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Anchors Aweigh (1945)
In director George Sidney's and MGM's Technicolored,
Best Picture-nominated, lightweight fluffy musical in the post-war
years (with an Oscar-winning
Best Musical Score), headlining a young and thin
Frank Sinatra who crooned Julie Styne-Sammy Cahn tunes, and also
featuring energetic Best Actor-nominated Gene Kelly (his sole Oscar
nomination in his career) in a star-making role - it was the stars'
first of three film pairings as a musical comedy team, and similar
to Kelly's and Sinatra's later "sailor-buddy" film On
the Town (1949):
- two sailors: experienced "Pomeranian
sailor" and lothario - Gunner's Mate 2nd class Joseph "Joe"
Brady (Gene Kelly) and the innocent, shy and naive Brooklynite
- Seaman First Class Clarence Doolittle (Frank Sinatra), were on
a 4-day shore leave from their ship Knoxville in San Diego,
and the two traveled north to Los Angeles (Hollywood) looking for
love connections
- they met up with straitlaced,
widowed, aspiring opera singer Susan "Susie" Abbott
(Kathryn Grayson) who worked as a film extra, and was befriending
her young, orphaned, 9 year-old runaway nephew Donald Martin (Dean
Stockwell in his film debut) who wished to join the Navy
- some of the tunes included
Sinatra's Oscar-nominated "I Fall
in Love Too Easily" and
"What Makes the Sunset?", and Kelly's magical, extremely-effective
and seamless, live-action
magical dream dance with scene-stealing animated
mouse Jerry, the character from MGM's "Tom and Jerry" cartoons,
in
"The King Who Couldn't Dance (The Worry Song)" number.
Susan sang
"Jalousie" (or "Jealousy") and "(All of
a Sudden) My Heart Sings"
- the bashful Clarence fell hard for Susan, and Joe,
who was chasing after actress/girlfriend Lola (never seen) at the
time, helped him by promising to introduce Susan to her idol --
MGM music producer and famed maestro orchestra conductor José Iturbi
(Himself) - without really knowing him
- however, a love triangle
developed when Joe also began to have feelings for Susan (and she
eventually did have an opportunity to audition with Iturbi), while
Clarence met a more suitable down-to-earth, Brooklynite native match
(Pamela Britton in her film debut, credited as Girl From Brooklyn
and nicknamed "Brooklyn"), a friendly Olvera Street Mexican restaurant
waitress
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Joseph's (Gene Kelly) Live-action Dream Dance With
Animated Mouse Jerry - The Character from MGM's "Tom and Jerry" Cartoons
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