This is the Army (1943) DVD5 - Wartime Musical - Subs-Eng-Francais -Joan Leslie, Ronald Raegan [DDR]

This Is the Army is a 1943 American wartime musical comedy film produced by Hal B. Wallis and Jack L. Warner, and directed by Michael Curtiz, adapted from a wartime stage musical with the same name, designed to boost morale in the U.S. during World War II, directed by Ezra Stone. The screenplay by Casey Robinson and Claude Binyon was based on the 1942 Broadway musical by Irving Berlin, who also composed the film's 19 songs and broke screen protocol by singing one of them. The movie features a large ensemble cast, including George Murphy, Joan Leslie, Alan Hale, Sr., Rosemary DeCamp, and Ronald Reagan, while both the stage play and film included soldiers of the U.S. Army who were actors and performers in civilian life.

    CAST:-
    George Murphy as Jerry Jones
    Joan Leslie as Eileen Dibble
    George Tobias as Maxie Twardofsky
    Alan Hale, Sr. as Sgt. McGee
    Charles Butterworth as Eddie Dibble
    Dolores Costello as Mrs. Davidson
    Una Merkel as Rose Dibble
    Stanley Ridges as Maj. John B. Davidson
    Rosemary DeCamp as Ethel Jones
    Ruth Donnelly as Mrs. O'Brien
    Dorothy Peterson as Mrs. Nelson
    Gertrude Niesen as WWI Vocalist
    Ronald Reagan as Cpl. Johnny Jones

  As Themselves:
    Irving Berlin
    Frances Langford
    Joe Louis
    Kate Smith
    Ezra Stone

Directed by Michael Curtiz
Produced by Hal B. Wallis, Jack L. Warner
Written by Irving Berlin, Casey Robinson
Music by Ray Heindorf, Max Steiner
Running time 121 minutes

MOVIE PLOT:- This is the Army (1943)
The storyline was added for the film; the stage version was simply a plotless revue. In World War I, the musical Yip Yip Yaphank is a rousing success. During the show, it is learned that the troop has received its orders to ship off to France, and thus the end number is changed so that the soldiers march through the theater with their rifles and gear and out into the waiting convoy of trucks. Jones kisses his new bride on the way down the aisle.

In the war, several of the soldiers in the production are killed. Jerry Jones is wounded in France, by shrapnel during a German artillery barrage. He loses the full use of one of his legs, ending his career as a dancer and must walk with a cane. Nevertheless he is resolved to find something useful to do. Sgt. McGee and Pvt. Eddie Dibble, the bugler, also survive.

Twenty-five years later, with World War II raging in Europe, Jones' son Johnny enlists in the Army shortly after Pearl Harbor is attacked. He tells his sweetheart that they cannot marry until he returns, since he doesn't want to make her a widow. He grudgingly accepts the order to stage another musical, just as his father did. The show goes on tour around the United States and eventually plays in front of President Roosevelt (Jack Young) in Washington, D.C.. During the show, it is announced that the Washington, D.C. performance will be the last night, and that afterwards the soldiers in the production will be ordered back to their combat units.

Johnny's erstwhile fiancée, who has since joined the Red Cross auxiliary, appears at the show. During a break in the show, she brings a minister and convinces them that they should marry - which they do, in the alley behind the theater, with their fathers as witnesses.

In May 1941, ex-Sergeant Irving Berlin was on tour at Camp Upton, his old Army base in Yaphank, New York during World War I. There he spoke with the commanding officers, including Capt. A.H. Rankin of Special Services, about restaging his original 1917 Army play, Yip! Yip! Yaphank.[2] Gen. George Marshall approved a Broadway production of a wartime musical for the army, allowing Berlin to conduct the arrangements and rehearsals at Camp Upton much like he had done during World War I. Sgt. Ezra Stone was selected as director for the new contemporary play, and the two set up on base during the weekdays to put together the story and crew. Insisting on integration, Berlin was granted the chance to add African Americans into this play, which he was not allowed to do in Yip, Yip Yaphank. This would not be unconventional for Berlin, but it would be for the United States Army—no whites and African Americans would appear on stage simultaneously. Though progressive in that regard, Berlin was still planning on opening with a minstrel skit. Ezra Stone told his civilian boss that it would be impossible to get 110 men out of blackface in time for the next number. Casting aside his minstrel show, Berlin instead wrote a "new" "Puttin' on the Ritz", calling it "That's What the Well-Dressed Man in Harlem Will Wear".

The retooled play ran on Broadway, at the Broadway Theatre from July 4, 1942 to September 26, 1942. The show was directed by Sgt. Ezra Stone, choreographed by Cpl. Nelson Barclift and Sgt. Robert Sidney.

The show was such a success that it went on the road. The national tour of the revue ended in San Francisco, CA on February 13, 1943. By that time, it had earned $2 million ($23 million in 2006 dollars[4]) for the Army Emergency Relief Fund. The company of men that staged the play were the only Army outfit to be fully integrated, but only so off-stage.
Production

The title of the movie is the same as the title of the stage version of the show. The movie features star appearances by Irving Berlin, Kate Smith, Frances Langford and Joe Louis as themselves. If Washington, D.C. officials did not like the idea of a musical/revue about the Army, playwright Irving Berlin was ready to call it This Is the Navy, or This Is the Air Corps. Smith's full-length rendition of Berlin's "God Bless America" is arguably the most famous cinematic rendition of the piece. Louis appears in a revue piece called "What the Well-Dressed Man in Harlem Will Wear", with James Cross (lead singer and dancer), William Wycoff (dancer in drag), Marion Brown (heavyset dancer), and a chorus of perhaps a dozen, the only spoken/sung scene that includes African-Americans. Louis also appears in two other scenes, one in a boxing match, and the second being the stage door canteen number (he did not speak in either scene).

One of the film's highlights is Irving Berlin himself singing his song "Oh! How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning", a scene borrowed from Yip! Yip! Yaphank!.

The celebrity impersonation "hamburger" sequence includes accurate spoofs of Broadway stars Jane Cowl, Lynn Fontanne, Alfred Lunt and Ethel Barrymore, and film stars Charles Boyer and Herbert Marshall.

The revue pieces also include acrobat routines, several comedy pieces, including one with Hale in drag, a minstrel show sketch (often removed from consumer videos and television broadcasts), and tributes to the Navy and the Air Corps.

Although the core of the movie consists of the musical numbers, the movie also contains a veneer of a plot involving the wartime love interests of both the father and the son.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS:-
Video Codec: MPEG-2
Video Bitrate: 3345 kbps
Video Resolution: 720x480
Video Aspect Ratio: 1.333:1
Frames Per Second: 29.970
Audio Codec:  AC3
Audio Bitrate: 192kb/s CBR 48000 Hz
Audio Streams:  1
Audio Languages: English
RunTime 121 mins
Subtitles: English, Francais
Ripped by: Trinidad [DDR]