The Theater: New Revue in Manhattan, Apr. 29, 1946

Call Me Mister (music & lyrics by Harold Rome; sketches by Arnold Auerbach; produced by Melvyn Douglas & Herman Levin) is the most engaging new musical of the season. A bright, bouncing, youthful revue celebrating the G.I.’s return to civilian life, it is acted by quondam G.I.s, male & female, and USO entertainers who are just back themselves.

Call Me Mister slows down here & there to the dreamy pace of a sentimental journey—Joe, overseas, thinking of the corner drugstore; a trainload of returning servicemen chanting nevermore-to-roam, going-home blues. But mostly the show clatters briskly along, ribbing everything.

It ribs Army red tape, imagining Paul Revere, under present-day methods, trying to get a horse; it ribs the housing setup for veterans (“I can put you on the waiting list for a cave”). In its funniest skit, it offers an infantryman’s conception of life in the Air Forces—toast after toast in champagne to “the Blue Lady of the clouds,” love-maddened women, tony chatter, youths who moan: “Look at me, 22 years old and still only a major!” And one of its liveliest ditties spoofs the Army as a character builder:

He was a bum before he got into the service, He was a bum when all is said and done. He would beat his ma and dad For suggesting it was bad To be a burglar on Sunday.

But oh the charm of Army life, The touch of discipline and strife! The military magic made him hum: With the things he learned He has now returned, Still a bum!*

Call Me Mister has its faults. Like almost all youthful shows, it has more high spirits than skill; like almost all revues, more faltering skits than funny ones. Yet the show as a whole is as well-balanced as it is bright. It has fresh ideas, peppy dancing, agreeable tunes, clever lyrics. And it has likable performers, notably Comic Jules Munshin and pretty Comedienne Betty Garrett (Laffing Room Only). As a canteen hostess, half-crippled and half-crazy from trying to conga, rumba and samba, Actress Garrett brings down the house.

*Used by special permission of copyright owners M. Witmark & Sons, 1946.