Thousands Cheer (M.G.M.) is not to be confused with the crisp, memorable As Thousands Cheer which Irving Berlin and Moss Hart brought to Broadway a decade ago. M.G.M. reportedly paid $25,000 for that show and its bull's-eye title back in 1935, but has taken its own aim from there on. The MGMarksmen ring no resounding bell, but they do bag 1) an average musical wartime romance (Private Gene Kelly v. Colonel's-Daughter Kathryn Grayson), 2) a brisk, hefty variety show featuring a clutch of M.G.M. stars and three bands (Kay Kyser, Bob Crosby, Benny Carter), 3) Pianist José Iturbi in his screen debut.
The romance is a by-product of the cinemilitary career of talented Gene Kelly, who before the Army gets him is a temperamental trapeze star. Private Kelly's yearning to get back in the air (in a plane) and an approaching court-martial for breach of discipline cause him to toy with Kathryn Grayson's affections in hopes that her father, his Colonel (John Boles), will transfer him to the Air Forces. The Colonel wants a less insubordinate son-in-law. Aware that trapeze work involves a certain amount of disciplined cooperation, he asks the young artist's adoptive family, The Flying Corbinos, to needle the boy during the camp's Victory Show. So they discuss teamwork with Trapezist Kelly while the whole troupe is lunging about between heaven and the hard floor. Mr. Kelly, though profoundly disconcerted, gets the idea, drops nobody, comes out of a two-and-a-half somersault with his lesson learned and Miss Grayson's heart somewhere between her throat and the palm of his hand. He is promptly forgiven by the court-martial and goes off to war, while Songstress Grayson (plus an orchestra and some 390 male choristers) gives tongue to United Nations, by Russian Composer Dmitri Shostakovich.
The show is dished out by Master of Ceremonies Mickey Rooney. Kay Kyser's noisy faculty teaches I Dug a Ditch, assisted by comely Georgia Carroll. Bob Crosby's band backs Baby Basilisk Virginia O'Brien in In a Little Spanish Town. Benny Carter cultivates Honeysuckle Rose for elegant Lena Home. Frank Morgan pretends to be a doctor, gets slap-happy in his examination of Ann Sothern, Lucille Ball and Marsha Hunt, who want to be WAVES. Red Skelton is a soda jerker with an allergy for ice cream. Judy Garland makes scat-singing like "Tchai-tchai-tchaikovsky" bearable in Let There Be Music. Senor Iturbi, forced by the curious exigencies of the screen to prove that he is almost anything else but a ranking pianist, trots out some fair boogie-woogie, takes care to play nothing worth hearing in one of the best recordings a screen piano has ever received.