Varsity Show (1937)

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annual varsity show come into conflict with their faculty adviser, a stodgy old professor whose ideas are hopelessly out of date...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 »

Director:

William Keighley

Writers:

Jerry Wald (screen play), Richard Macaulay (screen play),

Stars:

Dick Powell, Fred Waring and His Pennsylvanians, Ted Healy

Nominated for 1 Oscar.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Dick Powell	...	Charles 'Chuck' Daly
Fred Waring and His Pennsylvanians
Ted Healy	...	William Williams
Rosemary Lane	...	Barbara 'Babs' Steward
Priscilla Lane	...	Betty Bradley
Walter Catlett	...	Professor Sylvester Biddle
Johnnie Davis	...	Buzz Bolton (as Johnny Davis)
Ford Washington Lee	...	Buck (as Buck)
John William Sublett	...	Bubbles (as Bubbles)
Fred Waring	...	Ernie Mason
Sterling Holloway	...	Trout
Mabel Todd	...	Cuddles
Scotty Bates	...	Scotty
George MacFarland	...	Hap
Poley McClintock	...	Poley

Storyline

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annual varsity show come into conflict with their faculty adviser, a stodgy old professor whose ideas are hopelessly out of date, and who won't even let the new "swing" music be played in the show.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.

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Plot Keywords:

professor | college | college student | mayor | dancer | 

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Taglines:

See college life in the RAH!

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Genres:

Musical

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Certificate:

Approved

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

4 September 1937 (USA)

Also Known As:

Invitación al baile

Filming Locations:

Warner Brothers Burbank Studios - 4000 Warner Boulevard, Burbank, California, USA

Company Credits

Production Co:

Warner Bros

Technical Specs

Runtime:

120 min 80 min (Turner library print) 81 min (re-release) (edited)

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

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.

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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.

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Connections

Referenced in They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969)

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Soundtracks

"Anchors Aweigh"
(1906) (uncredited)
Music by Charles A. Zimmerman
Lyrics by Alfred Hart Miles and R. Lovell
Played and Sung by Fred Waring and His Pennsylvanians in a medley of football songs in the finale

User Reviews

Restore Varsity Show If We Can

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.