Ship Ahoy (1942)

Eleanor Powell is Tallulah White a dancer on tour with Tommy Dorsey when she is recruited to smuggle a magnetic mine to Puerto Rico. But those guys weren’t GI Men, they were Nazi spies! How will Ellie tap dance her way out of this one? Well that’s exactly what she does, tap dancing a coded message from her stage act in Morse code!

Hollywood’s greatest tapdancer headlines another MGM showcase, this one set on a ship with lots of costume parties and nonsense musical interludes. Powell is killing a lot of script in this one but she gets to shine in a few dance numbers. She swings a cape dressed as a matador, and takes center stage in an athletic poolside romp that is sabotaged by a shockingly ugly costume (sholderpads and a doo-rag turban – ugh!) and an even dumber song “I’ll Take Tallulah”, originally called “I love Manila” but when the Japanese Navy took the Philipines the song was re-written! The grass skirt shimmy set to Dorsey’s version of Hawaiian War Chant (Ta-Hu-Wa-Hu-Wai) at the beginning of the movie is just a tease, but WOW she looks sexy in a bikini!

The usual MGM stock company rounds out the cast. Dorsey and orchestra play themselves, sometimes dressed as cossacks. Virginia O’Brien is always a treat, playing against the MGM schmaltz with deadpan sarcasm. Burt Lahr sheds the cowardly lion suit (’Pood ‘em uup! Pood ‘em uup!). Redd Skelton is only mildly annoying. The Pied Pipers share a song with some unknown kid named Frank Sinatra. But a Black vaudville act Stump and Stumpy steal the movie in an unforgettable comedy dance routine.