AllMovie

As a wartime morale booster, Reveille With Beverly was tops, raking in millions for Columbia Pictures, who had spent a measly 40,000 dollars on the concoction. Today, the hodge-podge musical is interesting mainly for the guest artists, what with Duke Ellington and His Orchestra performing "Take the A Train" aboard a mock-up of the Super Chief rather than the New York subway line for which the Billy Strayhorn tune was named; and a glimpse of a startlingly young (and impossibly thin) Frank Sinatra, who does a fine rendition of "Night and Day" accompanied by chorus girls pretending to be violinists. Although a favorite of the film's young target audience, Sinatra was not everyone's cup of tea, one critic dismissing his vocal prowess as "pleasing enough, a kind of moaning baritone with a few trick inflections that involve going off-key at turning points in the melody." There is also the singing Wilde Twins, Lee and Lyn, Franklin Pangborn doing his prissy act (when Pangborn prances off in response to a draft notice, cleaning woman Maude Eburne sighs, "God bless America!"), and, of course, Ann Miller, as a morning DJ, performing the climactic "Thumbs up for V for Victory" tap routine dressed in a miniskirt and accompanied by a chorus of servicemen. It is all high camp and surprisingly entertaining.