The United States Service Bands (1943) User Reviews

Watch Out For Roaming Sousaphones

[boblipton · 5/10 · 28 August 2019]

The Army Air Corps Band plays "Off We Go Into the Wild, Blue Yonder; US Navy Band and "Anchors Away"; the Marine Corp Band "The Marines' Hymn" and "Semper Fidelis"; and the Army Band one chorus each of "The Caissons Go Rolling Along", "Garryowen" "Pack Up Your Troubles" "Tipperary" and "Over There" for the various branches under the direction of Jean Negulesco.

Negulesco had been directing Vitaphone musical shorts for four years by this point, 47 in total. He was about to move into feature production with THE MASK OF DIMITRIOS. He had directed or been an uncredited fill-in director on three features between 1936 and 1941. There was no new footage on this one. Instead, it is a compilation from earlier shorts covering each of the service bands separately.

I'd like to imagine they played this as a "chaser" -- the last item on the program -- and had recruiting stations right outside. Nothing gets your heart racing like George M. Cohan music from a brass band.

This unbalanced attempt at rousing martial music . . .

[cricket30 · 6/10 · 11 June 2015]

. . . bodes ill for America's Future. After THE UNITED STATES SERVICE BANDS devotes its initial 64 seconds to the Army Air Force Band and Chorus, the U.S. Navy Band and Chorus spends 2 minutes, 16 seconds rhapsodizing about the Army-Navy football game! The next 3:22 finds the U.S. Marine Corps Band and Chorus marching past every Washington, DC, area monument EXCEPT their Iwo Jima Memorial, while singing words to a Sousa march! Not to be outdone in weirdness, the U.S. Army Band and Chorus play John Hay, George Armstrong Custer's attack song against Sitting Bull in 1876, as waves of cavalry nags are shown prepping for a presumably also suicidal foray against Hitler's Panzer divisions! This bunch also sing half a dozen WWI songs, without a word about beating Navy on the gridiron. (And WHY are all these cavemen rolling along, "over hill, over dale, (over) the dusty trail"?) War should be a much more sober affair than shown here. I've seen many films documenting string quartets playing tasteful tunes as Nazi Death Camp inmates tramp toward the gas chambers. When a country gets out-classed by Hitler, you know it has major problems. As you view America's lumbering war apparatus on display in this ten-minute live-action short, you sense that any day now a time-traveling Nazi War Machine will show up in the 1940s to wipe out our entire military in 15 minutes. Let's see how all of today's Mercedes, Audi, Volkswagon, and BMW-driving Millenials like it when they wake up the next morning speaking German in 81 T.R. (or the 81st year of the Third Reich).

Compilation

[utgard14 · 5/10 · 18 January 2014]

Warner Bros. short that edits pieces from three previous shorts together to make one. There's no story here. The United States Army, Navy, and Marine Corps bands perform music over stock war footage. There's also what looks like some footage from a WB war movie or short. "The Rear Gunner," according to IMDb. I'll take their word for it as I haven't seen it. The music is nice. The historic footage is also interesting to watch. Jean Negulesco is credited with direction as he directed the three shorts this compiles footage from. I'm sure history buffs will enjoy it a lot. Give it a shot if you catch it on TCM or find it online. If possible, seek out the three original shorts for more footage and music.

Better To Check Out the Full Films

[Michael_Elliott · 12 December 2009]

United States Service Bands, The (1943)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

This Warner shot is pretty much a hack job version with earlier shorts being edited down to one. Songs from THE UNITED STATES ARMY BAND, THE UNITED STATES MARINE BAND and THE UNITED STATES NAVY BAND are all edited down into this film so if you haven't seen any of them you might get a kick out of this. Personally, I've seen those shorts and I think you'd do yourself justice by spending the 24-minutes watching those three instead of viewing them in an edited down 8-minute version. The music here is certainly good as the bands really do nice justice to the songs they're performing but if you enjoy what you see and hear here then you'll certainly want to see the expanded versions.

If this doesn't make you yearn to pick up a rifle . . .

[oscaralbert · 8/10 · 25 March 2014]

. . . and shoot some foreigners, you must be dead already. Scads of soldiers, sailors, and Marines play musical instruments, sing in all-male choruses, fly planes, sail ships, fly planes on and off ships, storm beaches, blast away with battle ship guns, and sing lots more. What's missing from this list? No one gets hurt--not even a scratch! I guess I just imagined all those guys with their butts strapped down on not-yet-invented "skate boards" selling VFW pencils on the sidewalks of my hometown when I was young, because this apparently was the best way to support oneself when one's legs were M.I.A. (Missing in Action). These sad-looking fellows MUST have been hallucinations (induced, perhaps, from seeing a couple episodes of the forbidden TV series THE TWILIGHT ZONE, when our third-choice babysitter "ran amok"). The best proof of that possibility is that I don't recall ANY of these men singing; the closest they came to making music on the sidewalk was when their tin cups rattled if someone "donated" a coin in exchange for a pencil. THE UNITED STATES SERVICE BANDS proves that singing is at least half the mission of the American Armed Forces (and there's not a pencil in sight during this 10-minute short).