A Blog About Women Who Were Homefront Heroines: the WAVES of World War II
Here Come the WAVES was nominated for one Oscar, for best music original song Accentuate the Positive. The song was written by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer.
It didn’t win. It Might as Well be Spring from the Rogers and Hammerstein musical State Fair took the award that year.
Here’s a version of the song (not from the film), sung by Bing Crosby and the Andrew Sisters.
Here Come the WAVES was released worldwide, including in Sweden (Flottans farliga flickor, November 1945), Finland (Laivaston heilat, December 1946), Turkey (Gönüllü melekler, 1947), Denmark (En rigtig sailor, August 1947), and Portugal (A Tentação da Sereia, May 1949).
The poster above is from the Argentinian version of the film, known as Mellizas Peligrosas, or Dangerous Twins. The poster below from the Denmark release, which translates as A Real Sailor.
Betty Hutton, star of Here Come the WAVES, in an advertisement timed to coincide with the theatrical release of the film in December 1944.
The theatrical poster for the film Here Come the WAVES, filmed in cooperation with the US Navy and released in December 1944.
And look what we found on the other side of the December, 1944 WAVES Newsletter. An ad for the new film Here Come the WAVES.
The Betty Hutton/Bing Crosby vehicle was filmed on Navy bases and at the Hunter College Boot Camp. It went into pre-release at Navy facilities across the United States before going into theatrical release December 18, 1944.
Happy December!
The December, 1944 edition of the WAVES Newsletter finds a photograph of a WAVE stepping out of a plane. We’d probably expect a Christmas-themed cover these days….
The USS Missouri headed to San Francisco from the East Coast in November of 1944 via the Panama Canal, stopping in various ports along the way. This allowed for visits from Navy WAVES aboard the ship.
This Navy photograph, dated December 1, 1944, is likely from one of the West Coast ports, perhaps San Francisco, where WAVE Margaret Anderson got a chance to visit the ship.
The photo comes from the National Archives.
…. when you join the WAVES. World War II-era recruitment photo.
Watching football this weekend? Maybe this photo of some WAVES at the USS Hunter (aka Hunter College Boot Camp in New York) will help you get some team spirit. Give me an N! Give me an A! Give me a V! Give me a Y! What’s that spell? NAVY!!!
The photo comes from the New York Historical Society.
Best wishes to you and your family!
Here’s the menu from Thanksgiving Day, 1944 at the Fleet Service Schools in Norfolk.
The menu is a part of the collection at the Naval History and Heritage Command.
Hinges of History 