L'appel de la folie

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.

COLLEGE HOLIDAY (Paramount, 1936), directed by Frank Tuttle, is the third installment, following COLLEGE HUMOR (1933) and COLLEGE RHYTHM (1934) to the many "College" musicals Paramount distributed during this period. COLLEGE HOLIDAY, in fact, is an entirely different college musical by not being set entirely on a college campus and avoids the usual cliché football game finale with those "rah-rah" cheers from the bandstand. Instead, there's a large-scale minstrel show where the co-eds gather together to help save a failing hotel resort from financial ruin. Adding to the lineup is a recent Paramount recruit named Jack Benny, who, with this and his subsequent Paramount comedies, was starting to find his comic persona, and in this instance, playing "Love in Bloom" on the violin in his most screechy-ating style that would become his trademark.

As for the plot, it's basically a simple one, revolving around a young girl named Sylvia Smith (Marsha Hunt) who aids her father, in the process of losing his hotel, assuming the title as manager and hires radio performer J. Davis Bowster (Jack Benny) for guidance. Professor Hercules Dove (Etienne Girardot), an ancient Greek mythology enthusiast who happens to hold a mortgage on the hotel, uses Carola P. Gaye (Mary Boland), a middle-aged heiress, to convert the hotel into a sexual laboratory for express purpose of mating the perfect specimens for both sexes. Bowster recruits college co- eds as prospects, but instead of having a Greek pageant as planned, he decides to save the hotel by having the students perform in a staged musical minstrel show.

More on the lavish scale than Paramount's previous college outings, and a little over the standard 75 minutes, this 87 minute production has a large cast consisting of George Burns as George Hymen; Gracie Allen as Girardot's hair-brain daughter, Gracie "Colliope" Dove; with Martha Raye (Daisy Schloggenheimer of Corn City); Olympe Bradna (Felice L'Hommedieu); Ben Blue (The Stage Hand); Louis DaPron (Barry Taylor); Jed Prouty (Sheriff John J. Trimble, an officer of the law who tries to close down the hotel but agrees to give it another month to make good); and the California Collegians. The comedy team of Burns and Allen show up a little late in the story but make a grand entrance in style riding down the street on a chariot, ala Ben-Hur. To add to the confusion, they do find time in inserting their usual comic routines into the plot.

With music and lyrics by Ralph Freed and Burton Lane, the musical soundtrack listing is as follows: "The Sweetheart Waltz" (sung by chorus during opening credits/ then by Leif Erickson and Marsha Hunt); "Our Alma Mata" (sung by students); "Just a Rhyme for Love" (tap danced and sung on train by Johnny Downs and Eleanor Whitney); "So What?" (sung by Martha Raye); "The Sweetheart Waltz" (reprise by chorus); "I Adore You" (sung by Leif Erickson and Marsha Hunt); "The Minstrel Show is in Town" (sung by chorus); "I Adore You" (reprise by Erickson and Hunt); "Love in Bloom" (by Leo Robin and Ralph Rainger, violin solo by Jack Benny); "Just a Rhyme for Love" (instrumental tap dance number with Downs and Whitney); "Who's That Knocking at My Heart" (sung by Martha Raye); and Pateranski's "Ah Latinque" (instrumental dance number with Ben Blue, Gracie Allen, others, followed by untitled jive number performed by collegians).

With a handful of songs, the best is the romantic ballad, "I Adore You," introduced by master of ceremonies Jack Benny during the Minstrel Show segment as "Enchantment," as sung by Leif Erickson as Huntg's love interest, Dick Winters. "I Adore You" is such a pleasing song, it's a pity it's constantly interrupted by spoken dialog and never heard straight through. Those with sharp hearing will take notice a goof made by Jack Benny introducing, in a hesitant manner, the song, "Enchantment" as sung and performed by MR. Sylvia Smith and MISS Dick Winters. Listen for it. "The Sweetheart Waltz" is another love ballad that is plugged a couple of times during the story, and sung by chorus, especially during one memorable but far-fetched sequence where the lovers (Erickson and Hunt) jump from the diving boards from opposite sides of the swimming pool, and join together as they swim parallel upwards, embracing to a kiss while still under water. Another good number here is "Who's That Knocking at My Heart," a true show stopper performed by the surprisingly loud and effective Martha Raye in black-face. The segment in which Jack Benny does his violin solo to "Love in Bloom" is played for laughs when it has its share of constant interruptions with the sounds of hammering, pipe organ music playing Stephen Foster's "Swanee River," as well as stage hands yelling back and forth at one another.

Unseen on television since the 1980s on public broadcasting channels such as WLIW, Channel 21 (Long Island City, N.Y.), COLLEGE HOLIDAY came to cable TV on Turner Classic Movies (TCM premiere: June 28, 2014). Once scene, many may consider it to be, at best, delightful nonsense that plays like a series of acts from a vaudeville show, with George Burns playing it straight Gracie Allen as her usual self with all the silly responses, getting most of the laughs. In conclusion, Jack Benny steps out of character addressing the movie audience (not the audience in the movie), "Ladies and gentlemen. I hope you notice our attempt in this picture to maintain the spirit of classic Greek tragedy throughout. Whenever the story interfered with art, we did not compromise. We gave up both." After a few more lines, Benny closes the story as he would do in his future TV show, "Goodnight folks." "Goodnight, Jack!" Next installment in Paramount's college semester, COLLEGE SWING (1938). (**1/2)

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.

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.)

... 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.