So This Is College

SO THIS IS COLLEGE is one of those movies that has such an antique look to it you can't help but to stop and see what it is when you're flipping through the TV channels. It is a pretty good musical. The cast works well. Max Davidson is a great Jewish character actor. I recall seeing him in some of the early Laurel and Hardy silents. This film from 1929 gives an interesting look at college life in the late '20s. It's a lot of fun. It includes a big football game sequence. Robert Montgomery stars, in one of his earliest film roles.

I finally watched SO THIS IS COLLEGE, a 1929 MGM college film with music. I bought it from Warners a while back, but Robert Montgomery is not a fave so I shelved it.

Right off the bat, I was surprised to see Elliott Nugent billed over Montgomery and at 33, a pretty old college senior (Montgomery was 25). Nugent acted in 17 or so films and some TV but is better known as a writer/director. He was son of actor J.C. Nugent. This might be Montgomery's first starring role.

Anyway. In another of those "2 pals who fall for the same girl" plots, Nugent and Montgomery are college football heroes and roomies. They both fall for Babs (Sally Starr, her talkie debut), have lots of parties (it is college after all), and are endlessly singing, listening to, or dancing to "I Don't Want Your Kisses if I Can't Have Your Love." Starr falls for Nugent which sends Montgomery into a petulant sulk. Can the 2 pals make up in time for the "big game"? Real footage of a USC/Stanford game is used along with lots of location shooting on USC campus.

On hand in support are Cliff Edwards (another mid-30s college senior) who sings a snappy "Sophomore Prom," Lee Shumway as the coach, Polly Moran as the cook, and Phyllis Crane as Betty. Among the bit players are Joel McCrea, Ward Bond, Ann Dvorak, Ray Cooke, Richard Carle, Delmer Daves, and of course Grady Sutton.

There's a bizarre subplot about a dry cleaner, his wife, and a pair of pants. Max Davidson and Ann Brody are the couple.

Funniest bit has Polly Moran running back to the kitchen after the "boys" sitting at a U-shaped table pelt her with saltines while they scream, "Polly want a cracker?'

Could anybody be as obnoxious as the frat boys in the first 20 minutes of this antique? They throw food, they argue about who gets the most girls, they make the freshmen carry their trunks up the fraternity house steps....On the screen it's less funny than that sounds.

Elliott Nugent and Robert Montgomery play football stars entering their senior year. As soon as they are all moved in, they get right down to the intelligent dialog:

Montgomery: The team's got a tough schedule this year.

Nugent: Yeah, we sure have.

Montgomery: I've decided we're gonna cut out the women until after the football season's over.

Nugent: You – hey, are you serious?

Soon enough, the pair cross paths with cute co-ed Sally Star, who enchants them both. Nugent's approach is pushy, Montgomery's more polite, but she shows interest in both and rather quickly the picture develops into a fairly standard two-fellows-in-love-with-the-same- girl story.

The farce takes a more serious turn at about the one hour mark— Nugent, in particular, becomes suddenly human and much more sympathetic. The climax of the story hangs not on which of them will get the girl but a much more important question:

With their friendship all busted up, will Nugent and Montgomery blow the big game against Stanford?

Technically, it's an early talkie fraught with the typical weaknesses—static camera work, dropped dialog—of that brief period during which filmmakers rushed to adopt a new and imperfect technology, making it up as they went. Dramatically, it's really pretty silly.

Still….There is some lively football action in the closing minutes. Also, Cliff Edwards sings a couple of okay tunes.

Unlike many films about college, this one actually names the location - USC, although you never see anybody here crack a book. If you like the early talkies, and in particular if you like Robert Montgomery, I do recommend this one. It is typical of MGM's output in 1929 and 1930 in that if they made a movie that was the least bit comical, then it had to be at least partially musical. This one has some drama in it, but it is mainly a comedy.

Eddie (Elliott Nugent) and Biff (Robert Montgomery) are popular senior football stars playing at USC, moving into their dorm room for the fourth and last time. They're buddies through thick and thin, but then a beautiful coed comes along that neither encourages nor discourages either of them enough to make them believe they are not in the hunt for her affections. At that point, a four-year friendship on campus and on the football field becomes strained. Will the young woman (Sally Starr) choose Eddie? Biff? none of the above? Watch and find out.

This film is notable for being Robert Montgomery's third film role and Cliff Edwards' second. As such, at this point, Elliott Nugent is billed ahead of Montgomery, but that will soon change as Montgomery is a big hit with audiences and begins to compete with William Haines for the kind of leading man roles that normally had gone to Haines. Cliff Edwards doesn't have a huge role here, and frankly he looks way too old to be playing a college student, but he is still fun to watch as always. He is mainly comic relief and musical accompaniment in the musical numbers carrying his trademark ukulele. Also note Polly Moran as the cook at the fraternity house where Biff and Eddie live. She doesn't have many lines, but what she does have goes a long way. I also enjoyed the dance scene as some of the wilder dance numbers echo the exuberance that is the hallmark of the end of the roaring 20's.

Leading lady Sally Starr isn't that well known today, but she was heavily promoted by MGM in the early talkie era as an answer to Clara Bow, and you can't help but see the similarities in everything from her demeanor to her voice that sounds quite a bit like Ms. Bow.

Others have called this film creaky and static, but I really enjoyed it and thought it moved along nicely. There are no halting long-winded scenes, no gestures left over from the silent era - everyone involved seems to "get" acting in the talkie era. The only problem I could see is that occasionally the soundtrack would overpower the speech of the actors and make conversation hard to pick up, but this didn't happen very often. Just don't come to this one looking for a heavy dramatic storyline or even one that makes a lot of sense. It is pure escapism.

Never has college been presented on screen with so many over-age players posing as college kids. How can we explain CLIFF EDWARDS (who was 35), ELLIOT NUGENT (34) and youngster ROBERT MONTGOMERY (25), all playing college seniors in a flimsy vehicle about friendships spoiled when a pretty girl causes the break-up of male roommates. It's the sort of routine college comedy done many times before without any new twists.

It's fun seeing ROBERT MONTGOMERY looking so youthful, but he's the only one who convincingly portrays a college guy. Nugent plays the kind of football hero he satirized when he co-wrote "The Male Animal" with James Thurber, a spoof on college life and brawn over brains.

Nugent at least looks a bit more believable as a football player than the slim Montgomery, but he's just satisfactory in a role that requires him to be earnestly in love with the girl his roommate has also taken a fancy to. Nugent's talent as an actor is about on a level with the bumbling but earnest Sonny Tufts (at a later era), and he wisely turned his talents toward directing by the late '30s.

It's primitive fluff, watchable if you're curious about how college life was depicted by Hollywood in the late '20s--but quite forgettable as a piece of light entertainment.