In the Navy

The famous singer Russ Raymond drops everything at the peak of his career and enlists in the Navy under a false name. What he wants is to live unrecognised. The reporter Dorothy Roberts recognises him and goes after him; all she wants is one photograph of the man in a sailor's uniform. On board, two raw recruits come to Raymond's aid: Smoky and Pomeroy. The more the two of them try to help, the worse the tangle gets. It is one of the service comedies Abbott and Costello turned out one after another in 1941, with the Andrews Sisters in it singing. One detail explains the film as it now stands: the finale, in which Costello takes command of a battleship and throws the harbour into chaos, offended the officers when it was screened for the Navy. The sequence was the climax and could not be removed; the studio found the solution and turned the scene into a dream. The Navy then backed the picture.