Another film with a focus on how a brave soldier should behave, When Johnny Comes Marching Home (dir. Charles Lamont) tells a story about soldier Johnny Kovacs (Allan Jones), a celebrated hero who returns from Europe for ten days of shore leave. Tired of all the events and dinners he's getting invited to, and wanting to avoid the attention of a particular woman, he decides to spend the rest of his leave at a boarding house where the people only know him by his stage name as a former singer in a band, Johnny O'Rourke.

Much like Deanna Durbin and Judy Garland, Jane Withers was a 1930s child star trying to navigate the transition into more adult roles in the early '40s, and the film Johnny Doughboy (dir. John H. Auer) addresses this directly. Withers plays child actress Ann Winters, now sixteen and tired of being cast in the child roles her manager, Harry Fabian (William Demarest), insists she play (her latest offer, she is assured, has her playing 12 instead of 10).

In You Were Never Lovelier (dir. William A. Seiter), Eduardo Acuna (Adolphe Menjou) is the owner of a hotel and nightclub in Buenos Aires. His eldest daughter has just married, and his two youngest daughters - Cecy (Leslie Brooks) and Lita (Adele Mara) - want to marry their sweethearts, but Eduardo insists that they marry in order of age, and his second daughter, Maria (Rita Hayworth), has not shown any interest in dating.

In Seven Days' Leave (dir. Tim Whelan), soldier Johnny Grey (Victor Mature) learns that he is due an unclaimed inheritance of $100,000 from his great-grandfather, a Unionist Civil War general. The inheritance has a condition, however, that to claim the money General Grey's descendant must marry a descendant of his Confederate rival, General Havelock-Allen. A suitable candidate, Terry Havelock-Allen (Lucille Ball) lives in New York, but she is engaged to another man.

I think I've said before that the Fox musicals are getting repetitive, but I'm really starting to feel it now. Springtime in the Rockies (dir. Irving Cummings) is set in the Canadian Rockies rather than Latin America, but it's still doing a lot of the same things. Broadway star Vicky Lane (Betty Grable) leaves her stage partner Dan Christy (John Payne) when she gets tired of his cheating.

Set during the First World War, For Me and My Gal (dir. Busby Berkeley) stars Judy Garland as Jo Hayden, a vaudeville performer in an act with Jimmy Metcalf (George Murphy). Playing in a small town they find themselves sharing a billing with comedian and dancer Harry Palmer (Gene Kelly), who at first annoys Jo with his arrogance and selfishness, but soon charms her and convinces her to leave Jimmy and join a new act with him.

YouTube video by utubebob100

The home secretary is set to announce major policy reforms, including a 20-year wait before people granted asylum can apply to settle permanently.

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.