Esther Williams always said that MGM had to keep coming up with excuses to get her out of her clothes and into the water. Some excuses were definitely better than others, though, and 1952’s Skirts Ahoy! isn’t one of them. It did, however, result in a far-reaching benefit for the WAVES, who ended up owing Esther Williams in more ways than one.
Whitney (Esther Williams) joins the Navy after running away from her wedding. Mary Kate (Joan Evans) joins after being jilted at the altar. Una (Vivian Blaine) joins to be close to Archie (Dean Miller), a sailor she had one date with. The women become fast friends and adjust more or less easily to life in the WAVES, what little we get to see of it.
It’s not perfect, of course. One misstep happens when Whitney signs up as a non-swimmer so she can stay with her friends, and the instructor notices pretty quickly that she’s a champion swimmer. Another happens when Whitney gets in a scuffle with three WACs who flirt with her dinner date, an intriguing fellow, who, awkwardly enough, turns out to be Lieutenant Commander Paul Elcott (Barry Anderson), the base doctor. Mary Kate is homesick until her runaway groom, Dick (Keefe Brasselle) shows up and basically says Mary Kate isn’t tough enough to make it in the Navy.
Other than that, things are pretty smooth sailing. There’s always time to break into song, for one thing.
OK. This movie has its fun and cute moments, but I’m really struggling to say anything good about it because a lot of it smacks of trying too hard. There’s not much of a plot, and the music waffles between ordinary, not too bad and flinch-inducing, such as the “What Makes A Wave?” number, which involves Esther Williams getting hit in the face with a wet mop. Why? Why? When Keenan Wynn showed up with Debbie Reynolds and and Bobby Van to sing, “Oh, By Jingo,” I kinda gave up the ghost.
Sigh. Is there a naval term for “mediocre”?
On the plus side, the DeMarco Sisters revived me again with “What Good Is A Gal (Without A Guy)?” and Vivian Blaine is wonderful as usual. At the time Blaine was in the midst of starring as Miss Adelaide in Guys and Dolls, and being from Newark, New Jersey, neither Adelaide nor Una were much of a stretch for her. For some reason she’s a blonde in this movie, maybe as a contrast with her costars.
Esther Williams does the best with what she’s given, and unusually, she’s in the water for very little of the movie’s running time. They’re not her greatest scenes, but they get by.
Skirts Ahoy! was made at the height of the Korean War, when talk of Communism in Hollywood was buzzing in certain circles, and MGM wanted to assure the public of Hollywood’s patriotism.
Maybe that’s why no one really criticized the film. Aside from the typically hyperbolic ad campaign, the press struggled to find a novel way to present Esther to the public, and the reviews were pretty neutral. Variety’s review stayed as succinct as possible, saying, “Plot is an adequate support for the typical musical comedy material most of the time…Barry Sullivan rates the most of the little tossed to the actors in the cast. Williams has two okay swim numbers.”
Film Bulletin called Skirts Ahoy! a “highly diverting and genuinely amusing hunk of mass entertainment,” and stopped just short of deeming the film predictable, although their review was full of compliments for the actors.
It seemed to pay off, as Skirts Ahoy! did solid business, bringing in $7.2M at the box office, or $153M in today’s money. Everyone seemed to have a grand time with the movie, not only as a recruitment tie-in for the WAVES, but skirts were a thing. Life-size cardboard cutouts of Esther Williams in her WAVE uniform were strategically enhanced with fabric and positioned in theater lobbies with fans aimed at them.
Syracuse, New York seemed to top them all. Theater engineer Jack Dorian of the Loew’s State Theater rigged a special ramp for all the women who saw Skirts Ahoy! to walk over on their way into the theater, and theoretically, a small fan would blow their skirts around. It was all in fun, of course, and it was all five years before a certain scene in a certain Marilyn Monroe movie that we all know.
Besides increasing enlistment in the WAVES, Skirts Ahoy! was a huge boon for women in the Navy in another way. While making the film, Esther got a load of the regulation suits WAVES had to wear, and in a word, they were hideous. The suits, not the women. They were like a sleeveless T-shirt, did nothing for the figure, and were heavy in the water.
Williams, who had an endorsement deal with Cole of California, knew she had to tread carefully. Fortunately, she was a good acquaintance of Dan Kimball, the Secretary of the Navy, and lost no time calling his office for a meet-up.
She later remembered:
I’d brought the regulation suit in a tote bag, but I knew it was no good just taking out the suit and holding it up…I popped into the powder room and came out wearing the suit.
Kimball’s jaw dropped. “What the h*** is that?”
“This, Mr. Secretary, is what you have your female navy recruits swimming in…and you oughtta see it when it’s wet! I’m going to swim in the movie, but no woman wants to wear this…If we’re making this film to boost the recruitment of women and they see me in this suit, it’s gonna backfire.”
“What do you suggest?”
“If you’d excuse me for just a moment…” I went back into the bathroom and emerged wearing my Cole of California Esther Williams suit. I’d asked Fred Cole to run it up in a snappy bright navy blue just for the occasion. (Williams, Million Dollar Mermaid, pgs. 206-207)
Kimball, who was a businessman in his civilian life. didn’t need much convincing, and Esther put in an order to Cole for fifty thousand suits.
All in all, Skirts Ahoy! was, in some ways, a blip of a film, but in other ways it’s had a lasting effect. It’s worth a watch, even if it isn’t all that great.
My post for the Favorite Stars In B-Movies Blogathon is coming up on Saturday. Thanks for reading, all, and I hope to see you then…
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Bibliography
Williams, Esther, with Digby Diehl. The Million Dollar Mermaid: An Autobiography. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999.
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