Starring Dick Powell, Rosemary Lane, Pricilla Lane, and Ted Healy
Directed by William Keightley
Music by Richard A. Whiting; Lyrics by Johnny Mercer
Even the Busby Berkeley spectaculars of the 1930's went back to school. Berkeley took his overhead formations and perfectly synchronized dancers from Broadway to higher education for that hallowed tradition of many big colleges, the varsity show. How does a college musical revue look like ala Berkeley and Dick Powell? Let's start at fictional Winfield College, where the students and assistant faculty advisor Ernie Mason (Fred Waring) are at odds with th old-fashioned advisor Professor Sylvester Biddle (Walter Catlett) and find out...
The Story: Desperate to make their show a success, the kids hit New York to hire Winfield alumni Chuck Daly (Powell), who is supposedly now a big-shot Broadway producer. The truth is, he hasn't had a hit in years. Hoping to get a big payment, his manager William Williams (Healy) convinces him to take the show and make it they way they want it to be, with lots of nifty jazz and swing numbers, under Biddle's nose.
Even after realizing he won't be getting the money from a school dance, Chuck decides to stay on. Biddle's still insisting on the show being done his way, with "genteel" music and no swing or jazz. Fed up with his fuddy-duddy ways, the kids go on strike and won't show up to class. When Chuck finally leaves to keep them from getting expelled, the kids decide to bring the show to him and prove that he still has what it takes to make it on the Great White Way.
The Song and Dance: The last thing I expected was to see in a 30's musical were college kids picketing the offices and taking part in a sit-down strike. For a while towards the end, I started to wonder if we were in college during 1937 or 1967. Their antics and talk of the realities of higher education during the Great Depression add a unique layer of authenticity to this backstage story. Powell's having a little bit more fun here than he did in the goofier Going Places a year later and Catlett enjoys his role as the stuffy professor whose musical ideas are a bit too dowdy for the Depression. Healy has a great time as the fast-talking manager who tries to avoid nerdy-but-cute co-ed Cuddles (Mabel Todd).
Favorite Number: We open with all of the kids singing about how "The Varsity Show" is being put on tonight, and everyone is excited to try out. Johnnie Davis joins Fred Waring and His Pennsylvanians to show off his big "Old King Cole" routine to a horrified Biddle. Healy, Powell, and the senior class sing why "We're Working Our Way Through College" as "freshmen" Powell and Healy are escorted down the senior walk. Rosemary Lane sings "On With the Dance" as Buck, Bubbles, and the college kids proceed to do just that during the big senior dance. She and Powell share the duet "You've Got Something There" during a romantic dance in the moonlight.
The spectacular finale brings together all of these numbers, plus the hits "Have You Got Any Castles Baby?" and "Love Is On the Air Tonight," along with a medley of college fight songs. Black dance duo John W. Bubbles and Fort Washington "Buck" Lee start things off with some amazingly dexterous tap work. Priscilla Lane takes over, cartwheeling her way through "Castles," while Busby Berkeley's overhead formations give us students forming the initials of major schools.
Trivia: Priscilla and Rosemary Lane's film debuts.
The movie was released at over two hours. In 1942, Warners re-edited it, losing 40 minutes and at least four more musical numbers, including more songs for Powell and Waring. The original version remains lost.
Davis is best known to animation fans as the voice of "Owl Jolson" in the Looney Tunes short "I Love to Singa."
What I Don't Like: First of all, Ernie's lucky he and the kids weren't arrested for just walking into a theater and taking it over. That was weird, and frankly kind of silly. Yeah, some of the plot can be pretty goofy or veer too close to other Warners/Berkeley extravaganzas of the time, and all of the Berkeley in the world can't make the dull music exciting. Lee and Bubbles are the janitors and are pretty slow and stereotypical unless they're dancing. Waring as the drama coach determined to have the kids show off their talent is a little too corny to be believable and comes off somewhere between stiff and creepy.
The Big Finale: Some good numbers make this worth checking out for fans of black dancers, Powell, or the Berkeley musicals of the 1930's.
Home Media: Easy to find on streaming and DVD, the latter from the Warner Archives.
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