The first half of Anchors Aweigh, a nominee for Best Picture of 1945, is one of those Hollywood films that lends itself very easily to a Queer Studies interpretation. Two sailors from the U.S.S. Knoxville get a four-day leave in Hollywood after receiving medals for their bravery. One of the sailors, a naive young man from New York City named Clarence Doolittle (Frank Sinatra), begins to follow the more experienced Joe Brady (Gene Kelly), hoping to pick up some pointers on how to pick up girls. What follows is a series of misadventures seemingly designed to keep the men together and away from any women.
Joe, for example, plans to meet up with a girl he knows in Los Angeles, the exotically named Lola. Unfortunately, the closest he ever gets to her is the telephone he uses to call her to beg her to let him show up at her home later than expected. By the way, it's always Clarence who keeps Joe from meeting up with Lola. He continually asks for Joe's help, and Kelly's sailor does his best at one point to act like a woman so that Clarence can practice his technique for meeting someone and introducing himself. He even tells Sinatra's Clarence to try to pick him up. A passerby "catches" them in the act, and the men quickly resume more stereotypically masculine behavior, but the film has already set up their relationship as paramount in importance. He then agrees to let Clarence watch him on a date with Lola so that Clarence can become a "wolf" like he is.
Of course, Lola is a difficult woman to please just over the telephone. She tends to reject Joe's offers of affection, thus giving Clarence and Joe more time to be together with each other. Interesting, during one of the phone calls to Lola, while Joe is trying his best to make romantic overtures, Clarence (who is sitting behind Joe) puts his head on Joe's shoulder. In fact, he does so a couple of times, as if Joe were wooing him instead of Lola. He seems to swoon at the romantic words Joe is speaking. Watch the look on his face and see if you don't agree with me.
When the sailors find lodgings for the night, in free beds reserved for servicemen, Joe brags about the women he and Clarence have met. He can't have the other sailors and soldiers realizing that he has spent the entire night with Clarence and has yet to meet up with Lola. These lies about their conquests suggest a form of "homosexual panic" on Joe's part. Clarence seems willing to admit that they haven't had any dates, but Joe bullies his way through the lies he tells. That the two men follow up the story with a dance together probably does little to convince a viewer of their heterosexuality. The next scene even has Sinatra's Clarence watching Kelly's Joe sleeping (wearing only his white t-shirt and boxer shorts, by the way), and when Joe realizes that he has overslept (because Clarence didn't wake him in time), he tries to attack Clarence. Once again, the more naive sailor has prevented the wiser man from completing a rendezvous with a woman, leaving Joe free to spend the day with Clarence again.
Thanks to a little boy who's running away from home to join the Navy (Dean Stockwell playing Donald Martin), Joe and Clarence meet Aunt Susie/Susan Abbott (Kathryn Grayson), a movie extra with aspirations to become a musical star, perhaps under the guidance of bandleader Jose Iturbi, who plays himself in the film. After initially rejecting Susan as not being right for Clarence, Joe cooks up a plan to introduce Susan to Iturbi, whom he and Clarence met on their ship during a medal ceremony. Grayson was a talented singer, no doubt, but her quasi-operatic style--most notably on the song "Jealousy," sung in a Mexican restaurant--is not a particular favorite of mine.
Iturbi shows up quite a lot in the film. The opening sequence has him leading the Navy Band in the title song. Under his direction, the band forms an anchor and even the word "Navy" on the aircraft carrier where the beginning of the film takes place. He also gets a full performance in the middle of the movie as he records a number for a film on which he is working. Here, however, he plays the piano rather than conducts. He also gets a piano number during a morning rehearsal at the Hollywood Bowl--which still looks very much the same--with about a dozen young pianists. It must have been quite a challenge for the filmmakers to come up with new ways to insert Iturbi into a movie like Anchors Aweigh, so you have to give them points for ingenuity. Instead of what could have been merely a cameo, he becomes an integral part of the plot.
Kelly and Sinatra also get to sing and dance. No sense making a movie with one of the world's best dancers and one of the world's best singers without letting them use their talents. I've always liked Kelly's singing voice, and he gets a couple of good numbers here, most notably "We Hate to Leave" (a duet with Sinatra, one of several, actually). Sinatra gets his own numbers to shine, "I Fall in Love Too Easily" and "The Charms of You." Obviously, MGM was attempting to capitalize on Sinatra's success as a vocalist; he's even top-billed above Grayson and Kelly. It's during one of these numbers, also sung in the Mexican restaurant, that he meets a waitress who's also from Brooklyn, played by Pamela Britton. He begins to fall in love with the waitress instead of Susan because he feels so comfortable with her, having come from the same background. Meanwhile, Kelly has been trying to help Clarence and Susan become a couple, but he's fallen under her charms and now wants her for himself. Odd how Clarence really doesn't have all that much in common with Susan despite all of the efforts his pal Joe has made on his behalf.
Unsurprisingly, the "right" people get together at movie's end. It is an MGM musical, after all. Clarence and the waitress become a couple, as do Susan and Joe. Interestingly, though, each man is very reluctant to tell the other about his changed desires. It's almost as if they are ashamed to admit that they have found someone else to love rather than just stay together themselves. Yes, I know that's not what MGM had in mind at all, but the looks they give each other at the end of the film, just after kissing their respective girls, suggest that they still maintain quite an interest in each other's reactions. Despite the attempt at a happy heterosexual ending, the homoerotic possibility remains.
By the way, I don't believe there is such a thing as "overanalyzing." Even Grayson's Susan says to Joe, "You're always with him [Clarence] or talking about him. Why, Joe?" I'm just not sure she really wants the answer to that question, does she?
Overall, Anchors Aweigh still works on one level as a typical musical comedy from the studio system of this time period. Sinatra gets to use his fabled voice to full advantage, and he even manages to survive that dance with Kelly. Kelly gets to dance a few numbers on his own, including a remarkably athletic Spanish/Mexican-influenced number where Grayson is primarily obliged to watch him and wear the largest white lace mantilla that MGM could find in the wardrobe department. Kelly is, as usual, the primary focus whenever a dance number is needed. He did like to wear very snug clothing to show off his physique, didn't he? I suppose that just helps you to see the moves more clearly.
This movie is also another example of just much rapport Kelly had with child actors. He's a natural with Stockwell here, and in the scene where he shows up at Donald's school and tells how he got his medals--it involves him convincing Jerry the Mouse (yes, of Tom and Jerry fame) that he can sing and dance--the kids make for a rapt audience. Near the end of the film, Kelly dances with a young girl on Olivera Street, and they make for a charming couple. He would later use this same skill with kids to great effect in An American in Paris where "I Got Rhythm" becomes a group performance.
I should point out that Anchors Aweigh pays a lot of tribute to the Mexican heritage of Los Angeles. Several scenes take place in Olivera Street, and the Mexican restaurant where Susan is an occasional performer becomes an important part of the plot itself. And Kelly's big number with Grayson as his observer occurs on a movie set made to look like a Mexican villa. I must admit that it was a nice surprise to see how thoroughly MGM managed to incorporate the historical roots of Los Angeles into the film.
Oscar Win: Musical Score
Other Oscar Nominations: Picture, Actor (Kelly), Cinematography (Color), and Original Song ("I Fall in Love Too Easily")
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