Up In Arms (1944)

Danny Kaye, Dinah Shore, Dana Andrews
produced by Goldwyn

and... IT WAS!!

Danny Kaye made some really shitty movies.  After I'd seen a couple of his flicks I did a google search to find a bio, and most of them read, "Danny Kaye was absurdly talented..."  Why mention that a guy was talented?  Shouldn't his work speak for itself?  No one writes, "Elias Kazan was a genius of film and theatre".  Or they do, but they're more likely to say, "Elias Kazan directed award-winning classics such as...". 

Up In Arms vacillates between brilliance and stupidity; one moment you have a zoot-suited Kaye surrounded by twelve gorgeous Goldwyn girls sipping a milkshake in a psychedelic dream sequence, and then fifteen minutes later he singlehandedly captures a Japanese batallion in a physical comedy act so dumb it wouldn't impress a five year old.  According to bio I read, Kaye's wife had some words with Goldwyn over the quality of the script, but he ignored her.  Which is strange, come to think of it.  Goldwyn pours all this money into costumes, sets, and technicolor film and yet he can't hire a better writer?  Don't get me wrong, I love my HD rip of Walter Mitty, it's just so pretty!  And yet, so many missed opportunities...

Dinah Shore is a real draw for this one; she's got sass, spunk and a great voice.  She needs all she can get; like Kaye, she's not exactly working with quality material either.  I don't think I've made it through her first number, ever, which I somewhat regret because I think the lyrics have something to do with the story.   The second song she sings isn't too bad though; she spices it up pretty good.  I like the spirit fingers at the end.

Constance Dowling plays the pretty girl, and she does a great job.  Dana Andrews plays the best friend, and he's solid as always.  The sets are nice and there are plenty of perfectly manicured beautiful women standing about in bathing suits (Dana Andrews excuses this with a witty aside).

this picture has absolutely no dramatic significance whatsoever

The best part of Up In Arms is the Broadway-style musical numbers.  I'd never seen a scat number before I saw this movie, probably because Goldwyn had no taste, didn't know he didn't have any taste, and while he hired all these great jazz talents to work together in these movies, they didn't scat because he wouldn't let them because he didn't like it because he had no taste.  I am not making this up, you can read all about it in this book here.  Kaye himself never scatted again until 1959, when he had his own production company and could call the shots.

Up in Arms is weird, campy, stupid, inspired, and has people singing and dancing in it, which is pretty much everything I like in a movie.  And that moment when Kaye screams "NOOOOO!!!"  and runs up the theater lobby staircase is just priceless.  Yes!