Two Girls and a Sailor: A Review (Review #2226)

TWO GIRLS AND A SAILOR

In terms of an all-star cast, you can turn to Two Girls and a Sailor. Jose Iturbe! Gracie Allen! Harry James AND Xavier Cugat! Lena Horne! An uncredited Ava Gardner! All in one film, where they don't add much if anything to the thin plot. Two Girls and a Sailor may not be original or good. It has not one but two of my least favorite performers from the so-called Golden Age of film. It is also longer than what the thin plot can hold. It is, however, a nice time capsule of World War II America, where big numbers make up for odd stories.

The Deyo Sisters were practically born in a trunk. Older sister Jean has always been protecting younger sister Patsy, down to always pulling Patsy's thumb out of her mouth. Their parents are hoofers, but somewhere along the line their mother died and their father retired. They do meet a fellow vaudevillian, Billy Kipp (Jimmy Durante). He is fond of the girls, but he too disappears from the stage. 

Now, it is the war, and Jean Deyo (June Allyson) and Patsy Deyo (Gloria DeHaven) are making their way on the vaudeville circuit. They have a regular gig at a club where Harry James and Xavier Cugat and their respective bands perform. This floor show can go from the Deyo Sisters doing a lively number to James blowing on his horn to Cugat taking that song to a Latin beat. Jean is also desperate to keep Patsy from falling for every guy who so much as smiles in her general direction. She has to watch over her lovesick sister in both Augustas (Maine and Georgia). Despite this curious friction, the sisters are devoted to each other.

They are also devoted to the various servicemen who go to the club. Jean and Patsy invite dozens of soldiers, sailors and Marines to their apartment virtually every night. No, not for wild orgies, but for song, dance, coffee and donuts (with some booze and sandwiches thrown in). The girls love having the boys over, down to inviting them when they stand outside the club after the show ends. One of those boys is Frank Miller (Tom Drake), a nice, soft-spoken Texan boy. Another is "Johnny" (Van Johnson), a seemingly shy sailor. In reality, Johnny is John Dykman Brown III, a scion of a very wealthy family. Romances soon start tangling themselves when Patsy falls for Johnny who in turn falls for Jean. Jean too is smitten with Johnny. Frank is in the background, pining for Patsy and I think Jean too.

Jean and Patsy want to open a canteen for servicemen but don't have the money for it. Miraculously, cash comes their way from a mysterious benefactor they nickname "Somebody". This allows them to buy a warehouse they've had their eyes on for some time. They also are astonished to find Billy Kipp there, hiding out after his wife and son left him. The Deyo Sisters open up their canteen, and new romantic entanglements come about. Who will end up with whom? Who is the creepy kid hovering around, who can do a surprising jitterbug? 

Two Girls and a Sailor runs a little over two hours. The Richard Connell and Gladys Lehman screenplay, which was Oscar-nominated, seems too thin to hold a surprisingly simple love quadrangle. That isn't to say that there are not funny moments and lines in Two Girls and a Sailor. Commenting on one of Patsy's potential suitors, Jean remarks that he has "not much hair and too much stomach". When Jean pulls Patsy away from a Latin suitor, Patsy replies, "I was just trying to be a good neighbor". The Good Neighbor Policy found itself namechecked a few times in the film. After Harry James' all-American number, the stage shifts to welcome "our good neighbor, Xavier Cugat". 

To be fair, the visual transition from James to Cugat is a very good transition. Two Girls and a Sailor also has a nice small running gag where Patsy makes impromptu wishes that do come true when it comes to furnishing their canteen. After finding the sad and lonely Billy Kipp, he tells them that he has been squatting in the abandoned warehouse, calling himself "a hermit without a permit". We have a nice montage where various servicemen are invited to the newly opened canteen. "Hey soldiers, food!", a soldier tells his fellow troops. "Hey sailors, drink!", a Navy seaman shouts to his fellow sailors. "Hey Marines, GIRLS!", a third branch calls out. 

In the surprisingly surreal dream sequence Jean has, we have a brief appearance by Ava Gardner as one of the beauties on parade. We also end it with a catfight between Jean and Patsy over Johnny, which I did find funny.

Personally, I find it puzzling that any woman, let alone two, would fight to get at Van Johnson when the much prettier Tom Drake is around. Here is where I will confess that one of the two of those least favorite figures. The other is June Allyson, whose popularity despite (or perhaps because of) her foghorn voice never ceases to puzzle me. I have to be fair in that Allyson was not bad in the film. She had a nice comic manner whenever pulling Patsy out of romantic escapades (and taking Patsy's thumb out of her mouth). However, when she has to perform, such as when she sings Young Man with a Horn to Harry James (who is the title figure), I remember why I dislike her so much. Fair is fair, though, and she was able to cut a rug with a minor character who did nothing but skulk around and frankly gave me the creeps.

Van Johnson's stardom is more puzzling than Allyson's. Two Girls and a Sailor did not show him to be particularly good. He seemed oddly ill at ease whenever he had to woo one or the other. He also seemed an odd fit for someone who was supposed to be a man-about-town mistaken for a poor sailor. Gloria DeHaven, the third figure in our sister act, was quite nice as the perpetually lovestruck Patsy.

I was surprised that Jimmy Durante could show off some dramatic chops in the film. The Great Schnozzola could rattle off lines and songs with his legendary grand manner. He even managed to get his theme song of Inka Dinka Doo into the film. However, when he talks about the reasons that he went into hiding and gave up his career, it was surprisingly moving. He had a few quips while delivering his dramatic monologue. That did not lessen the emotional impact of a man regretting his lost child.

Even if the picture of said child had a honker just like dear old dad.

I think that if one watches Two Girls and a Sailor, it should be as a way to study what and who were popular at the time it was made. The film is full of musical numbers that bear absolutely no relevance to the plot. I figure that many people today would not know who Harry James or Xavier Cugat are. To be fair, James has a few lines, even if he is playing "Harry James". Other musical performers like Ben Blue and the Wilde Sisters would have been wildly popular at the time but would elicit puzzled looks today. It is nice to see Carlos Ramirez sing Granada. It is also hard to imagine that viewers would know the song more than they would the performer.

Normally, shoehorning Lena Horne (billed as a "Specialty") would be a source of criticism. She appears near the end of Two Girls and a Sailor to sing Paper Doll. However, given the structure of Two Girls and a Sailor, I think this would be a rare case where her specific number being cut would not be motivated by racism; many musical numbers could have been cut without interrupting the flow of the story. 

A surprisingly long section that I figure could have served better as a short is Gracie Allen's performance of Concerto for Index Finger. The number itself is amusing. However, like almost all the musical segments in Two Girls and a Sailor, it is just there.

Two Girls and a Sailor could have been shorter. However, I think the point is to have the film loaded with big musical numbers ranging from Latin to jitterbug. Apart from Durante and DeHaven, the film is not particularly well-acted. Still, as a period piece of World War II America, Two Girls and a Sailor is a nice portrait of the times. 

DECISION: C+