College Holiday

Paramount seems to toss every minor comedy actor they had -- some would become major stars, but not from this -- into this poorly written potboiler of a college musical in which no time is spent on campus and the whole thing ends with a minstrel show in a eugenics lab.

There's little cohesion in this work and while you may enjoy individual comedy bits -- Burns & Allen driving a chariot while doing their act certainly amused me -- it looks like the sort of thing that some one started working on the script and by the time director Frank Tuttle got it shot, all the cast were making it up as they went along. The music is good and a couple of the numbers are well presented -- I'm impressed by the eccentric choreography that Leroy Prinz did for Johnny Downs and Eleanore Whitney in "Just a Rhyme for Love"; however, even though everyone does his job competently, in front of and behind the camera, the crazy-quilt construction of this film renders this only intermittently amusing.

Paramount assembled a top cast of comedians of the day for "College Holiday," and added some music and dance to go with it. I don't recall any other film that has three actresses playing zany brainless characters. Billie Burke was the hands-down best at this role - never failing to get many guffaws for her lines in so many wonderful comedies. But this film has three actresses who offer their own versions of befuddlement.

Gracie Allen is the queen of the nonsensical, here playing Calliope 'Gracie' Dove. Mary Boland offers her talents at silliness as Carola P. Gaye and Martha Raye plays the goofy Daisy Schloggenheimer.

But, of course, some men have their comedic roles, headed by Jack Benny as J. Davis Bowster. And, where would Gracie be without hubby George Burns, here playing George Hymen? Ben Blue is the quirky Stage Hand who offers the silly antics he was known for, and Etienne Girardot is a wacky eugenicist, Prof .Hercules Dove.

The film is filled with young folks who sing and dance a few numbers -- in between trying to steal kisses. The story is about as wacky as the variety of characters that make up the cast. The screenplay is good and the cast are all good. Except for Gracie's incomprehensible lines and the silly ones of the other actresses, the script has very little funny dialog. Most of the comedy is provided by antics and situations.

This is a fun film that most people even in the 21st century should enjoy. Here are some favorite lines.

Dick Winters, "Well, how can I ask your father for your hand in marriage if I don't know his name? Sylvia Smith: "Well, I'll tell ya. It's the same as mine."

Dick Winters, "Miss Smith, California. Yeah, that's gonna be easy..."

J. David Bowster, "Uh, have you any other children, professor... at large, I mean?"

J. David Bowster, "Say, you know, you speak pretty good French." Stage Hand, "Is that what that is?"

After a few years of glancing at the title and the beginning credits of this movie on YouTube, I finally watched it there on TV just now. It stars Jack Benny and the comedy team of George Burns & Gracie Allen-big radio stars who were also very close friends in real life. All three provide many funny moments throughout the picture. There's also some amusing turns by Mary Boland, Ben Blue, and Martha Raye who also sings some of the songs provided. There's something of a plot but it often gets forgotten so I won't mention it. The whole thing is so tolerable I even didn't mind the Minstrel numbers at the end. So on that note, I say give College Holiday a look.

... and I can tell that is what Paramount was aiming for. How they missed so badly is inexplicable. Maybe because they were trying to splice some previous college themed musical comedies with their Big Broadcast films so very shortly after the advent of the production code is part of the reason this one lands with a thud.

The number that opens the film - "Sweethearts Waltz" - is the only memorable song in the film. Two collegiate strangers - Marsha Hunt and Leif Erickson - dance to this tune and fall in love without knowing anything about each other, when Hunt's character - Sylvia Smith - is abruptly called away because her father has had a nervous breakdown. So Erickson's character is left only knowing her last name and that she is from California. He's like the prince with nothing but the glass slipper to go on in finding Cinderella.

This boils down to Sylvia trying to save her dad's hotel with the help of the partner that sank the hotel in the first place -Davis Bowster (Jack Benny). He, in turn, needs time from the hotel's mortgage holder, a goofy woman (Mary Boland) who is into eugenics. This is where the script just loses its way. Benny tells Boland that he is going to bring back to the hotel a bunch of college students so she and her weird friend the professor can do a eugenics experiment. But he tells the college students that they are coming to California to be entertainment for the hotel. How can he make both things happen? How is this going to save the hotel? And why are all of these eugenics kooks dressed like the ancient Greeks?

Much of the film is spent trying to keep the collegiate guys away from the collegiate gals - apparently a requirement of Boland's character. And after about two minutes the joke wears thin. How could you possibly miss with George and Gracie, Jack Benny, and a still teenage Martha Raye, all staples of Paramount 30s musical comedies? Watch this film and find out. There are a bunch of big holes in the plot too, but suffice it to say I could have dealt with that if I could have just gotten a few laughs out of it.

Forget about plot! This is one example of the 1930s Paramount "Big Broadcast" and "college" series, all of which are entertaining during individual scenes. Eugenics was a popular topic of discussion during this era: one which later became discredited in large part because of "breeding" experiments in Nazi Germany. On a much less serious note, in this film we have a wacky "professor" and an even wackier wealthy patron (Mary Boland in great form) who bring a trainload of "Paramount Co-Eds" and college studs to be matched up, so as to produce perfect physical specimens, all the time dressed in pseudo-classic Greek togas and "sarongs". The prof's exemplar daughter is Martha Raye. Burns and Allen do a couple of comic bits totally unrelated to the "plot". Maltin calls all this silly. Who can deny it? If you stop looking for anything to think about and relax, you'll have an intermittent good time, and if you doze off it won't make much difference (Dorothy Lamour and Marjorie Reynolds appear briefly as co-eds, but viewers probably won't spot them.)