All-American Co-Ed

What? this film is 65 years old? It plays like a sequel to PRISCILLA QUEEN OF THE DESERT or a prequel to SOME LIKE IT HOT. Apart from WONDERBAR I have never seen such a gay movie...in fact the ad line in 1941 (!) was "The year's gayest comedy" . It is gay in the way gay is a modern GAY expression. The head of the girls school, a single matronly sort, (keen to rub one girl's 'chest') takes a look at a pic of one girl posing with vegetables and exclaims "Look at those beautiful tomatoes!" and on it goes. There's a song on a train that the girls sing to each other: "I am up at the crack of Dawn (because I have been dreaming of you)".. Honestly! Rude risqué and believe it or not, a full scale drag queen comedy. Apparently there is a university called Quinceton (as in Princeton for Queens) which has a fraternity of good lookin' fellas who all do drag. See that opening scene: They're all in it! Tutus and all... They decide to send one guy to the girls school...in full drag.... The big finale has a song in it about how the Farmer's daughter is alone on the farm since the men have gone to war. The lyric repeated over and over is that "she's can't just rumba with an old cucumber"...... it's not just ME is it ?...hearing this and gasping in laughter and astonishment? Is it? Why are these lyrics in this film this way.. and all the drag antics.... this film is as modern today as any other drag film... and as rude. This gay coded one sidestepped the Hayes office in a dress... and an old cucumber. Hilarious! the DVD is excellent quality too. The music score is terrific: 2 Oscar noms. Because the DVD is spotless this film looks like a new production; and the modern risqué mindset makes it absolutely almost up to date. What also helps is the cast of 20 somethings ...especially the boys each of whom have modern haircuts. Noah Beery Jnr turns up late in the film styled exactly like someone you would see in a magazine today. Incredible;a 65 year old drag show! yeesh! Silent star Harry Langdon is a treat to see too.

After all-male university Quinceton holds a singing concert with the male students in drag, singer Virginia (Frances Langford) and her reporter friend Hap (Harry Langdon) come up with an idea to help raise the profile of all-girl school Mar Brynn, run by Virginia's aunt Matilda (Esther Dale). They'll invite a number of pageant winners to join their school and hold a welcoming concert that will get them attention. The Quinceton boys resent the idea, so they send frat boy Bobby (Johnny Downs), once more in drag, to infiltrate the school and disrupt the concert. However, when Bobby falls for Virginia, it complicates matters.

Producer Hal Roach assembles a lot of radio talent from the time, along with silent comedy star Langdon and former Our Gang regular Downs, for this rather terrible trifle. Langford sings several songs, which are okay. The production values are very bad, with obvious stage sets and poorly-done backdrops. The less-than-an-hour runtime means the pain doesn't last too long, though. Kent Rogers, who was a successful radio comedian and impressionist, does some impressions here (Gary Cooper, Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy). He would join the Army Air Corps when WW2 started up, and die in a training exercise before his 21st birthday. Surprisingly, this movie earned a pair of Oscar nominations, for Best Score (Edward Ward) and Best Song ("Out of the Silence").

I won't dwell on the content of the film itself (skip to the last paragraph) because there seem to be enough reviews by people more familiar with the movie than I am. But I just had to say that the DVD quality is surprisingly good.

If you're like me and you bought the MillCreek 10000 Family Classics (or whatever outrageous number of old flicks they managed to cram on a few DVDs), you're probably seeing spots from all the less-than-crisp digital transfers of these old movies, most of which are public domain with low quality sources.

Well, good news, somehow the original source of this film remained in surprisingly good condition. It's on par with some of the expensive, digitally remastered stuff out there. That alone makes this a historic document worth having in your collection, especially if you can get it for a dollar at your local grocery store.

Now about the film itself. It's very entertaining, but don't expect an airtight story. At times it requires some supreme leaps of logic and suspension of disbelief. But if you can get past that, it's all in good fun, the music is timeless, and the comedy is cute. Note that this is very much a "dated" film, meaning there are a lot of references to 1940s culture which many of us may not get. There are a few celebrity impersonations that went completely over my head. Similarly, some of the jokes just flew by me, including the humorous title "All-American Co-Ed" which is a gendrical impossibility (at the time, "all-american" meant "male", and "co-ed" meant "female"). And then there are more unfortunate cultural references of 1940s sexism "A woman doesn't want a mind; she wants a husband" and somewhat narrow racial stereotypes showing black people as uneducated simpletons who can never seem to conjugate their verbs properly. But my point is that this film must be viewed through a 1940s lens, and you'll realize it's all intended in good fun.

The joke in this film's title was too subtle for me, but a Yank friend explained it: "All-American" formerly designated a group of male collegiate athletes, and a "Co-Ed" was a female college student ... so "All-American Co-Ed" is a sexual oxymoron. Here's a musical comedy about transvestism which (except for some unpleasant racial humour) manages to maintain at least a surface appearance of innocence. But under that surface ... whoops!

The late choreographer LeRoy Prinz was openly gay: Max Wilk's book 'The Wit and Wisdom of Hollywood' contains an hilarious anecdote about Prinz working for "Aunt Sam" during WW2. Prinz usually subordinated his talents to other film-makers' vision. When Prinz decided to make his first movie as a director-producer, 'All-American Co-Ed' was the result. I can't help wondering to what extent this cross-dressed story struck a personal chord with Prinz. I'm aware that homosexuality and transvestism are two different phenomena, but there's inevitably some overlap. Considering that 'All-American Co-Ed' is almost entirely about cross-dressing, there's surprisingly little homosexual content here ... and most of it is sapphic rather than male.

Every culture has its cross-dressed traditions. We Brits have got panto dames and principal boys. For some reason, the Americans have got Hasty Pudding clubs with college males in frocks and wigs. I normally dislike American college movies, since they're always about the Big Game or the Big Dance. (Classes? What classes?) 'All-American Co-Ed' gets a free pass for that crime with its witty disclaimer: 'Any similarity to actual college life depicted in this picture is purely coincidental.' Prinz starts out dangerously during the opening credits by showing a chorus line of shapely gams, inviting us to find them attractive ... then tilting upwards to reveal that these are college boys in drag. Good job for me I'd spotted the male kneecaps.

There are some weird musical decisions here. Johnny Downs, in full drag but male voice (like Danny La Rue) warbles 'I'm a Chap with a Chip on His Shoulder' while tapping his shoulders. Why would a female impersonator deliberately call attention to his shoulders? (Elsewhere, some genuinely female chorines sing about 'The Crack of Dawn' ... is there a pattern here?) The 1940s seem to have been some golden age for drag, since women's fashions in that decade favoured padded shoulders, enabling transvestites to get by with linebacker clavicles. During one scene in this movie, Frances Langford's outfit has wider shoulders than Johnny Downs's! Some of the clothes on the (real) females in this movie are extremely attractive. However, Johnny Downs's stunt double (likewise in female garb), who shoulder-flips Noah Beery Jnr, is even less convincingly feminine than Downs.

Considering that Bob Sheppard (Downs) is trying to pass for female, he makes some weird decisions ... such as choosing the tomboy name 'Bobbie' rather than a genuine female alias. (Femalias?) Even more fatally, he fakes a dainty swoon in the presence of Noah Beery Jnr and Alan Hale Jnr ... but deliberately falls into Beery's arms, letting Beery find out how heavy 'she' is. Oh, and Downs gets to speak that line (mandatory dialogue in every drag comedy) about how it 'sure feels good' to get out of those female clothes ... so we don't get any, erm, ideas.

Johnny Downs was apparently unable to speak in a convincing female register, so 'Bobbie' pretends to have laryngitis. Downs should have used the trick that professional female impersonators use: practise speaking with only the upper half of his vocal cords, so that his voice will be in the female range and timbre with fewer overtones.

There are quite a few double entendres in the dialogue and lyrics. Somebody comments that Johnny Downs (in female disguise) looks like 'orchids covered in dew'. Did anyone connected with this movie check the origin of the word 'orchid'? The women's school is cried Mar Brynn, an obvious parody of Bryn Mawr. I wonder if anyone realised that 'Bryn Mawr' is Welsh for 'big breast'.

Harry Langdon has his best role (and gives his best performance) of his talkies career here, as a glib publicist, while Esther Dale is lumbered with the role of the headmistress who doesn't twig that "Bobbie" (with male jawline and falsetto voice) is a male, even when 'she' goes to bed in full make-up. Memo to all headmistresses: when a female student shows up at your boarding school with only one piece of luggage, she's no female.

Downs (in male garb) and Langford 'meet cute' in a surprisingly erotic scene with a bellrope. (He ain't done right by our knell.) I could have done without dialogue like 'A girl doesn't want to live in a mind; she wants to live with a husband.' Also annoying are Kent Rogers's alleged impersonations of celebrities, including (just before the fade-out, in voice-over) Jerry Colonna. Black performer Dudley Dickerson is stuck in a 'yassuh' role but at least he gets to cut loose with some dance steps. Less pleasant is a scene in which Downs 'haunts' black laundress Lillian Randolph.

Somehow, this impoverished all-female college devoted to 'horticulture' (oh, dear) manages to stage an elaborate musical with plenty of invisible musicians on the soundtrack, some wince-worthy lyrics, plus Downs doing some surprisingly graceful pirouettes. However, the photography and lighting throughout the film are excellent, especially during Langford's big number ... which contains a patriotic reference, possibly leading audiences in 1941 to wonder why all these big strong college boys are in frocks instead of uniforms. 'All-American Co-Ed' gets my rating of 8 out of 10. Now put your trousers on, lads.

The rather sourpuss comment by another reviewer, "In addition, having Kent Rogers along for support didn't help. While Rogers imitations were funny and helped in his brief appearance in STALAG 17 a decade later, here he just seemed like someone's obnoxious child mugging at the camera and doing some terrible impersonations" is aesthetically questionable and factually incorrect. Rogers' impressions were really quite good, although very badly integrated into the scenes in which he appeared. That was the script's fault, not his. And he was NOT in Stalag 17--he was killed in the war a couple of years after making this film.