Marcy McGuire

(On Cable TV, January 2021) American WW2 wartime musicals were a strange subgenre. Almost entirely produced between 1942 and 1945, they often starred that time’s equivalent of pop stars (i.e.: Band leaders, amazingly enough to modern audiences), comedians and studio stars in a narrative that did nothing more than arrange a series of musical and comedy performances in a loose story. Such films were meant to be shown overseas to troops, and to raise patriotic fervour, war bond purchases and morale on the homefront. Around the World isn’t the best of those, but it clearly shows the formula and the intent: Featuring then-famous band leader Kay Kyser and his musical entourage (the “Kollege of Musical Knowledge”), its slight narrative has the band touring the world to entertain the troops and getting embroiled in various adventures with stowaway teens and treasure-hunting Nazis along the way. There are plenty of big-band musical numbers and somewhat old-hat comic routines along the way, but if you’re having too much fun in wartime, just wait until the atonal conclusion in which one of our happy-bouncy protagonists learns that her father’s been killed in action and vows to do her part in fighting the Axis. (Never mind that we can see that revelation coming about thirty seconds before she does.)  If that sounds like a big blend of propaganda made to order, you’re right and the film doesn’t even try to hide it. For modern viewers, the propaganda takes a back seat to the period charm and the big band numbers. As intended, the film feels like an evening outing in the city to hear a big band playing a few hits and some comic interludes in between. Kyser is not a terrific actor (his presence in Swing Fever, his sole acting credit playing a character other than “himself,” is slight), but he does have a pleasant, sympathetic presence, especially given how he’s fully in his element here playing a band leader trying to manage the various issues affecting his band. Marcy McGuire is very cute as a teenager stowing away to follow the band around the world, while the band plays itself in a fictionalized take on their real-world troop entertainment. Around the World doesn’t amount to much in terms of a movie, but it’s an interesting film approximating what it must have felt like to either attend one of Kyser’s evenings, or watch a musical comedy in wartime.