Varsity Show (1937)

 

Varsity Show is an Oscar nominee thanks to just one musical number that lasts about ten minutes. Its finale was nominated for Best Dance Direction, a category honoring choreographers that lasted for just three years (1935-1937). Of course, the finale is spectacular given that it was choreographed by the legendary Busby Berkeley. To get to the film’s end, though, you have to go through a very tepid narrative that keeps throwing somewhat ridiculous obstacles in the path of a group of students who just want to have a great annual show for the Quadrangle Club at Winfield College. The show they’ve been working on is very old-fashioned and dull, thanks to their faculty director, Professor Biddle (Walter Catlett, hamming it up to the film’s detriment). He doesn’t want any contemporary (i.e., swing) music in the show, so the students turn to a famous alumnus, Chuck Daly (Dick Powell, much the same as he was in almost every other film). Daly, now a theatrical producer, has just had one of his shows flop miserably in New York, and his friend/manager (Ted Healy, providing a few strong comic moments) convinces him to return to campus for a promised thousand dollar payday. Let the complications begin. First, naturally, they need to get rid of Biddle so that Chuck can take over direction of the show. Healy’s William Williams contracts mumps from a night with a coed, and he agrees to spread the mumps to Biddle. He shows up at the professor’s home, asking, “Can’t we kiss and make up?” Biddle’s reply is “I’ll make up. That’s as far as I’ll go.” They enter the home for a cup of tea, and we next see them in side-by-side beds. It seems like Biddle (and Williams) will go farther after all. The college then schedules a bunch of exams with the condition that any students who don’t pass cannot participate in the show. So everyone has to study hard in order to stay in the show. And so it goes… Even when the students get the bright idea to take over a theater in New York in order to make a hit for Chuck—perhaps the silliest plot turn of them all—the obstacles keep coming. The theater owner keeps going up the city’s and state’s hierarchy to get the students thrown out, but two waves of police officers and even the National Guard wind up being more interested in watching the rehearsal than in stopping the show. There are a couple of romances, just as you would expect in a musical from this time period, but they truly aren’t essential to the plot or even depicted organically. Chuck falls in love with Babs (Priscilla Lane), a college senior with a lovely singing voice, and even Williams gets a romance with a glasses-wearing female nerd, Cuddles (Mabel Todd, matching the hamminess of Healy as much as she can). Varsity Show features Sterling Holloway, later to be famous as the voice of Winnie the Pooh, in a supporting role, but he and the other players really don't add very much to the film. Fred Waring and His Pennsylvanians provide lovely musical accompaniment to the various numbers throughout the movie, particularly shining in the finale. And about that finale? It’s ten minutes of marching band music, baton twirlers, synchronized dancing, and performers spelling out the insignia of various famous colleges, among them Yale and the University of Southern California (one of my alma maters). The finale also includes one of two performances by the singing-and-dancing duo of Buck and Bubbles. They are great, but then you realize that their numbers are shot so that they could be excised for showings in Southern theaters, which often did not permit scenes with talented African American performers except in servile roles. How sad that some moviegoers were not able to see these numbers, truly some of the best parts of the film overall. You can just watch the finale below, and you’ll truly see the highlight of Varsity Show.

Oscar Nomination: Best Dance Direction