shot jitterbug dance number, while James and his band mutate the theme from swing to klezmer and back again. Some great acrobatic dancing by a young troupe of dancers; Donald O'Connor and Peggy Ryan are in the movie, but they don't dance.

Brief, light rousing, unpretentious and just the sort of programmer to play on a double bill with THE BUZZARD OF BERLIN.

This is like a Abbott & Costello movie without Abbott & Costello. It's a service comedy only a year removed from "Buck Privates", and features the Andrews Sisters who co-starred with A&C in "Buck Privates", "In the Navy" and "Hold That Ghost". The male lead is Dick Foran, who co-starred in "In the navy", "Ride 'Em Cowboy" and "Keep 'Em Flying". Mark Wickes had a memorable role with Costello in "Hold That Ghost". Shemp Howard played supporting comic lead in a number of A&C pictures including "Who Done It?", "Africa Screams", "In the Navy", "Ride 'em Cowboy" and more, while Jennifer Holt can be seen in "pardon My Sarong" and Peggy Ryan in "Here Come the Co-eds". All that aside, this is a entertaining and fun film to watch. You just have the feeling somebody cut out all of Bud and Lou's scenes!

The cardboard comedy and the pencilled-in plot scarcely have a moment to bore you before the next musical number comes along. Some numbers are better than others-- unfortunately, the title song has not aged well-- but the Andrews Sisters make the movie worthwhile. And Harry James reminds us that he wasn't *only* Betty Grable's husband...

Private Buckaroo, a high-energy, patriotic movie from 1942, has two uses now. The first is to show us the optimism of our elders as they readied themselves to support the troops fighting in WWII. Sure, the jokes are corny, but the musical numbers crank up the confidence with everything from "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree" to "Six Jerks in a Jeep." It's not a bad idea to now and then remind ourselves of what an older generation of Americans were facing.

The second use of the movie is to provide fodder for all those graduate students eager for an easy doctorate in "American Popular Culture," a phenomenon that proves, if the money is right, that American universities will offer degrees in just about anything.

The barest of plots has Harry James being drafted. Naturally, his whole orchestra signs up, too, including Lon Prentice (Dick Foran), his singer who has an attitude adjustment problem. We see the high-jinks of training, a romantic encounter that will serve to straighten Prentice out, and a big show just before the boys ship overseas. All this is just a clothesline to pin on at least 13 musical numbers, and The Andrews Sisters and Harry James do most of them. The comedy intermissions are several. To give you an idea of what Universal's writers were capable of, the three-way romantic laugh relief involves Bonnie-Belle Schlopkiss (a tall and emphatic Mary Wickes), Sergeant Muggsy Sharell (Shemp Howard, who was earlier and later became again one of the Three Stooges) and Lancelot Pringle McBiff (an odd incarnation of stand up comic Joe E. Lewis). Personally, I enjoyed most Huntz Hall as a corporal trying to teach James how to play reveille.

Although some people today can pass by The Andrews Sisters because of their style, particularly Patty Andrews' mugging, the three were expert at close harmony. They have six numbers; all are skillfully delivered with a great deal of verve. As far as Harry James goes, I can't think of a better way to open a movie than James and Helen Forrest giving us the full treatment of "You Made Me Love You." And in one showstopper we have The Jivin' Jacks and Jills, a group of dancing teen-agers formed by Universal to showcase the studio's young talent. The ten kids tap and leap all over the stage to "Apple Tree." The fact that the story line is almost non-existent and that romantic lead Dick Foran, who sounds a bit like a cross between Nelson Eddy and Dennis Morgan, has the personality of a cardboard box really doesn't matter at all.

Doctoral candidates, start writing your dissertation on "The Underlying Significance of B Movies on the Cultural Development of American Civilization During the Formative Years of World War Two, With an Emphasis on the Influence of Teen-Age Tap Dancers on the Defeat of the Axis."