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.



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1 comment:

  1. AnonymousJune 16, 2013 at 3:19 PM

    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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