Swing It, Sailor!

"Swing It, Sailor!" is an awfully poor film even if it is a B-movie. The characters range from unlikable to stupid to really annoying--and who wants to watch a film with folks like these in the main roles?!

The film begins on a navy ship. Two sailors are apparently pals--Pete (Wallace Ford) and Ray Mayer (Husky). Pete is a complete jerk that continually uses his 'pal' and this is the case through most of the movie. And, Husky is too addle-brained to figure this out for himself. Pete tries to steal a trampy lady who Husky THINKS is his girlfriend, but Myrtle (Isabel Jewell) is just a selfish jerk. And, Isabel has a lady friend she pawns off on Husky--and she's a boorish jerk. With all these nasty, selfish people you wonder why the film was made in the first place. And, after watching it, I am STILL wondering!

The bottom line is that the filmmakers took a familiar formula and ruined it by making the slick and selfish friend too slick and selfish. Even in spite of the selfless act near the end of the film, Ford's character was just nasty and you wonder how anyone could be foolish enough to have him as a friend! Unconvincing and difficult to like from start to finish.

Oh, and I noticed that one reviewer didn't like the film but did like the parrot. I hated the parrot...so I didn't even have that to like. And, combined with terrible sound and picture quality with this Alpha Video release, I wonder why I even bothered with this one.

By any standard, this is a lousy movie. Even the usually awful-film-saving Wallace Ford is lost here. He and Ray Mayer have a kind of Abbott and Costello go at being sailors, with Ford in the Bud Abbott role of unsympathetic lead who takes advantage of his partner at every turn. The difference is that Lou Costello was a master comedian with a certain sympathetic underdog quality, whereas Ray Mayer is an absolute cipher on the screen. Who cares who takes advantage of this guy? The reason to force yourself to give it a viewing is the presence, in a leading role for a change, of an actress I consider to have been perhaps the most criminally wasted of the entire Hollywood talking era - Isabel Jewell. Ms. Jewell was almost like a female and younger version of Thomas Mitchell. Mitchell had tremendous acting range coming out of a face, voice and body that would normally have marked him as a constant bartender in films, but we know what he accomplished. Similarly, a much younger Isabel Jewell, with the face, body and voice of, at best, an undersized salesgirl in a B film exhibited tremendous range whenever she got the chance. Just think of a few of the roles she put her mark on: The shy little seamstress not understanding why she must go to the guillotine with Ronald Colman in A TALE OF TWO CITIES (she's not in the film more than five minutes and almost walks away with the end of it); the motor-mouthed and very funny secretary in COUNSELLOR-AT-LAW (holding her own throughout the film against what may be John Barrymore's finest film performance); the redeemed prostitute in LOST HORIZON; the quietly unsettling fortune teller, ever present cigarette dangling from her mouth, in THE LEOPARD MAN etc., yet no one ever seemed to know what to do with her to take full advantage of her talents and build her into a real character star (they certainly knew what to do with Thomas Mitchell!). Anyway, here she is a gold-digging sailor-catcher, maybe in it (according to her roommate) for her paramours' insurance policies, yet she becomes human and funny as the film progresses, most especially when she sticks her new dog right into Wallace Ford's face as he leans forward for a goodnight kiss, and then yelps a delightful laugh at his shock as she pulls back Fido and shuts the door on him. Misused, certainly, but I will watch any film she's in, which is the sure and certain only reason I got through this one at all.

Sailor Ray Mayer wants to get married to Isabel Jewel, but his buddy, Wallace Ford, likes to have him around to do all the work. While Mayer is in the brig for something Ford did, Ford visits Jewel to tell her off, and winds up falling for the dame himself.

There are a few comedy gags competently performed in this one, but while Miss Jewel and her room mate, Mary Treen, have good comic timing, between Ford's lugubrious delivery and Mayer's dull character, and there's little in the way of sympathetic characters. In fact, the best jokes are from a "Chinese parrot" that Mayer gives to Jewel as a gift.

It's a purely by-the-numbers effort from director Raymond Cannon, who often wrote as well as directed his B movies. His career ended in 1945, although he lived another quarter century.

In the US Navy, selfish sailor Wallace Ford (as Pete Kelly) takes advantage of dimmer-witted pal Ray Mayer (as Husky Stone). When Mr. Ford is assigned undesirable duties, he manages gets Mr. Mayer to do all the work. After a paint-job lands Mayer in the brig, Ford begins to fear his mate might marry shapely San Francisco blonde Isabel Jewell (as Myrtle Montrose), one of the many "skirts" Mayer chases. Ford goes to see the Ms. Jewell, a brassy "dame" who enjoys the company of several men. Ford finds himself attracted to Ms. Jewell while her gangly companion Mary Treen (as Gertie "Gert" Burns) seems left without a partner. The parrot steals the show by squawking "Mad dog, mad dog!" in a crowded pet store.

*** Swing It, Sailor! (2/4/38) Raymond Cannon ~ Wallace Ford, Ray Mayer, Isabel Jewell, Mary Treen