Call Me Mister (film)


Call Me Mister is a 1951 American Technicolor musical film released by Twentieth Century-Fox. The feature was directed by Lloyd Bacon and re-written from the 1946 Broadway play version by Albert E. Lewin and Burt Styler with music by Harold Rome that featured cast members from the US armed forces.
Call Me Mister was filmed in Technicolor, and starred Betty Grable and Dan Dailey and co-starred Danny Thomas with supporting players Dale Robertson, Benay Venuta, and Richard Boone. Only a couple Harold Rome numbers were kept in the film.

Background

The film was a film version of the Broadway version of Call Me Mister, but was also changed to be a remake of Betty Grable's 1941 film A Yank in the RAF. It was one of Grable's final "successful" films as her box-office power was beginning to diminish. This was also Grable's final film with Dan Dailey, with whom she co-starred in several of her previous films. Call Me Mister was a "moderate success" at the box-office.
The finale is a production number of "Love Is Back in Business" staged by Busby Berkeley, ending with four leading players on a precarious, high-rising disc surrounded by water fountains. Benay Venuta is replaced by a lookalike in the same clothes for this. Asked in the 1970s about it, she explained, "Betty Grable said, ‘I’m the star. I gotta do it.’ Dan Dailey was so drunk he didn’t care what he was doing. Danny Thomas said, ‘I’m on the way up. I gotta do it.’ Well, I didn’t gotta do it."

Plot

After the end of World War II American soldiers in occupied Japan are entertained with a show put on by one of their own Sergeant Shep Dooley and his former wife who is an entertainer Kay Hudson.

Cast