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Rating:  - Old memories
I saw this show in a theater in 1943. Just wanted a memory to keep.
Rating:  - Singing, dancing and a slice of Americana
I purchased this DVD because my VHS copy got stuck in the VCR and pretty well ruined! But besides that.... this is a thoroughly enjoyable film from the earliest stages of World War 2 that focuses on a little slice of life - touring with the popular bands of the day. What people of today have to bear in mind is that the Big Bands (like the Glenn Miller Orchestra, featured here) were the "rock" stars of their day and this type of film was the only way their fans could actually see what they looked like - especially fans who didn't live in big cities. That in mind, this film features a story about a band member (actor George Montgomery) who flirts around and gets caught up in his own web. Also featured are the VERY young Jackie Gleason, Harry Morgan and Cesar Romero, all of whom we Baby Boomers know from television. I found the commentary by stars Ann Rutherford and the late Fayard Nicholas (of the Nicholas Brothers) to be interesting, although I wish there was a film historian included in the discussion (just to ask some questions and do some prompting). If you like Big Bands (and yes, some of us Baby Boomers do), I would recommend this film.
Rating: - Above par, musically...
As would be expected, the music is wonderul. Glenn Miller pegged the "sound" of that generation and with his untimely death, his is the sound that will forever be identified with the WW2 era.
If you listen to "Serenade in Blue," there is a haunting quality that lingers with that particular number, but the arrangement is classic Glenn Miller. The movie is worth having just for the soundtrack; a great catalogue of Glenn Miller music when it was fresh and new, and the incredible voice of Pat Friday, the singer used to dub over Lynn Bari's vocals. What a shame they couldn't have used Ms. Friday's eyebrows, as well! There is more action in Lynn Bari's eyebrows when she "sings" then in any other aspect of this film! No wonder she never had an "A" movie career. But still, beyond her overactive "emoting" during her vocals, the film is worth having for the musical numbers; each a slice of life from that time in our country's history.
Rating:  - A promise of restored stereo falls flat
I won't go over the plot summary as many others have done so very well. A little audio history first:
Glenn Miller was an excellent band leader in the late 30's and early 40's and a proponent of using whatever the best available technology to create recordings of his incredible orchestra. His reputation for great sound was not just pulling together some of the best musicians of the period but also using early mulitrack recordings to capture his band's unique sound as faithfully as possible in the early 40's. This predated magnetic tape by several years. To do a multitrack recording in those days involved mastering to a multitrack optical recorder to capture each instrument section with fidelity pretty close to magnetic tape. Of course, back then, the final release audio for a film would be mixed down to a mono track printed optically on the film. The final quality of that mixed track would not be too good by today's standards but the original elements can be remixed on modern audio equipment to recreate a pretty good wide soundstage stereo image far exceeding the quality of old mono 78 RPM discs of the day. Back in 1992, Fox released a remastered version of Orchestra Wives and they took the trouble to find and remix the original multitrack optical tracks to create a good stereo soundtrack for their Laserdisc release. The sound was great on the band numbers with a full wide soundstage and crisp fidelity rivaling anything made years later.
Now, here's where I'm disappointed. I have the 1992 laserdisc and just got the new DVD release a few days ago. When I fired up the DVD, the audio sounded flat and dull. I checked the menus and found it had defaulted to the English Mono track so reset it for English Stereo. I tried again and it still sounded poorly equalized and lacking in the clarity and soundstage I was used to from the Laserdisc. On the Laserdisc, the dialog scenes are typical mono optical audio, limited bandwidth and pure mono. When the scene cut to a band performance, you could immediately hear the sound quality change to wide stereo with improved bandwidth and clarity in the highs. On the DVD, even the dialog tracks have a (fake) stereo effect added in so what I suspect is they took the mono track off the film print and passed it through a processor to add reverb to create a fake stereo effect. But if you play the Laserdisc and the DVD simultaneously and switch back and forth between the two, it is readily apparent the DVD tracks are not real stereo. They have the typical high frequency cutoff of an old optical release mono track.
Shame on Fox for this one. They have all the elements to do it right and to give the Glenn Miller Orchestra and their fans the kind of respect and treatment they deserve. Instead, Fox has taken the easy (and cheap) way out and created a fake.
Rating: - Ann Rutherford shines in second-string Fox musical
The second movie to feature Glenn Miller and his Band (following 1941's "Sun Valley Serenade"), ORCHESTRA WIVES is a charming musical comedy, filled with one-line zingers and classic musical memories, not to mention an Oscar-nominated song.
Small-town gal Connie (Ann Rutherford) quickly meets and marries Bill Abbot (George Montgomery), trumpet player for the touring Gene Morrison Band (played by the Glenn Miller crowd). Connie joins the gang on tour, and comes up against Bill's old flame--and band singer--Jaynie (Lynn Bari). You can pretty much guess the rest. This is a lightweight musical comedy with plenty of sass and sparkle.
Ann Rutherford had just come to the end of her longterm contract with M-G-M (where she appeared as Careen in "Gone with the Wind", Lydia in "Pride and Prejudice", and Polly Benedict in the "Andy Hardy" franchise). Rutherford never found the same kind of fame (or roles) with Twentieth Century-Fox, and she retired seven years later. George Montgomery's career virtually ended after he was called up for World War II service shortly after this film, and he later floundered in B-movie territory ("Belle Starr's Daughter", "The Pathfinder", "Robber's Roost").
Lynn Bari steals this film with her catty performance as Jaynie. She's the epitome of the fast-talking, no-nonsense dame, and gets the lion's share of zingers; though her singing was dubbed--and obviously so--by Pat Friday.
Glenn Miller's Band performs several of their classic standards, joined by Tex Beneke and The Modernaires ("Serenade in Blue", "At Last", and the introduction of "I've Got a Girl in Kalamazoo", which was Oscar-nominated). The cast of ORCHESTRA WIVES also includes Mary Beth Hughes, Carole Landis, Cesar Romero, Jackie Gleason, Virginia Gilmore and The Nicholas Brothers (who perform a brief dance specialty at the very end of the film).
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