Best Music Movies of 1943

As Tom and Jerry stage their typical fight sequences, the patriotic soldier theme of the title is evidenced by such things as a carton of eggs labeled "Hen Grenades"; Jerry dropping light bulbs from an airplane like bombs; and Jerry sending a telegram with the message "Sighted Cat - Sank Same." Musical phrasings from various patriotic war songs are heard throughout.

Rich kid Danny Churchill has a taste for wine, women and song, but not for higher education. So his father ships him to an all-male college out West where there's not supposed to be a female for miles. But before Danny arrives, he spies a pair of legs extending out from under a stalled roadster. They belong to the Dean's granddaughter, Ginger Gray, who is more interested in keeping the financially strapped college open than falling for Danny's romantic line. At least at first...

The daughter of a musical mentor adores a promising composer, who is quite fond of the adolescent. When her father dies, an uncle arrives with his own grown daughter, who begins a romance with the composer which culminates in marriage but creates an emotional rivalry that affects the three.

A young soldier on a pass in New York City visits the famed Stage Door Canteen, where famous stars of the theater and films appear and host a recreational center for servicemen during the war. The soldier meets a pretty young hostess and they enjoy the many entertainers and a growing romance

After one member of their group is murdered, the performers at a burlesque house must work together to find out who the killer is before they strike again.

When the bride's mother is supposedly swindled out of her money by a spurned suitor, the groom's father orchestrates a scheme of his own to set things right. He is aided by a cabaret singer, while placating a jealous wife.

Dressed in a tuxedo, the Big Bad Wolf announces the evening's program: the tale of the Big Bad Wolf and the Three Little Pigs, set to the music of Johannes Brahms's Hungarian Dances. Queue the fairy tale: we watch each pig build his house, the first two pigs dance and play, the wolf arrives and, wearing a gypsy woman's disguise, almost catches them. They run to hide in the brick house, where the wolf tries various ruses to gain entry, including dressing as a poverty-stricken old woman reduced to playing a violin for donations. He fools the two simple pigs and gets inside. Will he dine on pork? The house has an elevator, the wolf gets the shaft.

Aspiring singer Ann Carter visits her stepbrother in New York, hoping to make it on Broadway.

Deanna Durbin is all grown up in Hers to Hold, the unofficial sequel to her "Three Smart Girls" films of the 1930s. Durbin plays Penelope Craig, the starry-eyed daughter of wealthy Judson and Dorothy Craig (Charles Winninger, Nella Walker). Developing a crush on much-older playboy Bill Morley (Joseph Cotton), Penelope stops at nothing to land the elusive Morley as her husband. Highlights include Durbin's renditions of "Begin the Beguine" and the "Seguidilla" from Carmen, and a captivating sequence that includes highlights from Durbin's earlier films, presented as home movies!