Ruby Keeler and Dick Powell in "Flirtation Walk," First National Pictures, 1934

A spoonful of white sugar in your black militarist java, Frank Borzage’s "Flirtation Walk" (1934) is happening on DVD from Warner, along with a pile of ‘30s hamhocks we’d also all forgotten about, in editions so no-frills they don’t even have unique title menus as part of the recently introduced Warner Archives line. (A bunch of the films star crotchety character actress of the day Marie Dressler, whose popular bosomy crankiness seems to be one of the Hoover era’s most impenetrable lingering mysteries.)

But you take Borzage in whatever doses you can find, and though "Flirtation Walk" was one of his bona fide hits (so much so it was nominated as one of 12 Best Picture Oscar hopefuls, and Borzage was asked to virtually remake it the next year as "Shipmates Forever," also released), it’s a tremendously silly semi-musical salute to West Point, to the U.S. military and to Dick Powell, who was not handsome or funny, nor was he even a memorable crooner, but who exuded empathizable personality in precisely the way old Hollywood stars used to, script and genre and beauty be damned. Would someone as fascinating and unique as James Cagney even get roles today, short of supporting bits on sitcoms?

Anyway, here we have a Powell-Pat O’Brien bromance (complete with sniffling tears), Ruby Keeler sending up the idea of a female-run army (the very idea), a war-games exercise simulating an aerial attack on Hawaii (!) and a Busby Berkeley-ish Hawaiian musical number with dancers forming an undulating formation suggestive of a giant hungry anemone... Borzage locates a few characteristic moments in the hooey: cutting to Keeler during Powell’s first song and watching her big, moist, embarrassed eyes get hit with the chaos of first love, and later, as the couple reclines under a tropical moon, a long, sexy pause ended by Keeler muttering, "Perhaps we should keep talking, or something..." However you cut it, this is what America was preferring to think about in the starvation days of 1934.

“Waltz with Bashir” and “Flirtation Walk” are now available on DVD.

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