College Swing

I didn't intend to watch a slew of movies with fairly thin plots back-to-back; it's pure dumb luck that the movies I picked recently happen to have not a whole lot going on. For the latest example, I dove into my Bob Hope box set and settled on College Swing.

We don't see Hope for a while, as the movie starts with a prologue. It's 1738, and a school is having its graduation, presided over by Edward Everett Horton, who is decidedly non-colonial. All of the students get their diplomas except for Grace Alden (Gracie Allen). She's so ditzy that she's been in school for nine years and still can't graduate. Her father and the Horton character get into a debate with it suggested that she couldn't graduate in 200 years. So a contract is drawn up that the school will keep Alden's money in escrow until such time as a female descendant of the Aldens graduates, at which time she can claim the inheritance. Otherwise, in 1938, the money will revert to the college.

Fast forward to 1938, when the movie was made. There's another Gracie Alden, and she's still trying to graduate from the school. This is where Bob Hope shows up. He plays Bud Brady, some sort of smooth operator type who comes up with the brilliant idea of "tutoring" Gracie to pass the examination and then claiming a nice up-front free from that as well as a handsome annual salary from the college, which would be Gracie's inheritance. This "tutoring" really means finding out in advance what the questions are and feeding the answers to Gracie.

Hubert Dash (Edward Everett Horton), a descendant of that man from 1738, returns from South America to administer a special exam just for Gracie, with questions read by George Jonas (George Burns). Although there winds up being a flaw in Bud's scheme, Gracie somehow passes the test through a comedy of errors, and winds up taking control of the college, which means instituting all sorts of new policies including new faculty, which is where the phony "Professor Therese" (Martha Raye), professor of love, comes in, to play the romantic interest for Bob Hope.

There's another love story, typical for the genre, involving two of the students, including one who's related to a bigwig in the administration, played by John Payne and Florence George. But the main story, such as it is, still has some time to play out, so it's quickly suspected that Gracie must have cheated on the test. This means that Bud is going to have to come up with another scheme to help her cheat and pass another test, this one on live radio.

With not much plot here, the reason to watch is for the various musical numbers and sketch comedy that have all been stitched together to come up with something that's actually not terribly incoherent. But having said that, College Swing is also definitely not the sort of movie that's going to be for everybody. I can imagine quite a few modern viewers being put off by the 1930s music, with the comic interludes not being particularly funny for other people. Unsurprisingly, Allen is the best thing here, followed closely by Hope and Raye.

College Swing is another of those movies I'm glad to have picked up as part of a box set, but one that I wouldn't pay a standalone price for.