The Disenchanted by Budd Schulberg

The Disenchanted by Budd Schulberg
9780816679355
University of Minnesota Press
Originally Published 1950

Budd Schulberg was a screenwriter known for writing the screenplay of the critically acclaimed film On the Waterfront (1954). Schulberg also wrote novels including The Disenchanted which was published in 1950 and recently reprinted by University of Minnesota Press. The novel is based on the experience Schulberg had working with the troubled genius F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Producer Walter Wanger hired Budd Schulberg to assist F. Scott Fitzgerald in writing a screenplay about the Winter Carnivals at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. Schulberg was a recent alumni. The movie was to be Winter Carnival (1939).

In the video below, Budd Schulberg talks about meeting and working with F. Scott Fitzgerald on the doomed project. Schulberg made the mistake of giving Fitzgerald some champagne which caused Fitzgerald to go on a crazy bender. Their trip to NH to make the film became a terrible adventure.

The whole experience made quite an impact on Schulberg that he decided to fictionalize the experience in his novel The Disenchanted.

In the novel, Shep is a young writer in Hollywood who is still wet behind the ears and has just been assigned to work with the great T. Manley Halliday (known as just Manley Halliday) on the collegiate winter romance Love on Ice. Manley is a prestigious writer with numerous successful novels and screenplays to his credits. But by 1939, most of his books are out of print and he's hanging by a thread: the fleeting recognition of his name and illustrious career. Manley is working on a manuscript for his next great novel but he's in desperate need of money to buy him the time to finish it. So he reluctantly takes on working with Shep on Love on Ice and is hired by producer Victor Milgrim.

Manley is diabetic and has been on the wagon for a few years. He's been divorced for years from the love and scourge of his life Jere. His assistant and sort-of mistress Ann Loeb helps him daily and keeps him on the straight and narrow. When Manley boards the plane with Shep from L.A. to N.Y. and Shep pours the first glass from a bottle of champagne, it's all over. Manley goes on a bender and Shep assumes various roles of assistant, writer and parent to Manley. Shep struggles between the feelings of admiration for Manley's magnificent literary and movie successes and the shell of a man he sees before him. Throughout the novel we follow Manley and Shep on their crazy adventure to get Love on Ice written before they arrive on location for filming. There are also flashbacks in which we learn more about Manley's life. His early career, his love affair with the troubled Jere and the days just before he leaves L.A. on the trip.

It's pretty obvious that Shep is Budd Schulberg, Manley is F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jere is Zelda Sayre , Ann is Sheilah Graham and Victor Milgrim is Producer Walter Wanger. Most of the story is based on real-life events with only the names changed and Schulberg also takes poetic license especially with the flashbacks and as he explores the life of the Manley character. I wonder if Schulberg had decided to write this story much later in his life if he would have written it as a memoir instead of a novel. Perhaps it was out of respect to F. Scott Fitzgerald that he fictionalized the account and left it up to inquiring minds to find out the real life connection to the troubled writer.

The Disenchanted is a captivating novel about a doomed project between two writers at opposite ends of their careers. 

I highly recommend this novel to classic film fans especially those who love fiction. It's fun to spot the names of real actors, actresses and films as well as to figure out the reference made by fictionalized ones. 

F. Scott Fitzgerald is uncredited as a writer for Winter Carnival (1939). According to IMDB, the film lost money at the box office as I imagine the fictional Love on Ice would have too. If any of you have seen Winter Carnival, let me know! It currently has no DVD release and I'm not sure if TCM shows it.

Disclaimer: Thank you to the University of Minnesota Press for sending me this book to review!

Classic Film Haul Video

Products Mentioned




20th Century Masters - The Millennium Collection: The Best of the Mills Brothers




Myrna Loy and William Powell Collection

The Bride Walks Out (1936)

Red Dust (1932) 

Love In The Rough (1930) 

A Lady Of Chance (1928)

Hollywood Revue of 1929 

Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler

Bloggers Mentioned

Bobby Rivers

Laura from Laura's Miscellaneous Musings

Hairstyle 
Tutorial can be found at by gum, by golly!

Catching Up with Quelle (10)

Skyfall (2012) on the IMAX – The internet has been buzzing with great reviews of Skyfall (2012) and I was particularly excited about this new addition to the James Bond film legacy. My husband Carlos took me out on my birthday to see this film at an IMAX theater. Let me confess to you dear reader that I have never been to an IMAX theater to see a movie. I have been to the Mugar-Omni Theater at the Boston Science Museum where I had seen several wildlife documentaries. The Mugar Omni Theater has a five story tall IMAX dome screen which wraps around you. The seats are slanted and you feel like you are floating and falling at the same time. I always had to take Dramamine as the experience kicked in my motion sickness.

I came prepared to see the Skyfall movie the same way, I even took my medication in advance, but this IMAX was much different. It’s not a dome so I came to it expecting something very different and was quite relieved that the regular IMAX experience is not quite so intense as the IMAX Dome one. The visuals were wonderful and the experience was very enjoyable. I felt very immersed in the action and the settings. Skyfall (2012) was a wonderful entry into the James Bond repertoire. It had a solid plot, lots of twists and turns, a great cast and good quality action. I am a sucker for a good chase scene and the one in the beginning of the movie did not disappoint. My only complaint about the film was the lack-luster femme fatale Severine who was just plain boring.

Everything else about the movie was spectacular. Daniel Craig  as James Bond works for me. I like him as Bond just as much as I like Sean Connery’s Bond. One theme I noticed in the film was the importance of doing things the old-fashioned way. Bond and Agent M are continuously put down by various people in the story for being too old or to old-fashioned in their actions. At one point someone says “sometimes the old ways are the best”. Even the new Agent Q with all his new technology can’t compete with the fundamental and classic tactics employed by Bond and Agent M. While the film is not anti-technology, it still demonstrates that sometimes the old ways truly are the best. This theme made me so incredibly happy. It felt like some sort of vindication for my nostalgia for the past and appreciation for history and the old ways. Thank you Skyfall! I thought the experience had some nice irony. A story reinforcing old-fashioned methods while being shown on a screen that is made of new(ish) technology. The IMAX was great but I don’t think I need to see all films that way. Sometimes the old ways are the best!

Shameless family plug - Check out my cousin-in-law Nick's article about Bond's Aston Martin on AskMen.com.

The Stecher men love their cars! Here they are (Nick and my husband are in the middle) on our wedding day in front of a sweet Bentley.

10 top films I have never seen - The blog Shadows and Satin had a post of the top films Karen had never seen. It was pretty cool so I thought I'd do my own. I limited mine to just 10 as I saw a lot of new-to-me classics this year including To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), The Birds (1962), Frankenstein (1931) and The Bride of Frankenstein (1935).

Cape Fear (1962)
Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
West Side Story (1961)
Indiana Jones (any)
Star Wars (any)
Psycho (1960)
The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
City Lights (1931)
Ben Hur (1959)
My Fair Lady (1964)

I have seen bits and pieces of Psycho and I have been avoiding West Side Story, Indiana Jones and Star Wars for year. It's kind of "my thing". The others I plan to watch eventually!


Picture of the week - From Classic Montgomery - Film thoughts from a modern Robert Montgomery fangirl. James Cagney and Robert  Montgomery with their sons James Cagney Jr. and Robert Montgomery Jr.

Out of the Past - 2012 Classic Movie Gift Guide

It's that time of year again! If you have a classic movie fanatic in your life, you know the know who has everything and is impossible to shop for, here are some cool gift ideas. I have not included DVDs or Blu-Rays because we are all familiar with that trepidation that precedes gift buying, when you wonder whether the recipient has the gift already or not. I have listed below some really unique gift ideas that your loved one will probably not already have.

 Enjoy and happy holidays!

Custom iPhone Case - Cafe Press

$25.00

Make sure your image is at least 234 X 490 and that your design has a blank space at the top left (the above image is inverted).

Buster Keaton iPhone Case by Kate Gabrielle

$35.00

Hollywood and The Ivy Look Coffee Table Book
$75.00

This book is pure eye candy!

The Entertainer: Movies, Magic, and My Father's Twentieth Century by Margaret Talbot
$28.95 Retail Price

Read my review of this book here. And my interview with the author here.

Passes to the TCM Classic Film Festival 2013

Now for some goofy/fun ideas!

J.T.S. Brown Bourbon
$20.99

For the fan of The Hustler (1961)

NARS Nail polish in Jungle Red

$18.00

For that fan of The Women (1939) . Just make sure it doesn't come with a one-way ticket to Reno, Nevada!

The Maltese Falcon (1941) Replica Statue

$99.00

Because everyone needs one of these in their homes.

Green Velvet Curtains

$21.76

They can double as a dress. Just watch Gone with the Wind (1939) for inspiration.

Allen Edmonds Spectator Shoes

$335.00

That gentleman in your life will look as good as Robert Walker in The Strangers on a Train (1951)

Bodum Santos Stovetop Vacuum Coffee Maker

Williams-Sonoma - $89.95

I'm sure they'll do a much better job at making coffee with this gadget than Tess Harding (Katharine Hepburn) did in Woman of the Year (1942)

Yellow Raincoat
$84.95

For that special person who gets that glorious feeling to sing in the rain. Make them happy again!

Ray-Ban RB4164 Sunglasses

$94.98 (sale price)

For that conniving person who needs to hide the evil behind their eyes with a pair of sunglasses.

I wish Kate Gabrielle's print of Leave Her to Heaven (1945) was still available!

UPDATE: The above print is available at Kate's society6 store. 

Catching Up with Quelle (9)

Happy Birthday to Me! - I share my birthday with the following actors and actresses:

Kathryn Grant
Charles Emmett Mack
Ricardo Montalban

Nostalgia and Comfort - 2012 has been a year of major change for me and sometimes I want things to just slow down. I find some comfort in thinking about the past, looking at old pictures and watching movies that I know well and love. As I said in my previous Catching Up post, I have been having a difficult time with new-to-me movies. There is too much new in my life I need some more familiar.  I have found that if I watch one or two old favorites that I am more open to watching a new movie. For example, after watching Tony Rome (1967) and Ocean's 11 (1960), two of my favorite 60s standbys, I was more than ready to watch the new-to-me movie Walk Don't Run (1966). Too bad I didn't watch that during the Olympics! What a perfect tie-in.

Here are the films I have stacked by our DVD/Blu-Ray player so I have them ready to go whenever I need some comfort movie viewing.

From top to bottom:

The Original Nancy Drew Movie Mystery Collection (4 films)

Bachelor Mother (1939)

Holiday Affair (1949)

Christmas in Connecticut (1945)

Young Ideas (1943)

Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948)

Tony Rome (1967) 

Ocean's 11 (1960) (looks so much better on Blu-Ray!)

I have also been reaching far back into my childhood and have been thinking about some of my favorite childhood cartoons. One of them in particular is Adventures of the Gummi Bears, a Disney cartoon from the late 1980s. I have been singing the song around the house (much to Carlos' dismay, he dislikes my random bouts of Gangnam Style dancing too). I even added the Gummi Bears DVDs to my Netflix queue so I can watch them again. Just yesterday, my friend Lisa forwarded me a link to none other than Alicia Keys performing her version of the Gummi Bears theme on Jimmy Fallon's late night show. What a strange coincidence. To have been thinking of this show and relishing the memory AND to have one of my favorite singers perform the song on TV. Weird how the universe works like that sometimes.

What's your favorite comfort movie? Which cartoon did you love as a child?

To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

To Kill a Mockingbird is one of those stories that has eluded me for years. It was taught at my high school but I had taken certain English classes with certain teachers in a particular arrangement that skirted around having to read To Kill a Mockingbird. I didn't avoid it, it was avoiding me. I had never seen the movie either. I was grateful for an opportunity to read the book and watch the movie on the big screen.

Since I had read the book very recently, I had it fresh in my mind and because I hadn't seen the movie before I came to it not knowing what to expect.

The movie stays true to the book but it is very different. There are lots of characters missing and lots of scenes that were left behind. In the book, Atticus is very much a secondary character. The main focus is Scout and her brother Jem. It's really their world and point of view that we are experiencing.

When you read a book, the characters come to you with a blank state. The author builds the characters the way he or she wants and we as the reader visualize them in our mind. It's a very different experience with a movie. We are provided with visuals and with actors playing the parts that we would have otherwise created in our minds. Gregory Peck is Atticus Finch when we watch the movie but when we read the book Atticus Finch is our visualization of Atticus Finch.

Having read the book so recently, I was waiting for certain scenes and characters to appear and felt a bit worried when they didn't. But I realized that the book could provide me with more information while the movie only had a couple of hours to deliver the story. While the book focuses mostly on the child characters, the movie HAS to focus on Gregory Peck's Atticus Finch because Peck is the star. He's the draw, the anchor to the story and what keeps the plot going. In the book it's very much about Scout and Jem. Not to say that the two unknowns who played the children didn't get their screen time or were neglected in the film. I thought the film beautifully portrayed the importance of both Scout and Jem's roles in the story. There are two very touching scenes that effectively portray the innocence of children and the injustice adults sometimes do to each other. One is when Atticus is in front of the jail protecting his client and local men come to kill the accused. Scout, Jem and Dill, particular Scout, confront the local men and they ashamedly walk away. In another scene, Scout shows affection to Boo Radley (played by a very young very blonde Robert Duvall in his first role) who is incredibly shy and mostly ignored by the other townsfolk but came out of his shell to help Scout and Jem. While the film really focuses more on Atticus than the book does, I felt like the movie honored the importance of the children as well!

While I liked the book better than the movie, I think the film is quite a masterpiece. Gregory Peck did an amazing job portraying Atticus Finch. It's really a marvelous performance and I'm sure a lot of folks with knowledge of Peck's career will say it's one of his best roles.

Did you watch To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) on the big screen last Thursday? What did you think?

Thank you to Harper Perennial and Fathom Events for the book and a chance to see the movie! Much appreciated.

Catching Up with Quelle (8)

Anna Karenina (2012) -  While I love classic movies, what you may not know about me is that I also have a deep love for period films, especially adaptations of classic novels. Anna Karenina is one of my favorite books and I was excited to see that a new adaptation was being released into theaters. For some reason I became absolutely determined to win advance screening tickets to this film and I entered every online contest I could. I ended up winning a couple tickets from a local Whole Foods for an advance screening last Wednesday.  (They ended up being two tickets for four instead of two tickets for two, oops!). I got a gorgeous pass and when we left the movie they handed out these great tri-fold double-sided posters (see above).

It was a really good film despite Keira Knightley being in it. One of the reasons I don't watch as many period films as I used to is that she seems to be in a lot of them. If Zooey Deschanel ever decides to do Period Films I will have to give up the genre entirely.

It's good to note that Anna Karenina (2012) is partly choreographed and a lot of the sets are on stages that change and open up into other sets. If you don't know this up front or if you are not okay with this, the movie might not be as enjoyable. This reminded me of an adaptation of Shakespeare's As You Like it from 2006 in which you got glimpses of a real contemporary audience which reminded you that this is a performance. I loved the blending of reality with fantasy. With Anna Karenina, the stages remind you that this is a production and it also gave the filmmakers more liberty to be visually expressive with history and fantasy.

It's a beautiful film and I thought it was well-executed. I don't understand why they didn't just put Jude Law in the role of Vronsky instead of an unknown. Besides Keira Knightley, Jude Law and I'll make the case also for Emma Watson because I love her, everyone else in the film are minor actors or up-and-coming ones. I think the two major roles should have gone to the two major actors. Downton Abbey fans will recognize the familiar faces of Michelle Dockery (who looks just like my friend Haze who went to the movie with me!) and Thomas Howes who have minor roles in the movie.

One thing I have to say is that there is a gory scene in the beginning of the film which I thought they could have done away with. When I left the film, it's the one scene that stuck in my head. And that should not have been the case.

Will you see Anna Karenina (2012)?

Period Films - Do you like period films? If so, which ones? I have to say that I do not enjoy historical classic films as I do contemporary ones. I feel like todays film makers have a lot more pressure on them to be historically accurate whereas using Victorian style clothing in Pride & Prejudice (1940) (it's Regency not Victorian!). Also because of Hays Code and heavy-handed movie studios, film makers often had to change major plot points or characters in order to please the big bosses. Personally, I would like to know more about the decision behind making Lady Catherine de Bourgh a nice character at the end of the P&P 1940 adaptation (sorry for the spoiler!).

Advance Screenings - I have only been to one other advance screening and that was in 2004. A lot has changed since that time and I noticed while watching Anna Karenina that there were several guards at the theater waving some sort of laser thing over the audience. Also, they checked our bags for recording devices. Someone told me that at some advance screenings they'll take your cell phone and only give it back when the movie is over!

2013 Turner Classic Movies Festival - For those of you who have gone to this festival in the past, what advice do you have for those of us who are going or who are contemplating going in 2013? Cinematically Insane has a nice post detailing the differences between passes from 2012 and 2013 and offers some advice on what to invest your money in and Laura from Laura's Miscellaneous Musings gave me a good tip about standby lines for evening shows ($20 to get in if there are open spots). Any other advice?

Have a good week!

Interview with Margaret Talbot, author of The Entertainer: Movies, Magic, and My Father's Twentieth Century

I have had the privilege of interviewing Margaret Talbot, author of the book The Entertainer: Movies, Magic, and My Father's Twentieth Century and daughter of classic film actor Lyle Talbot. Check out the interview below and if you haven't heard about this amazing book yet make sure you read my review.

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Raquel: Why did you decide to write The Entertainer?

Margaret: I’d grown up listening to my Dad’s stories about his show biz career, and like most kids listening to their Dads holding forth at the dinner table or wherever, I tuned in and out of them. But as the years went by, and especially after my father died, in 1996, I thought about those stories more and more—it helped me to feel close to both my parents again, and I missed them a lot. And I realized that when you strung my Dad’s stories together, they told a bigger story about the rise of entertainment in the 20th century. I’ve always loved history, and I thought this would be a way to convey cultural history through an intimate, personal lens.

Raquel: What do you think your dad, actor Lyle Talbot, would think of the book?

Margaret: I think, and my siblings agree with me, that he would be thrilled. He wasn’t a writer at all, but he was a reader and a great story-teller, and would have been pleased as punch to see his story in book form.

Raquel:  What’s the one thing you’d like people to get out of reading your book?

Margaret: That it’s possible to make a deeply satisfying working life in a creative profession where there is a star system--and you are not a star-- so long as you have the attitude my Dad had, which was: I am lucky to be able to do the work I love. 

Raquel: What was the hardest part of the writing or research process?

Margaret: Honestly? Having to stop researching and writing it. So long as I was working on the book, I was still in communion with, having an on-going conversation with, my parents. When I finished the manuscript I felt like I was saying good-bye to my Dad for a second time.  

Raquel: The age gap between you and your dad was pretty big. I am in the same situation with my dad being 53 years older than me. How did that affect your relationship with him?

Margaret: I’m very interested to hear that, because it’s not that common—though it may become more so, as both men and women postpone having kids till they are older. In general, I thought it was a boon. My Dad was kind of gallant and old-world; I liked the connection to the past he gave me, and especially to old Hollywood glamour, but in a kinder, gentler version. And because he was a worldly person with an active mind, who kept acting and doing public appearances and interviews into his 90s, he didn’t seem all that elderly, even when he was. Possibly all that memorization you have to do as an actor, especially in the theater, which he did a lot of in his later years, helped keep his mind sharp.  

Raquel: Why did you decide to write The Entertainer not as a straight biography of your dad but as a story of your dad alongside the story of the twentieth century he lived in?

Margaret: He wasn’t enough of a star to sustain a straight biography. But that was actually an advantage in doing the kind of book I wanted to do. I didn’t have to cover every movie he made—and he made some really lousy ones!—or try and be comprehensive as you would if you were writing a biography of Katharine Hepburn or Humphrey Bogart. Also, as I say in the book, he had this Zelig-like life, where he turns up in all these facets of entertainment history: from traveling carnivals and magic shows in the Midwest in the teens, to tent theater and stock companies in cities like Memphis and Dallas in the 20s, to Hollywood, pre-Code movies and the studio system in the 30s, including helping to found the Screen Actors Guild, to the dawn of family sitcoms, with Ozzie and Harriet, the Bob Cummings show, and Leave it to Beaver (actually my brother Steve was the regular on Beaver, but my Dad did guest spots.) So his life really lent itself, I thought, to providing a narrative thread for a larger history.  

Raquel: What’s your favorite of your dad’s movies?

Margaret: I’d have to say “Three on a Match,” the ultimate pre-Code potboiler in my opinion, with a great cast: Bette Davis, Joan Blondell, Ann Dvorak, Warren William, and in a memorable small role, as a really vicious young hood, Humphrey Bogart.  

Raquel: Which of your dad’s stories is your favorite?

Probably the story of his screen test, which I tell in an excerpt from the book that ran in The New Yorker (but in more detail in the book!) I’m also partial to my parents’ love story.  

Raquel: My friend Bob from the blog Allure asks, “What I found interesting about Lyle Talbot, he seemed at ease as a good guy or a bady guy. Did he have a preference?"

Good point. He genuinely liked playing both. But I think as he got older, and a lot of the good-guy parts were police chiefs and commissioners (much staring with grim intensity into the camera while gripping a desk and vowing to get the perp, as in the pretty good nuclear noir “City of Fear” from 1959), he liked the bad—or at least flawed—characters better.  

Raquel: Could you tell us a bit more about yourself?

Margaret: I live in Washington, D.C. with my husband, writer Arthur Allen, and our teenagers, Ike and Lucy, who lucky for me, have always had a taste for black-and-white movies. They started with the Marx Brothers, moved on to Hitchcock, and are now watching silent movies even I haven’t seen yet (like the 1921 Swedish horror move “The Phantom Carriage.” It’s apparently really good!) We’re also lucky to live near the AFI Silver in Silver Spring, Md., a fantastic art and revival movie theater, where we go often. (The theater is screening a Lyle Talbot series in December, starting with “Three on a Match,” and showing a number of other films you don’t get to see that often, like William Wellman’s punchy and amusing “College Coach.”)

 Staff writer, The New Yorker author, The Entertainer: Movies, Magic, and My Father's Twentieth Century (November, 2012; Riverhead)

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Thank you so much to Margaret Talbot for taking the time out to answer my questions and thank you to Lydia of Riverhead Books for arranging the interview.

Catching Up with Quelle (7)

Oh Wedding Day - Many thanks to J.P. from the blog Comet over Hollywood for sending me this lovely picture of actress Susan Peters on her wedding day with director Richard Quine. I had never seen it before!

 How well do you know my favorites? - Play my IMDB Quiz! Make sure you play the Genius version for even more fun. 

Old Favorites versus New-to-me Classics - I have been going through a difficult time lately. I feel trapped with no way out. Every time I find a glimmer of hope it seems like there is always someone that comes along to block it out. Whenever I feel blue, I can't be bothered to watch new movies. I know a lot of you watch movies by the boatload but I just can't handle that. Watching a film that is new to me can be an emotional ordeal. There is a lot to take in and to think about. When I'm feeling blue, I find that old favorites are comforting. Movies that I know well, that I know I will enjoy and that have no mystery. What kind of movies do you like to watch when you are blue?

Maybe a viewing of one of my all-time favorites Nancy Drew - Detective (1938) will cheer me up.

Warner Archive Wednesday - College Coach (1933)

College Coach (1933) is a film that combines two of my favorite themes in early films: sports and collegiate culture. Calvert College is in trouble. They just put some money into their science department and now they are on the brink of bankruptcy. They get the idea to hire Coach Gore (Pat O'Brien), a college football coach whose success in developing teams that draw crowds and win championships is well-known. The board of the college figure that a healthy and attractive football program will bring enough revenue to help the college recover from it's financial crisis.

Coach Gore hires athletes to be fake college students so they can play on the college's football team and bring the success that the college is looking for. Two of his hired players Buck Weaver (Lyle Talbot) and Phil Sargeant (Dick Powell) don't see eye to eye.

And not only that Weaver has an eye for Gore's wife (Ann Dvorak). Things become complicated as Gore continues to neglect his wife, as Weaver causes more problems and as Sargeant figures out he really wants to study chemistry and the chemistry department is dependent on the football team's success in order to continue.

I love the dilemma between academics and sports. We all know that talented athletes are highly sought after my colleges and universities. And even today there is still debate about how much a school should invest in it's academics versus it's sports. Sports definitely bring more public recognition to a school than academics (unless we are talking about Harvard or MIT or something). ESPN will not be covering students doing a particularly tough chemistry experiment but will cover their basketball game. In College Coach (1933), the college's academics is the poorer cousin to the much more handsome prospect of a robust football program. There is contention between them both with the hired players passing classes without having to do any studying.

College Coach is a fun movie with a good cast. It's not particularly collegiate. Some of the early scenes show students at games, together in dorms expressing their college spirit. The focus of this film is definitely the business behind college football and how the manipulation of Gore and his hired players causes problems for the school and for personal relationships.

Technically it's a pre-code but it's pretty tame. There is one scene in which Weaver (Lyle Talbot) hangs up a picture of a swell looking dame on a shelf much to the dismay of Sargeant. Weaver points to the picture and proclaims: "How would you like to stick your finger in..."

OH MY GOODNESS! I was so scandalized until he finished

How would you like to stick your finger in her coffee?

Phew! Also, who sticks their fingers in girls' coffees? Is this a thing? Is it to break the bubble of personal space?


Fun fact: A very young John Wayne has a bit part as a college student.

College Coach (1933) is available from the Warner Archive and at various online retailers.

Warner Archive Wednesday - On (random) Wednesdays, I review one title from the Warner Archive Collection. Movies selected are rented from Classicflix, watched on TCM or purchased from Warner Archive, Classicflix or TCM. This series is not sponsored by Warner Archive.