Mike’s Favorite Original Songs of the Decade: #84 – “No Dames!” from Hail, Caesar!

84. “No Dames!” from Hail, Caesar!

This scene is a masterpiece. It’s perfect. It’s meant to be a Gene Kelly-type musical number from the 50s, and you just get it immediately. Plus, the song is just amazing… the perfect song for a homoerotic movie about sailors. “No Dames”? Perfect. Because they’re lamenting that there aren’t gonna be any women out on the sea, but also… you get it. The sexual innuendo is just brilliant. It’s the perfect parody song. It’s perfect for the ‘mermaids got no gams’ line alone. But then you have the dancing breakdown in the middle, which is also quite wonderful. This is the kind of song where you need the context of the movie to really understand why it’s so high on the list. But this sequence is just — it may be the best sequence in the entire film.