Main Cast: Ann Miller, Larry Parks, Joe Sawyer, Jimmy Little
Release Year: 1944
Country: US
Run Time: 77 minutes
Plot
Musical star Ann Miller plays a Broadway leading lady coaxed into reteaming with Larry Parks, her former producer. Parks is now a lowly Army G.I., anxious to produce a show for the troops--with a 200 dollar budget! This being a wartime musical, Ann Miller succumbs to Patriotism and stars in Parks' threadbare production. This being a Hollywood film, the "inexpensive" revue cost several times as much as any real-life show of this nature. Hey Rookie proved a boon to the Columbia publicity department when Ann Miller set a tap-dance record of 550 taps per minute in her climactic musical number. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
Larry Parks is the nominal star of Hey, Rookie, along with Ann Miller, and the two do have a lot to do, to be sure -- and they're very good in their respective roles. But roly-poly comic Joe Besser nearly steals the picture from under them as an inept army recruit, evoking ripples of laughter with his slapstick antics, even among twenty-first century audiences. He also manages to co-opt a comic march and drilling sequence that was perfected by Abbott & Costello in Buck Privates and put enough that's new and different about it so that it's worth watching anew in his hands. Add to that the presence of a young Jack Gilford doing a superb stand-up routine, and Miller's dancing, and you have a piece of period entertainment whose virtues transcend the era of its origin. There's also a chance to see character actor Joe Sawyer in a singing role, and lots of slapstick involving comic actor Sid Saylor. Additionally, the film of Hey, Rookie is one of the few service stage musicals of its period that is extant today, and offers a glimpse on a unique aspect of American popular culture from World War II -- and it can be enjoyed on that level of pure nostalgia, as well as for its sheer fun and musical delights. And any musical that casts Joe Besser in an Arabian Nights-inspired dance sequence with Ann Miller definitely has a good sense of what's funny on a timeless level. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
Lionel Banks - Art Director, Edward Eliscu - Associate Producer, Henry Myers - Associate Producer, Jay Gorney - Associate Producer, Stanley Donen - Choreography, Val Raset - Choreography, Charles Barton - Director, James Sweeney - Editor, Henry Myers - Composer (Music Score), Jay Gorney - Composer (Music Score), Morris W. Stoloff - Musical Direction/Supervision, Joseph Kish - Production Designer, Lewis William O'Connell - Cinematographer, Irving Briskin - Producer, Joseph Kish - Set Designer, Edward Eliscu - Screenwriter, Henry Myers - Screenwriter, Jay Gorney - Screenwriter, Doris Culvan - Play Author, K.E.B. Culvan - Play Author
