prune picker

This is the blog of a prune picker. (Native born Californian) Retired oilfield. I am an old man. I blog a lot about my body and getting old. As I approach death life gets more interesting. More interesting is not good. I still drive. I attend sports, music, and civic events. I am writing my memoirs. I attend swim class three times a week. Some of my blogs might be interesting. A lot of my blogs are silly and trivial. None are very long.

Saturday, June 15, 2013

Boat ride across the Pacific with Esther Williams and Red Skelton.

In the fall of 1944 I was an unassigned soldier on Guadalcanal Island. (I had become separated from my unit after being wounded on Peleliu Island.)  General Douglas McArthur decided that I should be in Hawaii.  So I boarded a troop ship with several thousand other troops and took off on a several week trip to Honolulu.

The ship had one movie. Thank goodness it was a good one. It was Bathing Beauty starring Esther Williams and Red Skelton.


The movie was shown every night of the trip across the Pacific. I estimate that I saw it 17 times. I could almost recite all the dialogue and knew every scene.

Kerry has ordered it. I am going to watch it one more time.

Esther Williams just recently passed away at the age of 91.



1 comment:

  1. Hello Mr. Chuck!

    I saw part of this movie for the first time just a couple of day ago on Turner Classic Movies! I didn't get to see the entire thing because I had to get to work but the big musical number that I caught was the "re-working" of the song "Loch Lomond". It was really fun. It just kept getting bigger and bigger! I have seen a few of Esther Williams' movies. It is always fun to see how they are going to manage to work swimming in to the story line. Boy, was she a beautiful lady. I bet that all the troops enjoyed the "eye-candy" and I am sure that Esther was glad to do her part to boost morale!

    Love and Hugs!
    A.B.

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