Customer Reviews

Private Buckaroo [VHS]

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

With the benefit of the DVD format, this film can be enjoyed as an Andrews Sisters concert with Harry James as well as the 1942 low-budget Universal musical that it was at the time of release (and a box office success, by the way).
The Sisters swing on "Three Little Sisters" (note this is after the disaster at Bataan/Corregidor and the lyric "from Iceland to the Philippines" is changed to "from Iceland down to New Orleans"), "That's the Moon, My Son" and "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree". This is a rare chance to hear the great Vic Schoen Andrews Sisters arrangements with the sharp James orchestra. This film also provides a glimpse of the great stage presence and commedienne quality of Patty Andrews, if only briefly.
Harry James and Helen Forrest join forces for "You Made Me Love You" and "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen".
James demonstrates his considerable talent on the trumpet several times and the Sisters keep smiling through, perhaps, their strangest novelty song, "We're Six Jerks in a Jeep".
Dick Foran croons "Private Buckaroo" and gives out with "We've Got a Job to Do" which is also the Andrews Sisters finale after the equally rare "Johnny Get Your Gun Again". Neither of these two wartime tunes were recorded by the Sisters in the Decca studio and may only exist in the Sisters surviving recordings on this film soundtrack.
Then-former Stooge Shemp Howard, Mary Wickes and the dancing team of Peggy Ryan and Donald O'Conner try to provide comic support in the tradition of musical comedy films of the era. This DVD contains an adequate print of the film with good sound and also has some World War II newsreel footage and movie bloopers in the package unrelated to "Private Buckaroo".
If Universal does not release a restored print of this film or an Andrews Sisters Universal DVD multi-film package (oh, that they would!), this is a keepsake item.

... the same blend as in a Rossini or Mozart opera or in Shakespeare's Midsummer Night. Though the corn seems cornier with age, the glamour is unfaded. Swing was America's finest-ever pop music, swing dance and swing-era clothes were truly glamourous, and the cinematography of this war-time morale booster was silky smooth. The story line -- band leader Harry James gets drafted and the whole band follows him to boot camp and to deployment "over there" -- is just a coat rack for the song-and-dance, featuring the genuine musical brilliance of the Andrews Sisters, including their classic "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree". The grand finale is an unabashed appeal to patriotism -- it was 1942, I was just over a year old, the war was no joke and patriotism was not anyone's idea of corn -- with the band marching forth to join thousands of staunch young men, thousands of warships, a sky full of fighter planes. If all that fervor wasn't real, you could have fooled me.

Do you want to know how America wanted to see itself in 1942? This film is it. Fun-loving, wise-cracking, irreverent towards authority but ready for the call of duty. Nobody's patsy. Never likely to fail a buddy. The iconic cowboy frontiersman, Private Buckaroo. Self-reliant but ready to share a load. Was the self-image realistic? That wasn't in question in the minds of the film makers. I know that my own mother and her sisters idolized the Andrews Sisters. They dressed like them and slung their shoulders like them. My mother even looked like LaVerne and took voice lessons. My father, on the other hand, worshiped Charles Lindbergh and thought America was entering the war on the wrong side.

Buckaroo was a confidently White America. There's not a dusky complexion to be seen in the large cast of this film; the closest to an acknowledgement of "another" America is an allusion to "Gone With the Wind" and a scene where the crooner with the Harry James Orchestra sings a "spiritual." What, "swing" has jazz roots? Harry James is a knock-off of King Oliver and Louis Armstrong? America in 1942 was, and wanted to stay, blithely ignorant of that "other" America. The absence of "dark laughter" in Private Buckaroo is incontrovertible evidence of the rigid, brittle racism that the North had accommodated in order to preserve the Union and pass the New Deal.

But the glamour was real. The painterly camera work in black-and-white, grainy as it was, was artful. The comedy was clever and multi-leveled. The Andrew Sisters could SING! And the country could unite to confront a crisis. Where has it all gone, that youthful confidence and creativity?

I purchased this to replace a failing VHS copy. That it had Harry James and the Andrew Sisters was the draw. It is as corny as it gets. If you love the images of the 40's big band era, the look and the talk, you'll not mind. The dance scene toward the end was quite naughty for the time. At least the girls' underpants were full coverage back then.
This movie was made for the young people of the time, to entertain them into the spirit of the war effort. Oh! By the way, there is Shemp Howard for "Stooges" fans. This movie has no great deeps. Cheap laughs, great music and dancing kids were all that were originally offered. Music plus visual images. It doesn't cost enough for you to agonize over the price. It's worth it if It's contents mentioned above rang your chimes in any way.

Knowing full well that this film was created to cash in on the popularity of Harry James & His Orchestra, and The Andrews Sisters, this is a cute programmer that i enjoyed very much.
Also, knowing that many films become 'emminent domain' after a period of years when nobody has the good sense to re-register it's copyright, this film has now been released by whatever company has an actual print of it.
Despite it's B- quality, as it is a rather worn print, I didn't expect anything more than a good picture with a so-so story, scratchy film, but with legends from the 1940's to make it all work.
In all, i was charmed, and entertained.

This is a great way to get a feel for what the times must have been like during WWII...everyone wanted to get into the army and everyone danced to the big band sounds...(I have a personal pride in this movie, my Dad was Harry James' drummer at the time!). Enjoy!

Private Buckaroo, a high-energy, patriotic movie from 1942, has two uses now. The first is to show us the optimism of our elders as they readied themselves to support the troops fighting in WWII. Sure, the jokes are corny, but the musical numbers crank up the confidence with everything from "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree" to "Six Jerks in a Jeep." It's not a bad idea to now and then remind ourselves of what an older generation of Americans were facing.

The second use of the movie is to provide fodder for all those graduate students eager for an easy doctorate in "American Popular Culture," a phenomenon that proves, if the money is right, that American universities will offer degrees in just about anything.

The barest of plots has Harry James being drafted. Naturally, his whole orchestra signs up, too, including Lon Prentice (Dick Foran), his singer who has an attitude adjustment problem. We see the high-jinks of training, a romantic encounter that will serve to straighten Prentice out, and a big show just before the boys ship overseas. All this is just a clothesline to pin on at least 13 musical numbers, and The Andrews Sisters and Harry James do most of them. The comedy intermissions are several. To give you an idea of what Universal's writers were capable of, the three-way romantic laugh relief involves Bonnie-Belle Schlopkiss (a tall and emphatic Mary Wickes), Sergeant Muggsy Sharell (Shemp Howard, who was earlier and later became again one of the Three Stooges) and Lancelot Pringle McBiff (an odd incarnation of stand up comic Joe E. Lewis). Personally, I enjoyed most Huntz Hall as a corporal trying to teach James how to play reveille.

Although some people today can pass by The Andrews Sisters because of their style, particularly Patty Andrews' mugging, the three were expert at close harmony. They have six numbers; all are skillfully delivered with a great deal of verve. As far as Harry James goes, I can't think of a better way to open a movie than James and Helen Forrest giving us the full treatment of "You Made Me Love You." And in one showstopper we have The Jivin' Jacks and Jills, a group of dancing teen-agers formed by Universal to showcase the studio's young talent. The ten kids tap and leap all over the stage to "Apple Tree." The fact that the story line is almost non-existent and that romantic lead Dick Foran, who sounds a bit like a cross between Nelson Eddy and Dennis Morgan, has the personality of a cardboard box really doesn't matter at all.

Doctoral candidates, start writing your dissertation on "The Underlying Significance of B Movies on the Cultural Development of American Civilization During the Formative Years of World War Two, With an Emphasis on the Influence of Teen-Age Tap Dancers on the Defeat of the Axis."

The DVD I saw has an adequate picture, no worse than a clean, average VHS tape. There were only four chapter stops and no extras. The movie is in the public domain.

An easily dismissible period piece, this musical-comedic-patriotic revue recalls many of the early Gershwin and Rodgers&Hart shows, for which the "story-line," or what there was of it, was no more than an excuse for a lot of great songs. To the songs, add the dance routines, the comedy schtick, the uneven acting, the comedy routines (with no small percentage of groaners), and the numerous patriotic numbers with lots of uniforms, parades, marching and guns (for display purposes).

The male romantic lead is a Nelson Eddy look-a-like/sound-a-like who seems ill cast as a jazz or swing singer (he has the title song not to mention a country-western number that manages to avoid the least hint of anything sounding remotely like country or western).

The Andrews Sisters light up the screen with each of their song and dance numbers, the highlights being "Six Jerks in a Jeep" and "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree" (great dancing by Maxine).

Harry James is at once the nadir and the zenith of the entertainment, first performing his pop hit, the schmaltzy, smarmy, tiresome "You Made Me Love You," but soon making amends with a pyrotechnical trumpet toccata that's more Raphael Mendez than swing (but Harry blows with twice the volume--and without sacrificing technique and precision--as Mendez). Some of today's musicians understandably dismiss James after hearing "You Made Me Love You" and some of his other hits--but to hear him for any extended period is to encounter one of the truly great trumpet players of the first half of the twentieth century (sadly, the same is true of the extraordinary trumpet work of the father of jazz, Louis Armstrong, who is too frequently judged solely on the basis of late trivia ("Hello, Dolly," Blueberry Hill," "What a Wonderful World").

As for the comedy routines, forget about them (you won't even have to try). At best, they're a tolerable diversion if you're a fan of Shemp from The Three Stooges (my beef against the film's comedy is that the talents of Huntz Hall (Satch from The Bowery Boys and Eastside Kids) are completely allowed to go to waste.

It's good to see this one back in print and at a reasonable price (though don't expect anything like a sharp master print). On the whole, the film captures the patriotic, community "spirit" that these days is not only sorely missed but seems irreclaimable (I'm afraid that wars against Iraq and immigrants have slim chance of bringing it back.)

I received the item in a timely manner and it was exactly what I had hoped it would be. I would continue to make purchases from this vendor.

I mainly wanted this DVD for the Andrews Sisters songs. Quality of film was not great, but for the price, I'm pleased.

Warning!!!! Do not buy this version, it is NOT remastered, it's trash. I just got it. The movie is not even centered in the screen, the opening titles are cut way off on one side....frankly it's a VERY poor transfer and it's on a copy DVD, not a factory release. I have the Madacy release, while they are know for poor releases, theirs is still far better than this rip off!