Soldiers' Chorus

One of the brightest theatrical memories of World War I is Yip, Yip, Yaphank, the lively soldier show that Irving Berlin created and Uncle Sam produced. A few months ago the same team decided to do a similar job, but on a far bigger scale. Yip just grew, wore anybody's old clothes, finally netted $83,000 for visitors' barracks at Camp Upton. But This Is The Army was carefully nurtured, shopped all the nation's army camps for talent, wangled a truckload of brand-new finery. Before it is through, it hopes to raise $1,000,000for Army Emergency Relief.

It probably will. Opening night the take was $45,000. with tickets at a $27.50 top. Warner Bros. is paying $250,000 for the movie rights. The sheet-music sale on Berlin's songs will bring in another hunk. But This Is The Army should bag most of its take at the box office.

It's big, with 300 soldiers packing the stage. It is graced by not one pair of female legs but it has fast feet that cut the air in a dozen kinds of dancing; and strong lungs that roll Irving Berlin's choruses straight up to the roof. It hits the right note, kids Army life:

This is the Army, Mr. Jones,

No private rooms or telephones;

You had your breakfast in bed before,

But you won't have it there any more.

Yet somehow it glorifies the Army. It catches the right tone: combines professional training and teamwork with a roaring, youthful zip. If its humor falters, its gaiety never flags. If it lacks sophistication, it makes up for it in lustiness.

It has variety, too. Before it really settles down for the evening, it tosses off a whole minstrel show, peels off a vaudeville bill complete with jugglers, acrobats, magicians. After that, it turns into a big-scale revue, with Russian ballets jostling Harlem hurlyburly, with a rousing salute to the Navy and a resounding one for the Air Force. It makes copy of Broadway's Stage Door Canteen, with amateur-night take-offs of Jane Cowl, Joe Cook, Gypsy Rose Lee. And at last it brings Irving Berlin on the stage, to let him dig down into the Yip, Yip, Yaphank trunk and come up with Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning. It is still, after 24 years, the best song in the show. But where everybody, once, had chuckled while humming it, last week it had most people dabbing their eyes.

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