College Swing (1938)
Genre: Comedy / Music
Duration: 86 minuten
Alternative title: Swing, Teacher, Swing
Country:
United States
Directed by: Raoul Walsh
Stars: Gracie Allen, George Burns and Bob Hope
IMDb score:
6,0 (613)
Releasedate: 29 April 1938
College Swing plot
"A riot of fun!"
In 1738 an agreement between the Alden family and the respectable Colonial University is signed. It states that if a female member of the family passes her exam within 200 years, the property of the university will be transferred to her. In 1938, Gracie Alden (Gracie Allen), the last girl in the Aldens family, wants to attempt to pass the exam. She asks for the help of the slick private teacher Bud Brady (Bob Hope). She also tries to win over the no-nonsense professor Hubert Dash (Edward Everett Horton). However, Professor Dash has no intention of handing over his precious university to an airhead like Gracie.
Actors and actresses
George Jonas
Gracie Alden
Mabel Grady
Bud Brady
Hubert Dash
Ginna Ashburn
Ben Volt
Betty
Jackie
Martin Bates
Reviews & comments
mrklm
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- 12829 messages
- 10699 votes
A wafer-thin plot about a not-so-bright young woman [Gracie Allen] who gets to take over a university if she manages to pass her exam. She receives help from an opportunistic teacher [Bob Hope] who, for a modest fee of course, stops at nothing to make this happen. Edward Everett Horton plays a professor who examines her, and George Burns, Helen Kaye, and Betty Grable are there merely to liven things up a bit. The 'story' amounts to hardly anything and serves only as a framework for a number of (unusual) sketches and a heap of musical interludes. That wouldn't have been such a problem if the quality of the material had been somewhat better. Fortunately, Gracie Allen is occasionally funny as the dimwit who keeps shooting herself in the foot, and Martha Kaye steals the show with her energetic, comedic performance. Hope and Horton are a bit disappointing here, and Burns and Grable have hardly anything to do. A curious film, but I wouldn't just dismiss a film with such a strong cast. It's not that bad...
Translated from Dutch · View original
Roger Thornhill
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- 6278 messages
- 2589 votes
What mrklm wrote above nine years ago pretty much hits the nail on the head: a story about nothing in which various up-and-coming talents get to show what they can do. Some contemporary comedians (Jerry Bergen, Ben Blue, the acrobatic Slate Brothers) have remained largely or entirely unknown to the current generation of filmgoers, others (Bob Hope, the hilarious Martha Raye, Burns & Allen) were still waiting for their real breakthrough, and in my opinion, only the immortal Edward Everett Horton was truly an established name with a 16-year career and dozens of films including Top Hat and Lost Horizon. Some sketches undoubtedly entertained the audience of 1938 but come across as somewhat stale 90 years later, and moreover, amidst all the comedy there is also a lame love story that is possibly even less substantial than Betty Grable on her WWII pin-up poster. Oh well, I can laugh about it; Gracie Allen is indeed entertaining as the ultimate scatterbrain, Everett Horton is always a delight despite his eternal repertoire of second takes, and Bob's meeting with Martha is so successful that the following year they got to be the headliners of Never Say Die. It’s all nothing special, but I just have a soft spot for this kind of unbridled silliness that tried to steer the anarchy of the Marx Brothers a bit into the beaten Hollywood path. And that directed by a man I primarily associate with gangster films, thrillers, and westerns, but apparently Raould Walsh felt at ease in the musical comedy genre as well, because there is nothing wrong with the production design.
Translated from Dutch · View original
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