Yesterday I took a rare afternoon off to watch one of the rare musicals we have on the TV these days. This one was Anchors Aweigh! Starring Frank Sinatra, Kathryn Grayson, and Gene Kelly, in which two sailors go on a four-day shore leave in Hollywood, accompanied by music and song, meet an aspiring young singer and try to help her get an audition at MGM. It also had some amazing pianist bloke guest starring as himself, I'd never heard of him but he was very good.
Overall I'd give the film 4/5. My only criticism being that the plot was very thin and similar to On the Town (which was actually made 4 years later and is vastly superior, hello Mr Leonard Bernstein).
On to the positives though. I haven't seen a Kathryn Grayson film before but what an amazing singer she is, really awesome and I can't wait to see another film with her in it.
Frank Sinatra was looking, well...young! He was very good though with splendid singing, of course!
Gene Kelly of course stole the show. I've always been more of a Fred (Astaire) fan myself but Kelly did win me over. I especially enjoyed his dream sequence where he went into a fairytale land and danced with Jerry (of Tom and Jerry fame) very clever and groundbreaking at the time of course!
However my absolute favourite part was the dream sequence dance at the end with Kelly as a bandit and Grayson as a princess. It was a paso doble flavoured dance (because for some reason they were all hanging out in some Mexican quarter of LA, if there is such a thing?) and the choreography, wow, just wow I'm speechless!
Of course there's a happy ending and everybody gets the girl they wanted (one girl with Heidi-esque plaits has managed to tame them by the end of the film!). The little beggar girl and Gene did this amazing dance together too.
Well worth a watch if you have an afternoon free.
Best song: If you knew Susie
Miss Pencil
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