OVP: The Sky's the Limit (1943)

Film: The Sky's the Limit (1943)

Stars: Fred Astaire, Joan Leslie, Robert Benchley, Robert Ryan

Director: Edward H. Griffith

Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Scoring, Original Song-"My Shining Hour")

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Oscar in the early 1940's tended to nominate a lot of movies, mostly due to a quirk in the music categories, where the number of nominees was bizarrely large.  You'd see fields of songs stretch to 15-20 strong, and as a result there are a lot of movies that have been nominated simply for their music that otherwise would've been long-gone in the AMPAS pantheon.  This occasionally means that we get films that aren't impressive, cited for songs that aren't all that good.  That's not the case here-The Sky's the Limit, as we'll discuss below, has a solid song nominated for best Original Song, a nod that Oscar shouldn't at all be ashamed of.  The strange part of it is...the movie features one of the best-loved songs of the entire decade, one of the most important songs of Fred Astaire's career, which was eligible for this film, but somehow didn't get the inclusion over the less iconic ballad.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie takes place during World War II, where flying ace Fred Atwell (Astaire) comes home on a ten-day leave a national hero with a ticker-tape parade.  Fred is supposed to be on a tour boosting national morale, but he wants to have fun (and meet some girls) so he sneaks away from the trip and meets Joan Manion (Leslie) at a nightclub.  She's a singer there, and so Fred, tired of being always identified with his hero persona, lies to her and pretends to just be a roustabout.  She attempts to get him a job, which of course he doesn't want because he has to go back to the front soon, but their unlikely chemistry sparks into love, and soon Fred must decide if and when he's going to tell Joan that he loves her and that he is, in fact, a war hero.

The movie is a relatively run-of-the-mill piece of wartime propaganda, a standard romance whose appreciation of it will depend entirely on your latitude with the two stars.  I personally adore Fred Astaire, and will watch him in anything, so I liked the movie even if the film's plot is absurd.  It's silly after a while that when Astaire's Fred starts to fall for Leslie's Joan that he doesn't just come out and tell her that he's a pilot, after all, he's going to have to eventually & leaving her behind feels a bit bizarre.  But it's short & sweet & to the point, and a fun way to spend a Sunday morning while you're folding laundry.

The film's two Oscar nominations are bizarre, though, as I mentioned above.  The film was nominated for Scoring, which is logical (it is a musical), though it doesn't have a lot of interesting dancing for an Astaire picture (only a couple of numbers with Leslie), and only three really significant songs.  One of them, "My Shining Hour" is pleasant & reprised, with Leslie & Astaire dancing wordlessly to it  It's lovely, truly-there's nothing wrong with this nomination...

...except that this movie features "One for My Baby," which I assumed initially was already a standard that Astaire had had put into the film (this happened a lot in this era).  That wasn't the case-"One for My Baby," a ballad that has been popularized by everyone from Frank Sinatra to Bette Midler (who famously sang it on the final Johnny Carson episode of The Tonight Show) was written specifically for Astaire for this film, meaning it was eligible for the Oscar.  The number is dynamite in the film, with a lovelorn Astaire singing it to a bartender, knowing he can't be with the girl he loved because he's shipping out, and while I get that "My Shining Hour" is a good song & great within the confines of the film, this is arguably the most important song of Astaire's career, and I don't honestly get how "One for My Baby" didn't get the Oscar citation.