From MGM, Ship Ahoy is an American musical-comedy film directed by Edward Buzzell and starring Eleanor Powell and Red Skelton.
I've posted about the incredible talents of Eleanor Powell in her trio of Broadway Melody films. Eleanor Powell was an extraordinary dancer whoses talents and skills left even Fred Astaire feeling intimidated.
Those predicious skills are on display in Ship Ahoy which even includes a sequence where Eleanor uses her tap dance talents to fight Nazis!
We hate Nazis!
Eleanor Powell is Tallulah Winters, a tap dancing tornado, a dancing delight, princess of the promendade.
She's a dancer, we get it.
She's part of a musical revue headed up by Tommy Dorsey AND his orchestra. A revue that has been booked to perform at a new night club in Puerto Rico and on a ship that will take them there.
Then Tallulah gets summoned to the office of U.S. government agents. They need Tallulah to transport a magnetic mine to Puerto Rico and get it past enemy agents who are looking to steal it!
Well, there is a war on, you know.
Tallulah is a bit recalcitrant at first but agrees to do it!
She's proud to help America in the war effort.
Alas, poor Tallulah is a dupe.
The U.S. government agents are really Nazi agents. (And how do we feel about Nazis? WE HATE THEM!!!). They need Tallulah to transport the magnetic mine to Puerto Rico to get it past American agents who are looking to get it back.
One of the Nazis (HATE!! THEM!!!) confesses to getting the idea to use Tallulah like this from a comic book.
Speaking of that comic book...
Red Skelton enters the picture as comic book writer Merton Kibble who is super burned out from writing three comic books simultaneously and gets booked on a cruise ship to Puerto Rico to recover his wits.
Yes, Merton and Tallulah will cross paths, fall in love and eventually the script writer of Ship Ahoy will remember that Tallulah is smuggling a (checks notes) magnetic mine to help (checks notes) win the war. (There's a war on, you know.) And Merton gets entangled in real life in the plot he made up for a comic book.
The magnetic mine plot is just a McGuffin to hang a movie that is mostly dedicated to the tap dancing prowess of Eleanor Powell, the swing stylings of Tommy Dorsey AND his orchestra and the comic pratfalls by Red Skelton.
Tallulah gets wise to who are really the good guys and the bad guys (who are Nazis who we HATE!).
Unfortunately the bad guys have their evils eyes on Tallulah while she's dancing onstage and she needs to get a message through to the good guys that the enemy spies have the mine and are preparing to escape.
So she sends that message through... the POWER of DANCE!!!
Tallulah taps dances in Morse Code who is doing what when and where!
Damn! Eleanor Parker is frickin' awesome!!
Suffice to say the bad guys (WE HATE NAZIS!!) are vanquished and the last scene is set in front of a Navy recruiting stations with Eleanor, Red, Tommy Dorsey AND his orchestra and a bunch of sailors performing "Last Call For Love".
Did everyone join the Navy?
Well, there is a war on, you know.
The closing credits include an appeal to buy war bonds.
The "It's That Person Who Was In That Thing" Department
Yes, that is an uncredited Frank Sinatra singing with Tommy Dorsey's band. A brief appearance, yes, but significant enough to draw attention to MGM to maybe start putting this guy in some movies.
If Merton's pal/agent/assistant Skip Owens sounds familiar, well, it might be because you might know him better as this:
The object of Skip's romantic adoration is Tallulah's friend and fellow dancer, Fran Evans played by Virginia O'Brien. When singing her part of the musical number "Poor Me", one might wonder why she doesn't move her face or her body. Well, it was part of a regular schtick Virginia employed that usually got her big laughs. We've run into Virginia before in Du Barry Was a Lady.
Andrea and I went into Ship Ahoy with no foreknowledge of this movie at all. Mostly, we like to watch Eleanor Powell dance. She's really good at it and has such a damn good time doing it.
Ship Ahoy is a thin movie hung on a thin premise and is clearly an exercise by MGM to keep Eleanor Powell out and in front of something, anything.
At the time of it's release, Variety was less kind. Their review was as follows: "The names on the marquee will mean a fair amount of business for this musical, though the asinine story and treatment, plodding direction and some rather poor performances would ordinarily scuttle a film like Ship Ahoy? If ever a picture in recent years looked as though it was shot off the director's cuff, this is it."
Ouch!
To be honest, I kind of agree with that assessment but as slight as it may have been, it was still mostly fun. Dumb fun, mind you, but fun.
To round out today's post, here's a clip of Eleanor Powell in her signature gender bending white tuxedo in the Morse Code tap dance sequence.
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