Up in Arms

Danny Kaye’s film debut, Up in Arms, is a case study in his (now stale) musical-comedies of the mid-40s. There’s a very basic premise and structure, hypochondriac gets drafted into the army, that merely exists as an excuse to get Kaye to perform various bits of song-and-dance, pull faces, and contort his lithe body into exaggerated shapes. While it's merely serviceable as a film, Kaye is a personality that shines from the screen.

There’s an alternate timeline where his handsome face and athleticism would have brought him great luck as a leading man in screwball comedies romancing the likes of Ginger Rogers, Rosalind Russell, or Carole Lombard. He doesn’t bring a natural comedian sensibility to his parts but that of a musical star who stumbled into being funny. To be more succinct, he’s not a Jerry Lewis or a Groucho Marx by nature, but more like a Gene Kelly type that got typecast as an idiot savant.

Up in Arms’ threadbare is merely there to give some structure to various sequences involving Dinah Shore and Kaye engaging in a fantasy jump-jive or Kaye doing a riff on a singing cowboy. While there’s not much to exactly hail as high-level artistry, there is a certain comfort food like warmth to the entire thing. It may not add up to much but it’s a satisfying glimpse into unreality where people sing, dance, and everything works out fine in the end.