Trailer
Plot summary
Sailors Joe Brady and Clarence Doolittle come ashore from the USS Knoxville after eight months at sea for a four-day leave, and they decide to spend it in Hollywood. Joe, a womanizer, plans to reunite with Lola. Clarence, a shy former choir boy, asks Joe for lessons in meeting women. A police sergeant finds Donald Martin, an orphaned boy who left home hoping to join the Navy, and the sailors are summoned to persuade him to go back. They walk Donald home and meet his widowed aunt, Susan Abbott, an aspiring singer who works as a movie extra. Susan agrees to a date with Clarence.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Anchors Aweigh (1945)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- MGM originally wanted to use Mickey Mouse for the animated dance segment and had contracted Walt Disney Productions, but Roy Disney rejected the loan-out because his studio was in debt after World War II and, he said, had no business making cartoons for other people.
- The dance sequence needed meticulous storyboarding, and after Kelly's live dancing was filmed, animators used rotoscoping to painstakingly match the animated character's movement to his, even down to their shadows cast on the polished dance floor.
- Anchors Aweigh was the first of three buddy pictures pairing the cocky dancing Kelly with the against-type shy, singing Sinatra; Take Me Out to the Ball Game and On the Town both followed in 1949.
