Where Do We Go from Here? (1945)

Director:

Gregory Ratoff

Writers:

Sig Herzig (story)
Morrie Ryskind (screenplay)

Release Date:

23 May 1945 (USA)

Genre:

Musical

Plot:

Bill wants to join the Army, but he's 4F so he asks a wizard to help him, but the wizard has slight problems with his history knowlege...

Plot Keywords:

American History | Question Mark In Title | Beautiful Woman | Question In Title | George Washington

Cast

Fred MacMurray	...	Bill Morgan
Joan Leslie	...	Sally Smith / Prudence / Katrina
June Haver	...	Lucilla Powell / Gretchen / Indian
Gene Sheldon	...	Ali the Genie
Anthony Quinn	...	Chief Badger
Carlos Ramírez	...	Benito
Alan Mowbray	...	General George Washington
Fortunio Bonanova	...	Christopher Columbus
Herman Bing	...	Hessian Col. / Von Heisel
Howard Freeman	...	Kreiger
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
George 'Gabby' Hayes	...	Gabby Hayes (scenes deleted)
Roy Rogers	...	(scenes deleted)

Runtime:

74 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Recording)

Certification:

Sweden:Btl

Company:

Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Hidden Hollywood II: More Treasures from the 20th Century Fox Vaults (1997) (TV)

Soundtrack:

If Love Remains

Where do we go? To the cutting room, obviously

Look at the number of actors on the IMDB cast list who had their scenes deleted (Roy Rogers, yet!), and you'll smell trouble: It's not typical for a big, expensive Technicolor wartime musical like this one to clock in under 80 minutes. Sure enough, it's a disjointed, haphazard musical fantasy, though full of talented people behind the scenes, notably Ira Gershwin and Kurt Weill. The songwriters bring a little pep to the story of a 4-F wannabe soldier who finds a magic lamp inhabited by an inept genie, who keeps putting him into the wrong century. The historic events visited feel terribly random -- the American Revolution, Columbus' voyage, Puritan New England -- and make one curious about what sequences were omitted. It's a cute idea -- the screenwriters, Morrie Ryskind and Sig Herzig, were Broadway veterans, and one suspects they originally conceived this as a stage musical -- but it's spun out with little real wit, and an aggressively uninteresting supporting cast fails to mine the minimal humor in the script. MacMurray, normally not a song-and-dance man, reveals a pleasant baritone but hasn't much to play, and he looks distinctly uncharmed by either of his leading ladies, though he did in fact marry June Haver. There's one celebrated sequence, a 10-minute mini-opera-bouffe called "The Nina, the Pinta, the Santa Maria," where Bill (MacMurray) convinces Columbus' crew not to mutiny, since America needs to be discovered. (A wonderful couplet describing America's bounty was disallowed by the censors: "The girls are delightful/ Their sweaters are quite full.") Suddenly the whimsy takes off, and the singing's splendid, and the film feels as bizarre and pixilated as "The Wizard of Oz." It doesn't last, though, and then it's back to 20th Century Fox's back lot and more halfhearted jests about history and patriotism.

A try at something different, certainly, in an age where Hollywood musicals were mainly backstagers, and it has its moments. But mostly it's a missed opportunity. If the missing footage ever turns up, it might be worth looking at.