THOUSANDS CHEER

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CREDITS

1943, 126 minutes, Technicolor.
Producer, Joe Pasternak; Director, George Sidney; Screenplay, Paul Jarrico and Richard Collins; Cinematography, George Folsey; Music Direction, Herbert Stothart; Art Direction, Cedric Gibbons.

CAST

Kathryn Jones, Kathryn Grayson; Eddy Marsh, Gene Kelly; Hyllary Jones, Mary Astor; Colonel William Jones, John Boles; Chuck Polansky, Ben Blue; Marie Corbino, Frances Rafferty; Helen, Mary Elliott; Sergeant Koslack, Frank Jenks; Alan, Frank Sully; Captain Fred Avery, Dick Simmons.
As Themselves:
Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, Red Skelton, Eleanor Powell, Ann Sothern, Lucille Ball, Virginia O'Brien, Frank Morgan, Lena Horne, Marsha Hunt, Marilyn Maxwell, Donna Reed, Margaret O'Brien, June Allyson, Gloria DeHaven, John Conte, Sara Haden, Don Loper, Maxine Barrat, Kay Kyser and His Orchestra, Bob Crosby and His Orchestra, Benny Carter and His Band, Jose Iturbi.

SONGS

In a Little Spanish Town by Sam M. Lewis, Joe Young and Mabel Wayne; Honeysuckle Rose by Andy Razaf and Fats Waller; Tico Tico by Zequinha Abreu; The Joint Is Really Jumpin' Down at Carnegie Hall by Ralph Blane, Hugh Martin and Roger Edens; Daybreak by Harold Adamson and Ferde Grofe; Three Letters in the Mailbox by Paul Francis Webster and Walter Jurmann; Let There Be Music by E.Y. Harburg and Earl Brent; The United Nations On the March by Dimitri Shostakovitch, Harburg, Harold Rome and Herbert Stothart; I Dug a Ditch by Lew Brown, Ralph Freed and Burton Lane; Let Me Call You Sweetheart by Beth Slater Whitson and Leo Friedman; Should I? by Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown; Sempre Libera by Verdi.

PLOT SYNOPSIS

"Thousands Cheer features Gene Kelly in one of his earliest roles as a circus aerialist who reluctantly becomes an army private. Complications ensue when he falls in love with the colonel's beautiful daughter (Kathryn Grayson) - and when the colonel's daughter decides to put on a mammoth show for the servicemen, she succeeds in bringing together a dazzling array of guest stars. . ."
- Liner Notes from MGM/Turner Laserdisc

NOTES

"MGM's big-budget contribution to Uncle Sam' war effort was the roaringly successful Thousands Cheer. . .If the studio's proud boast was that it had more stars than there are in heaven, they were all in Thousands Cheer."
- Clive Hirschhorn, The Hollywood Musical

"Paramount keynote of this expert filmusical is the tiptop manner in which young George Sidney has marshalled his multiple talents so that none trips over the other. It's a triumph for Sidney on his first major league effort."
- Variety

"Maybe Jose Iturbi put the seal of doom on the venture when he sat down to play boogie-woogie; he hits the notes all right, but his boogie-woogie is (arguably) the most mechanical ever recorded."
- Pauline Kael, 5001 Nights At The Movies


ACADEMY AWARD NOMINATIONS:
Cinematography (Color)
Art Direction
Scoring

HARVARD LAMPOON WORST FILM AWARD WINNER

Thousands Cheer was one of the top-grossing films of 1943. See Box Office Hits

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