Stage Door Canteen (1943)

“Is there something wrong with your throat?” “Yeah, there is a lump in it…!” Well no wonder when there are forty hungry soldiers and sailors outside this canteen looking for corned beef and ketchup, and that’s before they have even met the gals like “Eileen” (Cheryl Walker) who are frequenting the place trying to make their last nights before deployment as much fun and memorable as they can. The film is a compendium of cameos and on-stage performances from an array of stars who provided their services to gee up the young people who are about to head off to a conflict from which there may well be no return. Those stories are played out with enthusiasm by a few very boyish actors - epitomised by “Dakota” (William Terry) - who evoke clean cut, polite and respectful characteristics whilst the likes of Ed Wynn and Harpo Marx raise a laugh. George Raft does some washing up; Johnny Weissmuller does likewise without his shirt; Merle Oberon does some charming hosting; Yehudi Menuhin plays a short excerpt of “The Flight of the Bumblebee”; Dame May Whitty and Judith Anderson make what must be briefest appearances of their distinguished careers and there’s a mischievous musical number from Gracie Fields unashamedly taking aim at a musically dwindling number of Japanese pilots. It actually moves along quite well as it offers us a combination of entertainment and sentiment. That latter element isn’t laboured, indeed it’s quite engagingly, even gingerly, delivered by teenagers who come across as greener than anything that ever graced the “Gables”. It’s long, but you can play a 1940s version of “Who’s Wally?” as you try to recognise many of those household names that haven’t necessarily stood the test of time. Katharine Hepburn delivers the coup de grâce at the end, with a lovingly but potently delivered reinforcement of the message that there are tough times ahead, but if everyone pulls their weight then the days of the axis are numbered.