I surf with the remote’s guide
button looking for TV shows to record – especially during the holiday season. I
love Christmas programs and this year, I have delighted in the high quality of
the CMA and Michael Bublé Christmas specials. Surfing, surfing, I come across Anchors Aweigh on the Turner Classic
Movies station. Wow!
I first saw that venerable 1945 film in the sixties. I was a
starry-eyed fifteen year old growing up in Australia and I was enchanted! With
the experience of a few years of ballet lessons under my belt, I judged Gene
Kelly’s dancing to be phenomenal. Kathryn Grayson sang an adaptation of a piece
that I had played on the violin: Tchaikovsky’s “Serenade for Strings.” Her
coloratura soprano voice sparkled. Jose Iturbi’s musicality was brilliant as
his fingers flew over the piano keys in a resounding rendition of Tchaikovsky’s
First Piano Concerto – only to be interrupted by a charmingly unpolished
character, played by Frank Sinatra, who crooned along to the tune and argued
with Iturbi that the composer was “Freddy Martin.”
My favorite musical scene in the movie is the extravaganza
where Iturbi plunks out Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 with a bunch of kids,
each at a grand piano placed in a magnificent array on the Hollywood Bowl stage.
The spectacle captured the strings of my Hungarian heart.
In the sixties, in the days before videos, VCRs, On Demand, and
YouTube, it took planning to capture favored moments. When I noted in the TV
Times that Anchors Aweigh was to be
aired again, my younger brother and I mobilized and set up our family’s reel to
reel tape recorder – yep, that was the bulky box you set up on edge with yards
of delicate brown ribbon cellophane tape threaded through the
magnetizer/recorder and spinning onto two huge wheels. We were poised to record
the musical numbers, microphone propped up by the television set. We were
careful to remain silent, stifling our giggles, so we didn’t pick up any extraneous
sounds.
Tom and I were proud of our recording and listened to that
foggy, crackly tape over and over again.
So, as I watched Anchors
Aweigh this week, I remembered that recording effort so many years ago, and
I smiled. But then I took in the movie with fresh eyes. The music and dancing
were still just as brilliant, the plot maybe a little hokey, but heck, I am a
romantic at heart and I’m still looking for a (mature) knight in shining armor,
so why not fantasize and revel in romantic pablum.
What wasn’t pablum was the timeless, outstanding quality of
the movie’s music, choreography, the actors’ talent and artistry, not to
mention the first ever, innovative introduction of animated figures into the
dance sequence with Gene Kelly. I learned new details from TCM host Robert
Osborne: in a rare Disney gaff, Walt declined the offer to use the Mickey and
Donald characters and so Tom and Jerry were cast instead. As a naïve teenager,
I had overlooked many details, so focused had I been on the task of recording –
and trying to keep from giggling into the microphone. Another detail previous
overlooked: the definition of “Aweigh.” I had always assumed the title was
“Anchors Away.”
Now as a sage sexagenarian I am happily picking up and
feasting on these details, previously overlooked.
