Uma Noiva para Dois

Stanley Smith is an obscure actor today, but in 1933 he was to take Dick Powell's role in Footlight Parade when Dick got sick with pneumonia. When Dick got well, Stan was out, and he never amounted to much. Judging by his performance in this film, I can see why. He reminds me of Lawrence Gray, who was adequate but lacked that something special that made audiences want to see him again.

The film also stars Nancy Carroll who was quite beautiful, Helen Kane who won me over with her cute voice and silly antics (she is introduced sitting in a tree shooting the man she loves), and Jack Oakie who is quite attractive here in this early part, and brimming over with the personality that made him famous. The scenes are incredibly beautiful, mostly set on a college campus, and the music is fun but none of it is very memorable, except for "Alma Mammy" which turns the alma mater into a jazzy Jolson-style number.

This college romp was screened at Cinevent in 2012.

Cute early musical starring Nancy Carroll as a chorus girl who inherits a men's college where her ex-boyfriend (Stanley Smith) is a star football player. She tries to sabotage his career until she gets school spirit. An original musical for the screen, SWEETIE boasts a good cast and some solid tunes.

Helen Kane co-stars as the troublemaking Helen who boop-a-doops through "He's So Unusual" and does a mean "Pep Step" with Jack Oakie, a brash hoofer who follows Carroll to college and enrolls. William Austin is the silly college dean, and Stu Erwin is a dumb-blond football player who is usually the target of Kane's pop gun.

Carroll and Smith sing a few songs, but it's Oakie's "Alma Mammy" that flows through the film as a theme song after Oakie is told that alma mater is Latin for dear mother, which he converts into a Jolson-like MAMMY song.

Nancy Carroll was Paramount's top musical star in early talkies, and she's stunning, but this film belongs to Helen Kane and Jack Oakie.

Betty Boop... whoops i mean helen kane makes a wonder perfomace in this early talkie as well as Nancy Carroll who does well in this musical drama but wished she did more singing in this picture. Some scenes were corny and rushed but then again this was the early days of sound. It is a wonder how early colleges looked liked in the 1920s and wonder how it would be during the great depression. Football is depicted as it was in the motion picture "so this is college" also a film that came out in 1929. Most of these college productions of the early days of hollywood dont show a classroom or the students even attending any classess.

Helen Kane steals the whole show at Pelham College. She does the "Prep-Step" with Jack Oakie and watches the boys from a tree . .. until she gets caught.

Lots of good songs. Nancy Caroll sings "My Sweeter Than Sweet" and Helen sings "He's So Unusual" later made famous again by Cyndi Lauper.

They used to show TV prints of this one but now . . .who knows where it is. Paramount films are disintegrating fast.

Nancy Carroll quits her show to marry Stanley Smith, only to find out that he will not be quitting school to marry her because the football team is depending on him. When she dejectedly returns to work (after being dumped back into the chorus!), she learns she owns the school, even if not the ladies' seminary next to it. She and Jack Oakie head out to take over.

It's one of the approximately 48% of 1920s musicals concerning college and football. There is are a large number of mediocre songs. The one good number is "You Romeo, Me Juliet," sung by Helen Kane. However, her three musical numbers show up one upon the next, and by the time she was in the second chorus of this one, I was tired of her helium voice, even if she boop-a-doops a few times in it.

Eventually, you realize early on, there will come the show--ending football game against the school's rival. I began to wonder "What if they lose? Won't life go on? Won't this journey also end in lovers' meetings?" I doubt it would surprise you if they win in the end.

In the end, this is a college musical exactly like every other college musical. If you like college musicals, you'll like this. If you're as tired of them as I am, you won't.