Swingtime Canteen

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"We're in a war ladies and we've got to win!"

Fifty years from now, will anyone be singing those fabulous songs from the Gulf War? Oh, that’s right, there weren’t any. And we’d guess that few families gather round the piano to sing of the invasions of Grenada and Panama. Vietnam is pretty much an angry face-off between Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler (The Ballad of the Green Berets) and Country Joe & the Fish (I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag). The Korean War has a memorial now, but still no memorable songs. It’s as if, after World War II, Americans decided that internationally sanctioned slaughter was no longer something to sing about.

Ah, but WWII! The Good War. The war. The bigger, better sequel to the War to End All Wars. With a unified national will to defeat the Axis, and Broadway, Hollywood and Tin Pan Alley operating at full throttle, every G.I. could hit the beach with a song in his backpack. Terrific songs, many of them. They still sound swell today.

It’s London, 1944. Marian Ames, the ever-so-gracefully-aging screen queen, is fronting an all-girl band to entertain the Eighth Air Force with tunes that spotlight some of the era’s premier lyricists. They play Frank Loesser’s Love Isn’t Born, It’s Made; Johnny Burke’s Thank Your Lucky Stars and Stripes and His Rocking Horse Ran Away; Don Raye’s Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy, Rhumboogie and Beat Me, Daddy, Eight to the Bar. As in any creative assembly, there are spells of emotional fireworks. But the ladies play and sing handsomely, even during an air raid, and especially when remembering their beaux back home.

SWINGTIME CANTEEN, the "Star Spangled Musical Hit", enjoyed over 300 performances Off Broadway before beginning a London production. It has since become a staple of musical theatres across the country. The show takes its inspiration from the films and personalities that helped to define the national consciousness know as "the war effort". As we enter the millennium, SWINGTIME CANTEEN fondly looks back to a time universally heralded as Americas finest hour.

After 17 years with MGM, still-glamorous movie legend Marian Ames has endured four flop films in a row and is being put out to pasture. But this is 1944 and no time for self pity. So Marian has gathered up her instrument playing gal pals from the Hollywood Canteen and headed for London to entertain the troops.

Songs from original the play included: Don't Fence Me In, I'll Be Seeing You, Sing Sing Sing, How High the Moon, I Don't Want to Walk without You, A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square, Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive, Sentimental Journey, Apple Blossom Time, a fast paced, 12-song Andrews Sisters medley and many more.

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