Life Begins in College

Too often the Ritz boys were not allowed to just let loose and run away with a picture like other comedy teams of the time. Even as headliners in this one, they are not really given the chance to shine as characters. In "Life", they are three college-campus tailors who befriend an American Indian who shows up as a freshman and is promptly abused by his classmates.

Fans of the politically correct steer clear, as this film does not treat Native Americans with a whole lot of respect. The first shot of the film is a sign identifying the college as a school for American Indians. A girl says, "I've never seen an Indian here". An older gentleman replies, "Oh the school was started for Indians, but they have schools on reservations now. A few years back an Indian tried to go here, but of course we ran him out!" Enter Nat Pendleton as the latest Indian, nearly running folks over on his motorcycle.

But back to the Ritzes. They get three specialty song and dance numbers entirely unrelated to the plot. Some good crazy dancing. One or two funny scenes otherwise. Meanwhile the leading man is entirely unlikeable and a bad actor to boot, so we don't even root for him to get the girl. Tony Martin has what amounts to a cameo. Joan Davis fans will be pleased.

I've seen about half a dozen Ritz Brothers movies and have tried hard to like them...with no success. This was not the case with Wheeler & Woolsey. In their case, the more I watched, the more i enjoyed that comedy team. Perhaps, if I see more, I'll also grow to like the Ritz Brothers...or, I'll become suicidal! Now if anyone can get good performances out of the brothers, it should be the director of this picture, William A. Seiter, as he directed one of the greatest comedies of the 1930s...Laurel & Hardy's "Sons of the Desert". He also directed one of Wheeler & Woolsey's best, "Peach-O-Reno".

The film is set at Lombardy College and begins with Nat Pendleton arriving and making me groan. Why? He's supposed to be an American-Indian and it about as stereotypical and insulting as possible. Perhaps folks laughed at this in 1937 but today it just comes off as sad and painful to watch. It also actually had the purpose of making me look forward to seeing the Ritz Brothers enter the picture!

The plot involves the school and their losing football record...so they force Coach O'Hara to resign even though just about everyone likes him. The new Anerican-Indian student wants to help...and is fabulously wealthy. But he doesn't want anyone to know he's rich...otherwise folks (like the Ritz brothers) will want to become his friend. So, he asks the Ritz Brothers to pretend to be the donors and give the money a huge endowment...provided they keep O'Hara. This Indian also wants to be quarterback. What's next? Plenty!

In addition to the Ritz Brothers doing their schtick, Joan Davis is also on hand to provide comic relief...such as it is. Surprisingly, she manages to be more annoying than the Brothers, as hers is a strictly one-note performance as the man-crazy girl.

If it sounds like I didn't adore the film, you're right. However, oddly, it wasn't the Brothers' fault (though it usually is). The insulting Indian character and Davis manage to do a lot to make me dislike the film. Overall, a misfire and a film which has its moments...but it also has a lot to dislike as well.

By the way, I am not sure about the rules for football back in 1937, but I looked and today it IS legal for a quarterback to throw the ball to himself (even if it's not tipped) if he's lined up in the shotgun formation.

In Life Begins At College, the Ritz Brothers playing three zany tailors go to school and in fact start their own fraternity and admit one member, newly arrived Indian student played by Nat Pendleton joins them.

Pendleton is playing a student not too bright, but he's also one of those oil rich Indians from Oklahoma. When some of the alumni try to force out football coach Fred Stone, Pendleton gives the school an endowment to keep Stone at his job. Amazing how Dean Maurice Cass's attitude changes when the Ritzes say the magic word endowment.

There's a romance going between school quarterback Dick Baldwin and Gloria Stuart. Baldwin is as bland as Grandma's soup when she has unexpected company for dinner. A little livelier is Joan Davis pursuing Nat Pendleton so you'd think she was trying to scalp him. Tony Martin appears simply as 'Bandleader' in the credits, enough to get a couple of opportunities to vocalize. Who dubbed Gloria Stuart's singing is anyone's guess.

Pendleton's charcter is based on Jim Thorpe who at that time was making a few dollars in bit parts for films. Stone's character I would say was based on Amos Allonzo Stagg who was the grand old man of football and would live right up to the 60s and would pass the century mark.

Life Begins At College with the Ritz Brothers joining the Marx Brothers from Horsefeathers and Wheeler&Woolsey from Hold 'Em Jail in the pantheon of college football films. The Ritzes of course do run amuck on the gridiron as did these contemporaries in their films.

This is still an amusing film.

This just isn't a good movie. That Ritz Brothers' comedy is limited, best in their dance numbers and very weak in the dialogue passages. They can't carry a feature-length film on their own.

But there's nothing else here to carry it for them. The script is obvious and lame- brained, and the other performers can't do anything with it. (Who could?)

And then there's the blatant racism, mostly directed against Native Americans. It's sobering to remember that this movie was made by Fox Pictures, a fairly important studio, in 1937, the same year Fox released Shirley Temple's Heidi, and two years after it starred her in The Little Colonel with Black dancer Bill Robinson.

There really isn't anything to recommend this picture. The few mildly funny passages won't compensate for sitting through 80 minutes of tedium and embarrassing racism.

1937's "Life Begins in College" was the fifth feature film for the popular Ritz Brothers, but the first to offer them top billing, a shame since it must rank near the bottom of all their films. To modern viewers the story of a Jim Thorpe-type athlete of Native American heritage who becomes the star quarterback for the aging coach of Lombardy College (Fred Stone, Milburn's uncle) comes off as almost entirely humorless, weak material coupled with appalling musical numbers. Nat Pendleton does what he can as the Indian George Black, but it's an uphill battle from the start, crashing his motorcycle at top speed, being hazed by fraternity brothers, and finally joining up with campus tailors the Ritz Brothers, who have spent seven years in their shop before scoring their first customer. George turns out to be extremely wealthy, courtesy Oklahoma oil wells, and the Ritzes use his money to maintain the coach who was forced to resign, his daughter (Gloria Stuart) being romanced in dreadful fashion by the team's quarterback (Dick Baldwin), taking a seat on the bench when George proves the superior player. Later vehicles would offer the boys better opportunities than this turkey, for even the hugely talented Joan Davis is let down by her lone number, chasing after her Indian until he finally relents, to her chagrin. Small roles on the team for familiar faces like Elisha Cook and Robert Lowery, with Lon Chaney Jr. making a very brief appearance in the final moments as the bench warming Gilks, who can't get into the big game with the Ritz Brothers on the verge of losing. This appears to be the last time that Chaney adorned a football feature, after roles in "Girl O' My Dreams," "Hold 'Em Yale," "Accent on Youth," and "Rose Bowl." Those game highlights are the only spark to the entire film, a look back at the early days with the single wing offense, soon to be supplanted by the T-formation that earned the Chicago Bears a 73-0 championship rout of the Washington Redskins in 1940.