The New Half Back

Almost unique among college comedies, this actually starts in a class room, where Professor Andy Clyde is teaching. In walks Harry Gribbon, the son of a former football star. An alumnus has offered to donate $250,000 if the team scores a touchdown in the big game, so they try to recruit Gribbon. It turns out he cares more about whippoorwills and eating pie than football, but he is vampable by Clyde's daughter, Marjorie Beebe.

There are some good shorts among Mack Sennett's first couple of years of sound production, and this is one of them. The back-and-forth between Clyde and Gribbon is amusingly bizarre.

The summary is NOT an exaggeration. After all, Harry Gribbon (age 44) stars as a prospective college football player...and the guy who sits next to him looks even older...and he's on the team, too! I cannot understand why they chose a couple old guys to play ball players. Had they been REALLY old it might have worked because it would have been so ridiculous...but instead it's just bizarre.

Gribbon plays a guy whose father was a star football player. But he's not interested in anything but eating desserts and watching birds. So, the professor's daughter (Marjorie Beebe) decides to vamp him and convince him to join the team. Can this guy possibly have what it takes to be a football star?

So is it any good? Well, it's decent and entertaining but it's really NOT all that funny. Andy Clyde was enjoyable as the Professor but otherwise the film was just okay.

By the way, some of the footage for the football game was obviously originally silent, as the speed of silent and sound films as they are projected are different...and playing silent films at sound speed makes for characters which move VERY fast.