Varsity Show

This movie probably won't appeal to anyone under the age of 50 - the generation gap is too great. College boys in shirts and ties, girls in saddle shoes and calf-length skirts, and riding around in 'jalopies' with topical slogans on them - not today. And the cast of this picture contains some of the oldest college kids ever seen on campus. But, if you are of a certain age, it all works.

There is a great deal of energy in each scene, which is how it would be on a college campus, and there are some very tuneful songs to be found, although most of them forgotten. The most durable is probably "She's Working Her Way Through College", but several others were written by Richard Whiting and Johnny Mercer. In addition, here is a chance to see Buck and Bubbles, a legendary song and dance team. They differed from the Nicholas Brothers, who were strictly dancers. Buck and Bubbles both sang, both danced and both played the piano, hence a more talented team.

The story is unimportant, about Dick Powell returning to his alma mater to help put on a show, but the cast is good and the pace is brisk. Two of the Lane sisters are the female leads opposite Powell and comic relief is done in heavy-handed fashion by Ted Healy. There is also lots of able support, and there is a great finale provided by none other than Busby Berkeley. There is lots to like in "Varsity Show", a better-than-average musical of its kind.

Why watch Varsity Show? Two words: John Bubbles, the man Fred Astaire said was the greatest tap dancer of his generation. John Sublette (John Bubbles was his stage name) and his partner, Ford Washington Lee, were Buck and Bubbles, with Buck primarily at the piano and Bubbles dancing and singing. They were major stars in vaudeville. I can't explain dancing any more than an infant can explain milk, but I know the good stuff when I see it. John Bubbles combined tap, a sort of fast shuffle and ingenious rhythm into something I wouldn't argue with Astaire about. He has a couple of short numbers in this inane college musical and one Buck and Bubbles short production number to "Have You Got Any Castles, Baby?" They make watching the movie something special.

Among the aged aspects of Varsity Show that you have to get past to enjoy the tap artistry of John Bubbles are...the jokes are so corny even Iowa wouldn't take credit for them...the pacing is just about as matter-of-fact as that bland title...several of the students have long since past their college years...ironically, Dick Powell seems too young for the part...and Fred Waring as the drama teacher is so sincere, so constantly smiling and so solicitous of the students as to be creepy.

Still, the Richard Whiting and Johnny Mercer songs aren't bad. "We're working Our Way Through College," sung by Powell and the students as they stride through the campus, is bouncy and funny.

"We're working our way through college / To get a lot of knowledge / That we'll probably never ever use again.

It's swell to tell what parallel and parallax is, / But after graduation will it pay our taxes?"

For those fond of choral music there's Waring and his Pennsylvanians (they're in the movie as college students) doing some fine singing. Aficionados of college pep songs will hear a bunch of them at the big smash close. And for those with a morbid fondness for stories about alcoholics, there's Ted Healy in a major role and Lee Dixon in a minor one. Healy, who's the reason there was a Three Stooges, wound up in Hollywood as one of the highest paid comedy actors. His specialty was the big grump. Let me tell you, he was good. He also was a big-time alcoholic. He got into a drunken fight the night his first child was born (the year Varsity Show was released) and died several hours later. He was 41. Lee Dixon was big and blond, an eccentric dancer in the early Buddy Ebsen style. He was handsome enough with an open, quizzical kind of face. He towered over everyone else. He was 23 when he made Varsity Show and played one of the students, had a few lines and a couple of brief dance steps. By the early Forties he was drinking so heavily no one wanted to take a chance on him. Rodgers and Hammerstein offered him the part of Will Smith in Oklahoma! after extracting the promise he wouldn't hit the bottle. He received great reviews with his two numbers, "Kansas City" and "All Er Nuthin'" (with Celeste Holm as Ado Annie). All was well for a year or so, then he started sneaking drinks, then more and more. That was that. He faded fast and died at 39 in 1954. What's the moral to Healy and Dixon? You've got me.

The story? The kids at Winfield College are putting on the annual varsity show but their professor adviser insists that there'll be nothing "swinging" or "modern." A group of them decide to go to New York and ask Chuck Daly (Dick Powell), famous Broadway producer and Winfield graduate, to take over the show. They've got a lot of great songs and ideas. They don't know that Daly has had three flops in a row and is broke. We can skip the next hour. The show is a smash, on Broadway no less, with a Busby Berkeley finale. Chuck wins a co- ed's love with Rosemary Lane the co-ed. She's second billed after Powell. Her sister, Priscilla, is third billed and gets a song to sing and a few dance steps to share with Dixon. Priscilla Lane has never done much for me, but here, at 22 and in her first movie, she's a cutie pie.

College musicals always seem to give off that indulgent condescension that so many adults reserve, usually to their regret, for the young. Still, some can be a lot of fun. There are three I like a lot. Too Many Girls has a book as inane as Varsity Show, but it has a great Rodgers and Hart score and a terrific Lucille Ball performance. Best Foot Forward has a fine Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane score, including that rouser, "Buckle Down, Winsocki," plus Ball again, and a great cast that includes June Allyson and Nancy Walker. Good News is a lot of fun, just as corny as the rest, but June Allyson is appealing, Peter Lawford avoids being appalling, and best of all there's Joan McCracken and Ray McDonald dancing. "Pass that Peace Pipe" is a showcase for both of them, especially McCracken.

No need to repeat details exhaustively provided by other reviewers. I caught the 80-minute truncated version on TCM and it's a shame despite the lively cast and Berkeley's big production number. Comparing the playlist with what's on screen, most of the musical numbers that survived the edit appear condensed into the closing medley of songs—hardly a fair representation. And what's left intact is musically pleasant but hardly memorable. Generally, the same can be said of the truncated movie as a whole.

(In passing—note the rebellious college students impatient with the stodgy musical tastes of their elders. Seems like musical rebellion among the young extends further back than the 1950's and Elvis. More obscurely-- note how the kids at one juncture perform a brief sit-down strike to make their point. The year is 1937, the same period as the historic General Motors Sitdown Strike of 1936-37. Looks to me like a topical reference even in a movie piece of fluff.)

VARSITY SHOW (Warner Brothers, 1937), directed by William Keighley, is a college campus musical, in fact, Warners' only contribution to the college musical of the 1930s. Originally distributed in theaters at two hours in length, circulating prints are from the 1940s reissue at 79 minutes, with 40 minutes of material clipped from the original negative and lost since then. Considering this edition happened to be the only known print in existence today, this review is taken on the basis from the edited version.

The story begins with Ernie Mason (Fred Waring) and his fellow students of Winfield College rehearsing for the upcoming annual varsity show. Ernie, assistant to Professor Sylvester Biddle (Walter Catlett), the faculty adviser, finds he and the students aren't being given the freedom they need to put on a successful show. Biddle insists the show be done his way or none at all, in spite that his ideas are out-of-date and his refusal to allow swing music as part of the score. Janitors Buck and Bubbles come up with an idea in hiring Charles "Chuck" Daly (Dick Powell), a former alumnus now a successful Broadway producer, to help direct the show. Betty Bradley (Priscilla Lane), Buzz Bolton (Johnnie Davis), Johnny "Rubberlegs" Stevens (Lee Dixon) and Trout (Sterling Holloway) volunteer in coming to New York City to locate Daly. At first Daly refuses, but because Daly has just closed his latest Broadway flop (his third in a row), he and his assistant, William W. Williams (Ted Healy) decide to return to Winfield College where they not only agree to help direct the varsity show, but become part of the fraternity by staying in the dormitory run by Mrs. Smith (Emma Dunn), as well as finding themselves suitable love partners, Daly with Barbara Steward (Rosemary Lane) and gravel voice Williams with Cuddles (Mabel Todd), a buck-tooth, bespectacled blonde with a very peculiar laugh.

With the music and lyrics by Johnny Mercer and Richard Whiting, the good selection of songs from the 79 minute print includes: "The Varsity Show's Rehearsing Today at Three O'Clock" (sung by cast); "Old King Cole" (sung by Johnnie Davis); "We're Working Our Way Through College" (sung by Dick Powell); "I'm Dependable" (sung by Priscilla Lane and Fred Waring/ written by Tom Waring and Don Raye); "On With the Dance" (sung by Rosemary Lane); "You Got Something There" (sung by Dick Powell and Rosemary Lane); Tap dance solo act performed by Buck and Bubbles; "Have You Got Any Castles, Baby?" (sung by Priscilla Lane); "Love Is on the Air Tonight" (sung by Buck and Bubbles); "Have You Got Any Castles, Baby?" (tap dance by Buck and Bubbles); "On With the Dance" (sung by Buck and Bubbles); "Old King Cole" (sung by Johnnie Davis); "On With the Dance" (reprise); "You Got Something There" and "Love Is On the Air Tonight." If one looks very closely to the opening credits and to the list of songs, one tune, "Little Fraternity Pin," is listed but not heard in VARSITY SHOW.

As much the story may be as predictable as any college musical of that time, the majority of the songs for this production were quite standard. Forgotten today, VARSITY SHOW contains the most entertaining college finale ever presented. Choreographed by Busby Berkeley, it did get nominated for an Academy Award in the best dance direction category. Though it didn't win, VARSITY SHOW still demonstrates Berkeley's true ability in his creative staging techniques. With Fred Waring and his Pennsylvanians orchestrating the finale, the real show stopper centers upon an individual co-ed throwing a football on numerous occasions across the stage over to a group of students to form themselves into spelled-out letters of well known universities as Yale, Wisconsin, Notre Dame and Stanford. All these letters are used with color tiles with the underscoring to just about every familiar college song imaginable. It's an excellent production that makes up for whatever flaws the film itself contains. Buck and Bubbles shouldn't go unnoticed. They, too, contribute to several good dance routines. Not quite as effective and faster style of the Nicholas Brothers over at 20th Century-Fox, but a routinely style all their own.

The supporting cast includes: Halliwell Hobbes (Dean J. M. Meredith); Edward Brophy (Mike "Curly" Barclay); Ben Weldon, Robert Homans and Tom Kennedy. Lee Dixon, who was becoming a familiar secondary character in the Warners musicals as GOLD DIGGERS OF 1937 (1936), READY, WILLING AND ABLE (1937), and THE SINGING MARINE (1937), makes his final bow in VARSITY SHOW. In the edited version, he not only limited in his contribution to the story (though possibly had extensive scenes from the two hour edition), but had his name placed thirteenth in the closing cast credits. He later scored successfully in the Broadway musical, OKLAHOMA (1943), and appeared one more time on screen in the western drama, ANGEL AND THE BAD MAN (Republic, 1946), starring John Wayne, before his death in 1953.

VARSITY SHOW in present form is a pleasing musical with a bright score. (One can hope the missing footage will someday suffice and take the place of the chopped-up copy on TCM). As for the cast, Dick Powell, Ted Healy, Rosemary Lane, Johnnie Davis and Mabel Todd appeared together again in another large scale Warners musical, "Hollywood Hotel" (1937), that introduced the popular theme song, "Hooray for Hollywood." Directed entirely by Busby Berkeley, it lacked the great musical finish that highlights VARSITY SHOW so well. Rah! Rah! Rah! (***1/2)

I wonder what happened with the missing 40 minutes from "Varsity Show". IMDb lists its original running time as 120 minutes but the Turner DVD is only 80--meaning a third of the film is missing. Perhaps this is just a mistake and the film was always 80 minutes but I wonder if the studio thought 120 minutes made the film incredibly sluggish and they decided to re-edit it--though cutting out THAT much seems very unlikely. Can anyone shed any light on this for me?

Dick Powell as well as Fred Waring and his orchestra star in this light-hearted college musical. Apparently the folks at Winfield College are going to put on another VERY boring show--thanks to the very dull Professor Biddle who insists they do it his way. The students want to breath energy into the program and invite Mr. Daly (Powell) to 'spice it up'. But the faculty is adamant--so what are these co-eds to do? Why SING of course! And, in the end, instead of Mr. Daly saving the college show, the students (much like in "Babes on Broadway") put on a show to save the career of swell 'ol Mr. Daly.

Overall, this is pure escapist fun. While the songs aren't particularly memorable, they are enjoyable. And the final BIG production number (choreographed by Busby Berkeley) is also quite amazing--and better than most of his efforts. While I am not a huge fan of this sort of film, for what this is, it's amazingly well done. Proof that it wasn't just MGM that could make a nice musical, as Warner had a long string of big production number musicals in the 30s. Worth seeing.

By the way, I liked Dick Powell's line "Get back to your rooms and crack a book...". That's because in practically every college film of the 30s and 40s, you almost NEVER see these folks studying or attending classes! Seeing them in the next scene actually studying was a shocker! Although, not surprisingly, the studying session didn't last very long!