It's 1941 Santa Monica. Kay Walsh (Goldie Hawn) is happily married. Her fisherman husband Jack (Ed Harris) enlists after Pearl Harbor. Kay gets a job at the aircraft plant despite Jack's objections. Their lounge singer neighbor Hazel (Christine Lahti) is tired of her manager Archibald 'Biscuits' Touie (Fred Ward) and doesn't like the Walshes either who often snicker at her. Eventually, the two women become best of friends at the sexist plant on the swing shift from four to midnight. Kay starts to fall for her supervisor trumpet player Mike 'Lucky' Lockhart (Kurt Russell).
He's a player hound-dogging a married woman. She doesn't come off that well either. There has to be a higher degree of douchness from Jack to excuse her cheating on him. He is a male chauvinist but not necessarily worst than everybody else including Lucky. As a rom-com, it's very awkward. I really couldn't take the bad romance. For this to work, this has to be a darker drama. All the lightness has to go. Goldie Hawn is the wrong person to go there. There is a wrong tone to the movie. I don't know which version I saw although I suspect it's not the director's cut.
Swing Shift
1984
Action / Drama / Romance / War
Swing Shift
1984
Action / Drama / Romance / War
Plot summary
Jack and Kay Walsh are typical of many couples of the 1940s, where he is the breadwinner and she the housewife dependent upon him to do the man's duties around the house. Jack believes one of their neighbors in the housing complex in which they live in Los Angeles is white trash - he letting her know so at every opportunity, while Kay is quietly curious about her. That neighbor is streetwise Hazel Zanussi, an aspiring singer who does get a chance to sing on occasion at the club managed by her casual boyfriend, Biscuits Toohey, although he relegates her to being one of the taxi dancers more often against her wants, while he cheats on her behind her back despite truly having feelings for her. Hazel just wants to make an honest living. Their worlds are turned upside down on December 7, 1941 when the US enters WWII with the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. Jack immediately enlists in the Navy, and while he will send money home, his decision leaves Kay largely to fend for herself. Against what she knows are Jack's wishes, Kay decides to follow the request made by the government to the female population to do their part in the war effort by getting an assembly line job at a factory, in Kay's case as a riveter at Santa Monica-based MacBride, a military aircraft manufacturer. Hazel, too, gets a job there. Despite a rocky start based on how Hazel knows Jack feels about her, Kay and Hazel become best friends in the process, largely in their and their fellow female employees needing to stand up to the taunts by their less than enthusiastic male colleagues. Working for a living and having Hazel as a friend results in Kay standing on her own two feet for the first time, including making important decisions on her own. Kay is pursued romantically by their line leadman, Lucky Lockhart, who sees himself more as a musician, a trumpeter, than a factory worker. Kay has to decide how far to go with Lucky, to whom she is admittedly attracted, but she does not want to betray Jack, especially due to the reason for his absence. With all these issues going on in Kay's life, she will be tested to see if she can go back to her previous life in all its aspects if and when Jack makes it home, especially after the war.
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awkward rom-com of unlikeable characters
The Homefront
The story of Swing Swift was probably played out several thousand times during the World War II years. While the men went to war the women did their bit in industries to keep America's industrial machine running. No doubt they developed itches that needed scratching. One such was Goldie Hawn, the protagonist of this story.
On Pearl Harbor Day Goldie was the happily married wife of Ed Harris, who's nice enough, but a bit on the thick side and a regular alpha male. Harris goes into the navy and Hawn who doesn't want to live on just his allotment checks takes a job in an aircraft factory. She goes to work with her neighbor Christine Lahti whom she and Harris never really socialized with that much, but now they become best of friends.
An even better friendship develops with musician Kurt Russell who because gigs are getting fewer and farther between also takes a job in the same aircraft factory. He still blows his trumpet at some clubs in the wee small hours of the morning after the Swing Shift. He's also a quite legitimate 4-F due to a heart murmur.
Try as she might Hawn is unable to resist Russell's persistence. Then when Harris gets leave and returns all the issues come to a head.
Swing Shift which has a nice score of 40s era music which is my kind of music would never get a bad review from me if for that alone. But director Jonathan Demme really does well capturing the mood of the 40s when we were a people united trying to save the world from one nasty brutal tyranny. The women are shown to have a really tough time both mastering the defense jobs they were doing and taking a lot from the men still working there.
As we all know until recently Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn were the happiest unmarried couple in the history of Hollywood. That comes right through in Swing Shift and that carries a great deal of the film.
Christine Lahti got Swing Shift's only Oscar recognition with her nomination for Best Supporting Actress. She was one sassy woman who takes nothing off no one in the human race. It's also left her sad and a bit bitter. Before Pearl Harbor she was a nightclub singer and that world has left a mark on her. But she does have the right stuff in the end.
Swing Shift is a marvelous film recapturing a bygone era of a truly United States of America.
If there was a boogie woogie bugle boy, there had to be a female equivalent.
An easy-to-watch look at the Rosie the Riveter culture during WWII, "Swing Shift" is nothing special but passes. Goldie Hawn is her usual self as housewife Kay Walsh, who goes to work in the factories after her husband Jack (Ed Harris) goes off to fight in the war. If anything weakens the movie, it's something that we only recognize in the 21st century: the fact that Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell met on the set (Russell plays her new love interest). Since then, stories of movie stars meeting on movie sets - and possible breaking up marriages - have become so commonplace that it makes our eyes roll.
But the movie itself is pretty interesting. Maybe it's not any kind of masterpiece, but it's fun to watch. Also starring Christine Lahti, Fred Ward and Holly Hunter. Jonathan Demme was certainly demonstrating the talent that he would later bring to "Silence of the Lambs", "Philadelphia" and "Beloved".