Certainly the template for Reveille with Beverly was nothing new. The concept of a musical revue tied together by a minimal plot had become a film genre unto itself since 1929 with The Broadway Melody and in the case of Reveille with Beverly, it's the phenomenal musical talent on display that makes this a unique pop culture time capsule. For one thing, it features Frank Sinatra, minus the Tommy Dorsey orchestra, in his first movie appearance as a solo vocalist. He sings "Night and Day" accompanied by an orchestra of chorus girls posing as violinists and pianists. The other highlights include Count Basie and his band performing "One O'Clock Jump," Bob Crosby and his musicians deliver a "Big Noise from Winnetka", the Duke Ellington band pay tribute to the Billy Strayhorn composition, "Take the 'A' Train" (which is visualized as a railway club car and not the famous New York City subway line), Ella Mae Morse, backed by the Freddie Slack Orchestra, performs a suggestive rendition of "Cow-Cow Boogie" and the Mills Brothers get to shine in two numbers - the Spanish standard "Cielito Lindo" presented in a stylized "Deep South" setting and "Sweet Lucy Brown" which is just a foreshadowing of the rhythm and blues craze that erupted full-force in the fifties. The icing on the cake is provided by Ms. Miller in a big production tap dance number at the finale - "Thumbs Up and V for Victory."
The only low point is the specialty act, The Radio Rogues (comprised of Jimmy Hollywood, Eddie Bartell & Henry Taylor), whose brand of airwaves comedy combines vocal impersonations of famous celebrities (Amos 'n Andy, James Cagney, W.C. Fields) with vaudeville skit humor. The group was clearly a favorite with radio listeners of the thirties but their on-screen antics in Reveille with Beverly will most likely elicit groans from contemporary viewers. Still, everything in the film zips along at a fast clip under the direction of Charles Barton, who rarely got off the B-movie treadmill except for an occasional Walt Disney feature (The Shaggy Dog [1959], Toby Tyler, or Ten Weeks with a Circus [1960]. Barton would go on to direct Ann Miller in two more flag-waving musicals for WWII audiences - Hey, Rookie [1944] and Jam Session [1944] - but his biggest success came with a series of Abbott and Costello comedies including the trend-setting Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948).
Like Barton, Ann Miller paid her dues in the B-movie unit at Columbia Studios. In her autobiography co-written with Norma Lee Browning - Miller's High Life - the actress wrote "Harry Cohn was known as one of the most hated men in Hollywood. He kept a riding crop on his desk which he was apt to pick up and crack at anyone who got out of line. But I always felt that his bark was much worse than his bite. He put me in a little nothing-picture called Go West, Young Lady [1941]...And thus began my reign at Columbia as Queen of the Bees, as I became known, for turning out quickie B pictures during those early years of World War II."
Miller has little to say about most of the B movies she made at Columbia but she did note "among my most notable ones was a happy-hearted little film called Reveille with Beverly, which really cleaned up at the box office, racking in millions more than the $400,000 which Columbia spent to make it...The movie was a smash hit among the armed forces. And not only because of Ann Miller. It featured some of the biggest bands in a big-band era...it also featured a new young singer in his very first motion picture, Frank Sinatra. I'll never forget it. A record would start to spin, then the cameras would pan into the record while the voice came on, and then to Frank's face with a big band backing him up. Even way back then he was great, his voice sent tingles up your spine. And to think the name Ann Miller (as well as a few others) topped him in the billing. How times do change!"
As for behind the scenes anecdotes, Miller does provide one in her autobiography which could easily have turned into a personal tragedy. "When I was doing Reveille with Beverly, real flames of fire were supposed to spring up behind me as I twirled my way up and down a V for Victory platform. But sometimes the man who controlled the fire turned a flame on in front of me and I would have to leap out of the way. And once I didn't leap quite fast enough and ended up with a singed costume, eyelashes, and hair after my big finale."
Producer: Sam White
Director: Charles Barton
Screenplay: Albert Duffy, Howard J. Green, Jack Henley
Cinematography: Philip Tannura
Film Editing: James Sweeney
Art Direction: Lionel Banks
Music: John Leipold
Cast: Bob Crosby and His Orchestra, Count Basie, Duke Ellington and His Orchestra, Ann Miller (Beverly Ross), Douglas Leavitt (Mr. Ross), Adele Mara (Evelyn Ross).
BW-78m.
by Jeff Stafford
