Starring Nancy Carroll, Stanley Smith, Helen Kane, and Jack Oakie
Directed by Frank Tuttle
Music by Richard Whiting; Lyrics by George Marion Jr.
First of all, Musical Dreams Movie Reviews is going on vacation hiatus from September 22nd through the 30th. Reviews will resume October 1st. To make up for that, you'll be getting an extra review on Wednesday every week for the rest of the month.
Second, we kick off Back to School week with one of the oldest college-related film musicals. Movies with college settings go back to the silent era, complete with football games, homecoming dances, strict deans, and flappers chasing only slightly reluctant class presidents. College musicals had become especially popular in the late 20's, thanks to the success of the Broadway show Good News. This is Paramount's answer to that rush. How does the story of a chorus girl who inherits a university look nowadays? Let's enter the campuses of The Pellham School and Miss Twill's School for Girls in North Carolina and find out...
The Story: Barbara Pell (Carroll) is shocked when she inherits Pellham from a deceased uncle. Her former boyfriend Biff Bentley (Smith) was going to marry her, but he opted to stay at Pellham and finish out the football season instead. He's one of the reasons they're having their best season ever. Barbara's furious with him. She quit her Broadway job to be with him and was dumped back in the chorus when he left her.
She first gives him tests on football days, then claims she'll sell the college to their rival school and let him knock it down. Even her Broadway buddy Tap-Tap Thompson (Oakie) knows that's pushing things too far. While Biff tries to prove to Barbara that she means as much to him as football does, Miss Twill's student Helen Fry (Kane) is up trees shooting boys in the rear, especially Biff's fellow football player Axel Bronstrup (Stuart Erwin).
The Song and Dance: Carroll and the supporting cast are the standouts here. Kane shows the feisty cooing that made her the inspiration for Betty Boop, and Oakie has a fine time hamming it up as the dancer who ends up deciding he might actually like higher education. Carroll also has some good moments, especially early-on when she drops Biff after he claims he wants to finish the season. Paramount really jumped into this one, with lovely gowns and suits for the homecoming dance and a genuine field for the guys to play that all-important game on in the end. It honesty moves pretty fast for an early talkie film, with more vitality than most of them.
Favorite Number: Our first song is "Bear Down, Pellham." This sentimental fight song is what convinces Biff to stay at school and on the football team, after he hears his fellow team members singing it, looks into a mirror, and remembers what it feels like to be a football hero. Jack Oakie and the chorus girls have an instrumental tap routine at a Broadway theater after Barbara returns to the chorus that she's having a hard time keeping up with.
Biff and Barbara perform the ballad "My Sweeter Than Sweet" on a simple piano as the school decorates for the homecoming dance. Helen boop-oop-a-doops through the only standard from this score, "He's So Unusual," looking every inch like a live-action Betty Boop. She and Oakie teach the kids decorating the lively routine "The Prep Step" for the dance. Oakie sings the goofy Al Jolson parody "Alma Mammy" at the school dance. All of the kids eventually join in for the closest thing this gets to a big dance routine. Helen tries to explain to Erwin when he climbs a ladder to her window that "I Think You'll Like It." The students briefly reprise "Alma Mammy" at the big game in very strange blackface masks that are probably supposed to represent Jolson.
What I Don't Like: First of all, Smith is so dull, especially compared to hams like Kane and Oakie, that you wonder why Barbara wanted revenge on him to begin with. Though she does eventually rescind on her plans when she realizes how important football is to the school, Barbara's scheme to shut down an entire college just because her boyfriend dumped her for 8 months seems annoyingly petty.
And yeah, this is an early talkie school musical. The story is cliched other than the angle of Barbara inheriting the school, only "He's So Unusual" stands out among the songs, and though the copy currently on YouTube is in surprisingly decent shape for the era, it still occasionally slows down and shows scenes of people sitting and talking.
The Big Finale: Mainly for fans of Carroll, Kane, Oakie, or the movies of the pre-Code late 20's and early 30's.
Home Media: To my knowledge, this can only be found at YouTube at the moment, but the copy is in surprisingly decent shape.
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