SWEETIE is a better than average musical from 1929, the first year talking pictures were the norm but many were quite stiff. This one is well photographed, moves well, and most thankful for a 1929 Paramount, the cast is including the men are not decked out in heavy makeup.
Rising Broadway starlet Nancy Carroll and college football quarterback Stanley Smith decide to leave their current activities behind and elope. Coach Wallace MacDonald talks Stanley out of it since he's important to Pell College potentially getting their first winning season ever and the college's survival may depend on it. Alas Nancy has already quit her show and she is furious when Stanley asks her to wait until the season's over, just eight months. They break up and she goes back to Broadway - and has to start over as a chorus girl. Revenge shows up out of nowhere (in one of the weirdest ever "meeting again" scenarios in films) when Nancy's distant cousin dies, and it turns out she will inherit the very college Stanley attends! The all-boys school welcome the young beauty with open arms including a surprised Stanley but she has revenge up her sleeve even if it closes the college!
Nancy Carroll is the nominal star but I'd venture both Stanley Smith and Helen Kane have more footage; there's quite a piece before Carroll enters the picture and even then she is off the screen for periods. Carroll was fast becoming a popular star on the early talkie screen but here her character is considerably more devious and selfish than in other films. Another comet of the era is Helen Kane, now a legendary vocalist but her peak was also brief. Helen Kane was one of a kind, a slightly plump comic vocalist specializing in sexy songs and as man hungry in her films as Mae West would later be. She may be an acquired taste but plenty of fans myself included most definitely acquired it. She's delightful and keeps this film moving with her cute songs, including the now classic "He's So Unusual" which was given renewed fame in the 1980's by Cyndi Lauper. Jack Oakie, early in his career and much thinner than in his salad days, is good as Nancy's pal and Helen's song partner. He pens a new college song for Pellham, a sassy "Alma Mammy", a parody of a Al Jolson number which is given three performances in the film, one by Oakie, a quite elaborate one by the school chorus including the girls from the neighboring college, and finally and unfortunately one at the big football game in which the chorus wears comic black masks.
Three supporting players of note standout here. William Austin is a kindly, effete staff member named "Professor Willow" (the credits suggest his nickname is a word often used before willow, and which probably would be censored here but I didn't hear anyone use it; it was either cut or the work of some bad boy in Paramount's credits title division). Austin had a long career playing "sissy" types in films but rarely gets mention in film history books like Franklyn Pangborn. Wallace MacDonald was playing bits from the early 1910's, often in Charlie Chaplin pictures. He was quite a handsome hunk of a man and looks remarkably young at 38 for this era when most men of his age back then seemed quite middle aged, he later had a brief career in B westerns beore moving on to a long career as a film producer for Columbia. Another handsome supporting player was Joe Depew as one of the youngest on the football team (just 17 in 1929) , his acting career never got off the ground but he worked behind the scenes and worked steady as a associate director for Paul Henning on his television shows in the 1950's leading to his being the director of over 140 (over half of the series) for the legendary sitcom "The Beverly Hillbillies".
Neither Stanley Smith nor Stu Erwin, as a dumb student, seem that credible as football heroes (Smith is both the star quarterback and the composer of the school's musicals!) but this movie is quite fun and has a talented cast that makes it work, perhaps so much so that there were dozens of similar musicals in the next few years.
