Winfield College students who are trying to put together the annual varsity show come into conflict with their faculty adviser, a stodgy old professor whose ideas are hopelessly out of date... See full summary »
Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends.
If your account is linked with Facebook and you have turned on sharing, this will show up in your activity feed. If not, you can turn on sharing
here
.
Winfield College students who are trying to put together the annual varsity show come into conflict with their faculty adviser, a stodgy old professor whose ideas are hopelessly out of date, and who won't even let the new "swing" music be played in the show. They decide to get ahold of a former student who is now a big Broadway star and have him direct their show. What they don't know is that this "star's" last three shows were big flops. Written by
frankfob2@yahoo.com
When Fred Waring was approached to play a starring role in this film, he brought his famous glee club, The Pennsylvanians, to the shoot and planned on using the college glee club from Pomona College for additional singers. When he arrived at the campus he found the Glee Club conductor was ill but his replacement was a young, energetic man named Robert Shaw. After the movie was finished, Shaw followed Waring to New York, where he founded the Collegiate Chorale and the Robert Shaw Chorale. Robert Shaw went on to be one of the most important personalities in American choral music in the 20th century. See more »
Goofs
When the college kids arrive in New York to put on there show there are about 60 of them and they have only a few props. When they put on their show they have massive, elaborate sets and props, more than 200 actors and the stage is much larger than the whole theater. See more »
I was looking forward to seeing Varsity Show because of the fact that I owned the four Dick Powell Decca recordings that were made from songs in this film. The Tony Thomas book, the Films of Dick Powell also said that it was a 2 hour film.
In the abbreviated 80 minute version I saw of it, I'm thinking there was a lot of material that was left out and may in fact now be lost. Two of those songs Powell did not sing on the screen, Have You Got Any Castles Baby and Love Is On The Air Tonight. He did do a very nice version of You've Got Something There with Rosemary Lane and the song Moonlight On The Campus seems to have been edited out all together.
Still even in the shortened version Varsity Show is an entertaining bit of nonsense about a Broadway producer played by Powell who's had a run of bad luck, but answers the call of the student body of his alma mater to produce their Varsity Show. It was the kind of light weight material that Powell was desperately trying to get out of doing at Warner Brothers, but Jack Warner wouldn't see him in anything else.
Jack did give him a good cast to work with however with a lot of very familiar character actors going through their paces. Standing out are Ted Healy on loan from MGM playing Powell's assistant, Edward Brophy as the theater manager who's about to have a stroke because he can't get an advance for rent from the college kids, and Walter Catlett who is very funny as the faculty adviser for the show who knows as much about putting on a show as Ginger Rogers running the Brooklyn Dodgers to quote another Dick Powell song from another film.
Fred Waring and his Pennsylvanians are here to supply the music and chorus and Rosemary's sister Priscilla Lane is another student. The dancing talent is tops with Lee Dixon who had co-starred with Powell in Golddiggers of 1937 and the great team of Buck and Bubbles who I still remember from the Ed Sullivan Show as a lad. Richard Whiting and Johnny Mercer wrote the original songs that I liked so much.
Varsity Show got an Academy Award nomination for Busby Berkeley in the category of Dance Direction which was discarded in the Forties. Berkeley did one of his patented extravaganzas for a finale using the theme songs from several colleges and it's quite an eyeful and most entertaining.
I hope one day we can get a restored version of Varsity Show. I'm betting a lot of good material might be lost as it stands right now. I have a feeling I'd rate Varsity Show higher if we saw the director's cut.
9 of 9 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful to you?
I was looking forward to seeing Varsity Show because of the fact that I owned the four Dick Powell Decca recordings that were made from songs in this film. The Tony Thomas book, the Films of Dick Powell also said that it was a 2 hour film.
In the abbreviated 80 minute version I saw of it, I'm thinking there was a lot of material that was left out and may in fact now be lost. Two of those songs Powell did not sing on the screen, Have You Got Any Castles Baby and Love Is On The Air Tonight. He did do a very nice version of You've Got Something There with Rosemary Lane and the song Moonlight On The Campus seems to have been edited out all together.
Still even in the shortened version Varsity Show is an entertaining bit of nonsense about a Broadway producer played by Powell who's had a run of bad luck, but answers the call of the student body of his alma mater to produce their Varsity Show. It was the kind of light weight material that Powell was desperately trying to get out of doing at Warner Brothers, but Jack Warner wouldn't see him in anything else.
Jack did give him a good cast to work with however with a lot of very familiar character actors going through their paces. Standing out are Ted Healy on loan from MGM playing Powell's assistant, Edward Brophy as the theater manager who's about to have a stroke because he can't get an advance for rent from the college kids, and Walter Catlett who is very funny as the faculty adviser for the show who knows as much about putting on a show as Ginger Rogers running the Brooklyn Dodgers to quote another Dick Powell song from another film.
Fred Waring and his Pennsylvanians are here to supply the music and chorus and Rosemary's sister Priscilla Lane is another student. The dancing talent is tops with Lee Dixon who had co-starred with Powell in Golddiggers of 1937 and the great team of Buck and Bubbles who I still remember from the Ed Sullivan Show as a lad. Richard Whiting and Johnny Mercer wrote the original songs that I liked so much.
Varsity Show got an Academy Award nomination for Busby Berkeley in the category of Dance Direction which was discarded in the Forties. Berkeley did one of his patented extravaganzas for a finale using the theme songs from several colleges and it's quite an eyeful and most entertaining.
I hope one day we can get a restored version of Varsity Show. I'm betting a lot of good material might be lost as it stands right now. I have a feeling I'd rate Varsity Show higher if we saw the director's cut.