"The Song of the Marines" is a song composed by Harry Warren with lyrics by Al Dubin. It was featured in the 1937 Warner Bros. film, The Singing Marine where it was sung by actor Dick Powell.
Later, Warner Bros. Cartoons used the song in several shorts, including the Porky Pig short Porky the Gob (1938). A shortened version (replacing the lines "It may be Shanghai, farewell and goodbye" with "We're leaving today, it's anchors aweigh") was sung several times in the Daffy Duck cartoon Conrad the Sailor (1942) and several opening bars of it in Duck Amuck (1953), plus the Sylvester and Tweety cartoon Snow Business (1953)
In 1962, Dick Powell, star of The Singing Marine, reprised the song in a cameo appearance in the Ensign O'Toole episode "Operation Benefit", a TV series owned by his production company, Four Star Television. It was one of his final filmed appearances.
The version in The Singing Marine has these lyrics:
Bridge:
The chorus is repeated up through "farewell and goodbye," except that "shovin' right off" is replaced by "sailin' away." This is followed by the first four lines of the Marines' Hymn, then the original chorus is repeated, but with "shovin' right off for home" repeated a third time in the last line.
There is a recording by Dennis Day that begins with the bridge, replacing "in China or Japan" with "of every fighting man," then the chorus, then a repeat of the last few lines of the chorus, changed to: