Maybe It's Love

I'm a Joe E. Brown fan from way back, but this film doesn't give him much to work with. He does his usual open-mouthed scream that starts out like a siren a few times, but little else other than move the story along. The idea of getting eleven of the All-American football stars from the 1928 - 29 season in a movie about football may have been a good one in 1929, but their names are meaningless (to me anyway) 70 years later. And their acting is awful. Even Joan Bennett, who uses her sexual wiles to get them to come to the college to form a winning team, seems to act very stiffly. Unless you are a football fan and enjoy watching some action, there isn't much to recommend.

Upton College President Sheffield's job is threatened after yet another football lost to rival Parsons College. His daughter Nan Sheffield (Joan Bennett) is desperate to help and her friend Yates (Joe E. Brown) comes up with an idea to recruit a whole new team. She has to take off her... glasses. She gets busy. Then there is the special case of Tommy Nelson (James Hall).

This is aka Eleven Men and a Girl. There are a couple of mildly humorous schemes to entice football players. These guys should have noticed that they are all after the same girl much sooner. Joan Bennett is a pretty pixie girl. This is a semi-musical. It has a few torch songs, but apparently the audience were getting a little tired of musicals during this time. It's not funny enough to be a comedy. The romance isn't that compelling. This movie seems to fall short on all sides.

Comedy star Joe E. Brown is given very little to do in a secondary role in this lame college football quickie. Twenty-year-old Joan Bennett stars as the university president's daughter who uses her charms to attract football talent to Upton in order to beat the school's rival and save her father's job. As a kind of gimmick, the cast includes several real-life collegiate football stars, but seen eighty-plus years later all that remains is amateur acting in a weak script (although admittedly I'm more of a baseball guy). Doughy leading man James Hall stands out like a sore thumb as the "star quarterback" among a roster of actual athletes.

A young woman, the college president's daughter (20 year old Joan Bennett) is convinced that to fix the school's penchant for losing football games, she should seduce the best players from around the country to come play for good old Upton College. While it sounds flirty and naughty, it's really quite tepid, and the film meanders listlessly through romance, dopey comedy, a few short musical numbers, and football footage. Seeing actual college football players playing themselves was of some interest, e.g. Bill Banker, nicknamed the "Blond Blizzard" because of his hair and his playing without a helmet(!), as was seeing Bennett soaking wet (ahem). The antics of Joe E. Brown are mostly a nuisance, though his cheer of Uppppppppppton is pretty cool. Overall, just not much here.

To help her college's faltering football team, beautiful Joan Bennett (Nan) must seduce hunky football players into transferring to her school. It's the bright idea of gay friend Joe E. Brown (Yates). Will the young men discover each other? Will Ms. Bennett find true love among them? Will Upton win the "Big Game"?

"Maybe It's Love / Eleven Men and a Girl" is interesting in that it features Bennett and Brown on their way to becoming successful in the "talkies". They aren't there yet - Bennett is unspectacular and Brown's shrieks are more annoying than funny; later, he would successfully refine his comic persona. The best scene is early on, when Bennett and one of her football players topple their canoe, and emerge soaking wet.

*** Maybe It's Love (1930) William A. Wellman ~ Joan Bennett, Joe E. Brown, James Hall