The College Coquette

This is currently showing at the Stanford Theater in Palo Alto, as a bookend to The Freshman. Both films were made in the 1920s, are about upper-class college life, swank parties, overdressed and overaged students, and football, and feature Jobyna Ralston. After that, most resemblances end.

The Freshman is a wonderful silent film, a comedy that combines slapstick with subtlety, and Ralston brings depth, tenderness, and a delicate beauty to her role.

The College Coquette is an early talkie melodrama, ground out by a bunch of hacks. Ralston is ineffective and one-dimensional, as are the other characters. The plot is clichéd and primitive.

Usually the old films that survive are good ones, and we thus become spoiled, and assume that they represent the norm of their time. This turkey reminds us that there must have been quite a few times when Hollywood laid an egg, this definitely being one of them.

Bottom line -- this is by far the worst movie I've seen in many years.