In 1942, the first year of World War II, General Dwight Eisenhower asked Hollywood to make movies that would boost the morale of troops fighting overseas, and the studios responded throughout the war years with all-star entertainments featuring music, comedy, and lavish production numbers. RKO didn't have the big budgets that studios like MGM, Paramount, and Fox had, but its modest, black-and-white 1942 effort, Seven Days' Leave, fit the bill nicely, with a storyline about a group of soldiers on one last fling in New York before shipping out. It featured songs by Frank Loesser and Jimmy McHugh; two top big bands, Les Brown and his Orchestra and Freddy Martin and his Orchestra; recreations of two popular radio programs, The Court of Missing Heirs and Truth or Consequences, and radio stars such as Harold Peary (The Great Gildersleeve).

Seven Days' Leave stars hunky Victor Mature as Johnny, a soldier who learns that he's the heir to a family fortune, but must marry a woman from a rival family to collect it. In civilian life, Johnny was a trumpet player with Les Brown's band, which just happens to be performing in New York, providing plenty of opportunity for musical interludes (Buddy Clark, a popular radio singer and recording artist, provided Mature's singing voice, and plays a small non-singing role as one of Mature's pals). Lucille Ball, showing only glimmers of her screwball comedy future, is the lady in question, and their courtship takes place during the seven days of his leave, aided and abetted by his fellow men in uniform. At one point, the two go on a date to watch the radio program Truth or Consequences, and are picked to play the game. She has to take aim at him with a cream pie, and that's when you see her potential for comedy. According to several sources, Mature, who made the film on loanout from his home studio Fox, had wanted his current girlfriend Rita Hayworth for the role, and resented working with Ball. He made her life miserable during production by letting her know it. They later worked together amicably on another RKO film, Easy Living (1949).

Seven Days' Leave features the film debut of Arnold Stang, a bespectacled young radio comedian with a distinctive voice. Stang went on to work in television, most notably as a sidekick to Milton Berle. Also making her first movie was teen actress and singer Marcy McGuire, who plays Ball's sister, and Seven Days' Leave also includes the only American film appearance by Puerto Rican singer Mapy Cortes, who had a long and successful career in Mexican films.

B>Seven Days' Leave also marked another career debut, this one behind the camera. Pasadena-born Charles Walters had become a success as a dancer and choreographer on the New York stage, and had recently returned to California. He is credited with the film's "Dance Ensembles," including "Please Won't You Leave My Girl Alone," a rousing march by the soldiers; an energetic samba danced by Cortes and a plump soldier; and a comic Texas swing number for singing ingenue McGuire. A ballroom dance that goes hilariously awry by the team of Lynn, Royce and Vanya, wittily spoofing the swoopy style of Veloz and Yolanda, was apparently their own creation.

The critics offered faint praise for Seven Days' Leave. "If you stuff a grabbag with enough different items, some of them are bound to please," wrote the New York Times critic. "With rugged, dimpled, eye-rolling Victor Mature and the nearly as beautiful Lucille Ball to provide the romantic hide-and-seek, Seven Days' Leave is an unsteady melange. But on a thin tire the producers are still getting a little mileage. The audience seemed to enjoy the ride." The Brooklyn Eagle was more enthusiastic: "Loaded with music, hot, sweet and solid, Seven Days' Leave made a whole lot of local audiences happy." In spite of lukewarm reviews, the film was one of RKO's top moneymakers of 1942.

Walters and Ball were soon reunited. Thanks to Gene Kelly, who had known him in New York, Walters was hired to choreograph DuBarry Was a Lady (1943) starring Kelly and Ball, her first film under contract at MGM. It was the beginning of an enduring friendship. In the 1970s, Walters directed an episode of Ball's television series Here's Lucy, and two of her TV specials. DuBarry was also the beginning of Walters' long career at MGM, first as a choreographer and, beginning with Good News (1947), as a director.

Producer/Director: Tim Whelan
Screenplay: William Bowers, Ralph Spence, Curtis Kenyon, Kenneth Earle
Cinematography: Robert de Grasse
Editor: Robert Wise
Costume Design: Renie
Art Direction: Albert S. D'Agostino, Carroll Clark
Dance Ensembles: Charles Walters
Music: Songs by Frank Loesser and Jimmy McHugh
Principal Cast: Victor Mature (Johnny Grey), Lucille Ball (Terry Havelock-Allen), Harold Peary (Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve), Mapy Cortes (Mapy), Marcy McGuire (Mickey Havelock-Allen), Arnold Stang (Bitsy), Peter Lind Hayes (Speak Jackson), Walter Reed (Ralph Bell), Wallace Ford (Sergeant Mead), Buddy Clark (Buddy "Clarky" Clark)
87 Minutes

by Margarita Landazuri