I'm not sure what I can really say about Panama Hattie, because I'm not sure anything of consequence happened in it. Directed by Norman Z. McLeod, the film is an adaptation of a Broadway show by the same title, though with most of the songs changed. It stars Ann Sothern as the titular Hattie Maloney, a singer in a Panama club, who is engaged to Sgt.

The second film to feature the Glenn Miller Orchestra, Orchestra Wives (dir. Archie Mayo), has them as a fictional version of themselves, the Gene Morrison band, who are embarking on a stressful tour. Young fan Connie Ward (Ann Rutherford) attends a couple of their shows and falls for trumpeter Bill Abbott (George Montgomery), and the two make the rash decision to get married (it's pretty clear, subtextually, that they do it because they're horny, and marriage is the only socially acceptable solution).

Cairo (dir. W. S. Van Dyke) isn't as much of a musical as I'd prefer, but it has Jeanette MacDonald's last leading performance until 1948, and I found it one of her better performances. The film stars Robert Young as Homer Smith, a small-town reporter from California sent to Europe to cover the war. After his ship goes down in the Mediterranean, he washes up in Egypt with Philo Cobson (Reginald Owen), who claims to be part of British Intelligence and sends Homer with a message to his contact in Cairo.

Closing submissions are being made in an employment tribunal brought by eight female nurses.

Bringing together stars Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby for the first time, we have a film that's been made almost ungoogleable by the hotel chain of the same name, Holiday Inn. Directed by Mark Sandrich, the film starts with singer Jim Hardy (Crosby) and dancer Ted Hanover (Astaire) working as a three-person act with Lila Dixon (Virginia Dale). When Jim is about to leave with Lila to be married, he finds out she plans to leave him for Ted instead.

In what feels like a little bit of a throwback to the mid-30s, Footlight Serenade (dir. Gregory Ratoff) is a backstage musical about a new Broadway show where a chorus girl ends up rising up and becoming the lead. The show is a boxing-themed musical that is to star the heavyweight boxing champion Tommy Lundy (Victor Mature). Though he's a decent guy, Lundy is a bit of a tyrant in the show - he's egotistical, thinking he knows better than everyone and dictating decisions to the producers, including getting his girlfriend Estelle Evans (Cobina Wright Jr) the lead, even though she's a singer who doesn't act or dance.

I've been pointing out where films have dipped into propaganda for the armed forces here and there as I watch my way through the 30s and 40s, but now that America has jonied the Second World War, I expect we're going to be seeing a lot more of it over the next few years - much, much more of it. So I think for a while it can be taken as a given that many of these movies are not just involving the war, but are actively being made as propaganda for the current conflict.

The last, and worst, of the Nelson Eddy & Jeanette MacDonald musicals, I Married An Angel (dir. W. S. Van Dyke) is a bit of an odd one. Adapted from a Rodgers & Hart stage musical, with the usual massive liberties taken in both music and plot, the film tells the story of Count Willie Palaffi (Eddy), a banker in Budapest who is celebrating his birthday, and being encouraged to consider marriage after years of philandering.

Another biopic, Yankee Doodle Dandy (dir. Michael Curtiz) stars James Cagney as the actor, writer, composer, and producer George M. Cohan, who was one of the biggest names in Broadway in the early 20th Century. The film opens in the present day of 1942, with an elderly Cohan summoned to meet with President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the rest of the film, from his birth up to that moment, is framed as Cohan reminiscing to the president about his life.

A short piece of army recruitment propaganda, Private Buckaroo (dir. Edward F. Cline) is at times too packed with songs to bother with either the story or comedy, but it's generally about a group of entertainers - including the film's band, Harry James and His Music Makers - signing up for the army, going through boot camp, and shipping out to the front lines.

A new adaptation of the play that was the basis for the 1929 film of the same name, 1942's Broadway (dir. William A. Seiter) takes the same story and reframes it as an event from the early career of actor George Raft, who plays himself. The film adds opening and closing scenes that show Raft visiting New York from Hollywood, and reminiscing about his time working as a dancer on Broadway; the rest of the film plays out much the same as the previous version.

Another biopic of a 19th Century songwriter, My Gal Sal (dir. Irving Cummings) stars Victor Mature as composer Paul Dresser. Starting out making music for medicine shows, Dresser's fortunes change when he meets actress Sally Elliott (Rita Hayworth), who starts using his music in her shows. Elliott likes Dresser's songs but dislikes the man himself, finding him low class and arrogant; somehow this doesn't stop them from forming a relationship.

The first movie I've watched for this that directly addresses America's participation in the Second World War, Ship Ahoy (dir. Edward Buzzell) is about a dancer, Tallulah (Eleanor Powell), who is approached by mysterious government agents and asked to smuggle a prototype sea mine to Puerto Rico. The agents, of course, are actually Axis spies using Tallulah to transport a stolen mine.

Song of the Islands (dir. Walter Lang) is a Hawaiian-themed musical comedy starring Betty Grable as Eileen O'Brien, daughter of Dennis O'Brien (Thomas Mitchell), who owns a strip of land on the fictional Hawaiian island of Ahmi-Oni where he lives an idyllic life alongside the natives. The land next door to O'Brien's is home to a cattle ranch owned by Jefferson Harper (George Barbier), who sends his son Jeff (Victor Mature) - accompanied by his friend Rusty (Jack Oakie) - to oversee the ranch and see if they can make improvements.

In Sing Your Worries Away (dir. A. Edward Sutherland), Bert Lahr plays Chow Brewster, a songwriter struggling to get his break. The gangster owner of a local club, Smiley Clark (Sam Levene), finds out that Chow is about to inherit a large sum of money, and decides to convince him to commit suicide, then marry Chow's cousin, Carol (Dorothy Lovett) for the money.

For today's film I'm not actually covering a musical; instead, I'm laying some groundwork for a film I'll be watching much later. Roxie Hart (dir. William A. Wellman) is adapted from the 1926 play Chicago, which would later be adapted into the musical of the same name, and eventually a 2002 musical film. Ginger Rogers stars as the titular Roxie Hart, arrested for murder and attempting to both be acquitted for the crime and use the publicity to boost her career as a dancer, with the aid of hotshot lawyer Billy Flynn (Adolphe Menjou).