William James Craft's Dames Ahoy is such a delightfully-paced service comedy, that one quickly forgets that it is a silent -- although the fact that it is a silent is what accounts for its pacing. In the opening shot of the sailors aboard ship preparing for liberty ashore, there is a beautiful tracking and panning shot of the men celebrating, across their quarters past the different antics, that sets the tone for the entire movie to follow -- and which would have been impossible to do as well or as smoothly in a talkie of the period. And then we meet our trio of heroes, portrayed by Glenn Tryon, Otis Harlan, and Eddie Gribbon, each a lunkheaded gob in his way and the fun really begins. This breezy service farce plays far better than such more recent fare as Hit The Deck (which was a hit musical of the same period and saw a screen version done as an early talkie the same year that Dames Ahoy was made) -- director William James Craft even manages to shoe-horn a brief musical sequence into the silent that works perfectly (one has to see it to understand). Between the delightful performances, the sustained good humor of the piece, the location crowd shots involving the three principals, and the establishing shots of the 1930-vintage navy ships (too many of which were still in service 11 years later when the US entered World War II), this is not only still a fun movie 70-some years later but also a priceless document of a more innocent age that, today, is only recalled indirectly through such more recent period films as On The Town and Kiss Them For Me. One added treat for sharp-eyed movie buffs is the presence of a coterie of past and soon-to-be major names and familiar faces, including a young (and amazingly slim) Andy Devine as a U.S. Marine in a dance contest, John "Tiny" Lipson as a Scotsman, Franklyn Farnum as the master-of-ceremonies in the dance contest, and Walter Brennan as a carnival barker.
by Bruce Eder
review
