Why do they start this short about the Navy band by singing the version of "Anchors Away" that's used at Annapolis' football games? The Negulesco musical shorts that Warner Brothers' Vitaphone unit produced in the 1940s tended to be livelier than earlier projects, with a lot more outdoor shooting -- like this one, which includes shot of the Lincoln Memorial -- but I find that a little odd. It's not the swing music. That's obviously to appeal to to the young men who might see this short subject in the theater, and then head out to enlist. Perhaps, like the William Tenn short story, the war that the Navy was fighting was, after all, against the Army.
No, that's can't be right. Perhaps, this was just one of the "selected short subjects" that a movie program encompassed during the war, when a show would include not just the feature, but cartoons, newsreels, educational shorts..... In the end, this was another chaser, a short subject meant to end the program and send the audience stepping out quickly. Some good music, some stirring images.