same troubadour, chirping the ditties as only Crosby does even though his waistline is somewhat more generous than behooves a juve." Bosley Crowther of The New York Times liked it too. "So many screen exercises in the music-album line have been so cluttered up with 'biography' that it is a pleasure at last to see one in which a tune-vender's life and his music are not mutually and mawkishly abused. Such a one is the Paramount's current and cheerfully diverting "Blue Skies," which catalogues some songs of Irving Berlin without catalyzing that gentleman's career. And with Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby as its bright particular stars, everyone's probity is honored by it—especially Mr. Berlin's." At the 19th Academy Awards, honoring the films from 1946, Blue Skies was nominated for two Oscars: Best MUSIC (Scoring of a Musical Picture) - Robert Emmett Dolan and Best MUSIC (Song) - "You Keep Coming Back Like A Song", Music and Lyrics by Irving Berlin. The awards, however, went to The Jolson Story – Morris Stoloff and "On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe" from The Harvey Girls – Music by Harry Warren; Lyrics by Johnny Mercer. Soundtrack and dance routines Crosby applies his famous relaxed crooning style to the many songs he delivers here. In contrast, Astaire, assisted by choreographers Hermes Pan and Dave Robel (for the "Puttin' on the Ritz" routine), delivers a series of dances which explore the theme of confrontation, both with partners and with the audience. As a result, it is one of only a few Astaire films not to feature a romantic-partnered dance. "A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody": Berlin's 1919 song is presented as part of a big Ziegfeld Follies production number, an aesthetic which Astaire parodies in this partnered dance with Caulfield and others. In the first of a series of references to films he made earlier in the 1940s, he reprises a tap sequence performed atop a bar counter in the "One for My Baby" number from The Sky's the Limit (1943), this time danced down a stairway. "I've Got My Captain Working for Me Now": This song, composed in 1919, is performed by Crosby, backed up by Billy De Wolfe. "You'd Be Surprised": Another 1919 song, this time performed by Olga San Juan. "All by Myself": Crosby performs this 1921 song to Caulfield, who harmonizes with him in the closing phrases. "Serenade to