Start Cheering

Movie star Ted Crosley (Charles Starrett) announces that he has made his last film. He's quitting Hollywood and starting college. His managers, Willie Gumbatz (Jimmy Durante) and Sam Lewis, try to sabotage him in order to get him back to making movies. The college is in financial trouble and sees the movie star as a potential cash windfall. No matter the infractions, the college refuses to expel him.

It's a B-movie comedy. There are some weird vaudevillian acts like the eating. I can say that one don't see much of that in today's movies. It's almost a carnival geek show. Jimmy Durante and The Three Stooges are the more recognizable names for modern audiences. Durante is doing the heavy lifting. The Stooges have a few scene. Maybe somebody can cut them together to make another Stooges short. I get a sense that orgy meant something tamer back then. The leading man is too old to go back to college and doesn't have that much big screen presence. The comedic lead is actually Durante. He's going hard to keep it moving. All in all, this has interesting bits and pieces although it's not much of a movie.

Watch it when you feel ill or just kind of "wotthehell".

Durante and the Three Stooges are in fine form. There may or may not be some kind of plot - this thing moves fast.

It's got almost as many memorable lines as Casablanca. Here's a few that have stuck in my mind for years:

DURANTE: It's an absolute catasta-strophe.

DURANTE: "When I was at Penn State..." MAN: "Oh, so you're a college boy?" DURANTE: "Sorry, I meant state pen..."

MAN: "Well this is a fine how-do-you-do!" STOOGE: "Fine! How do you do!"

This is another of those rare Three Stooges-here being Moe, Larry, and Curly-feature films before their starring roles in the '60s in which they appear in support of the main cast. The actual stars here being Charles Starrett-a Columbia cowboy in his only time away from a western-and Joan Perry-who would eventually marry studio head Harry Cohn and remain so until his death in 1958. Also, Jimmy Durante and Walter Connolly are the second bananas here. The Stooges have a couple of funny scenes: one on the football field and another at a girls' dorm. In the last sequence, Larry noticeably has his usually wildly hanging curly hair slicked back while wearing a fire hat, probably because he doesn't like his curls tangled up in it! Singer Gertrude Niesen and tap dancer Hal LeRoy also provide some entertaining musical moments as well as Durante when doing his novelty numbers. There's also a weird turn by a Chaz Chase. Watch him in it and you'll understand what I mean. I very much enjoyed this one so on that note, I recommend Start Cheering for fans of the Stooges and Durante.

Ted Crosley (Charles Starrett) is tired of acting and unexpectedly quits in order to attend Midland College. The university president is thrilled, as his job is on the line and he assumes the publicity with Crosley attending will save him. But, at the same time, Crosley's manager (Walter Connolly) is determined to work behind the scenes to get Ted tossed out of school and back to acting! So, although Ted's a nice guy, folks hate him and his welcome is short...all because of the manager's machinations! Eventually, Ted has had enough...but by then the manager actually has figured out how to make Ted's going to college work for everyone! But it might just be too late, as Ted has quit!

This is an okay musical comedy extravaganza. The songs are just okay and the comedy is at best okay. My biggest problem is that they made Jimmy Durante's character positively sub-humanly stupid...something that was supposed to be funny but which didn't elicit a single laugh in me. The Three Stooges also appear briefly in the film and are used a bit better....mostly because they seemed to follow the old axiom 'more is less'. Too bad Durante didn't follow this. Overall, an okay film which is quite watchable but not a lot more.

By the way, IMDB says that TCM uses the British print...but the one aired this week was NOT the British but the American print.

I have very little patience for leading men and their love interest, and their songs; and I don't care much for musical numbers by "guest" performers, so much of this movie was a complete bore to me. I'm also not much interested in watching the details spelled out for me in run-of-the-mill stories like this: I prefer watching what the characters DO within a story, not the playing-out of the story itself, and since a lot of time here is spent with the main characters talking out the narrative, my fingers were itching for the fast-forward button. Durante is always fun to watch, but the script is so poor that his jokes mostly fall flat. I agree that he and Walter Connelly have no chemistry, and the justification for Durante even being in the story at all is too contrived to suspend belief. I actually prefer his roles in the late MGM Buster Keaton movies, like "What, No Beer?", where his character is an integral part of the story and his vitality really helps to move along the film. In this movie, the only moments I really enjoyed were Durante's musical number, Hal LeRoy's dance (which I have to admit was spectacular), and the Three Stooges who perform two skits with perfectly timed ensemble work. Basically, the story-laden non-comedic scenes were boring, and most of the Durante comedy was slightly embarrassing and only borderline amusing. Recommendation: don't pay more than $7 to watch it.