College Rhythm | |
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Directed by | Norman Taurog |
Screenplay by |
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Story by | George Marion, Jr. |
Produced by | Louis D. Lighton |
Starring | Jack Oakie Mary Brian Joe Penner |
Cinematography | |
Edited by | |
Music by | Tom Satterfield |
Production company | |
Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
Release date |
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Running time | 86 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $537,000 |
College Rhythm is a 1934 American musical comedy film directed by Norman Taurog and starring Jack Oakie, Mary Brian, and Joe Penner.
The film's budget was $537,000.
Cocky college football star Francis Finnegan has his eye on the attractive Gloria van Dayham, as does his rival, Larry Stacey.
Francis takes a job in a department store owned by Stacey's father, where salesgirl June Cort is attracted to him. Finnegan proposes that Stacey's store sponsor a football team, which causes rival shop owner Whimple to do the same. The team's head cheerleader Mimi falls for team mascot Joe, and everyone pairs off with the perfect partner after the big game.
Several of the film's cast had appeared in the 1933 hit musical film College Humor . [1] Dorothy Dell had been cast in the leading female role but was killed in an automobile accident on June 8, 1934. [2]
Screenwriter Francis Martin spent four weeks with Joe Penner, a vaudeville and radio star who had no previous experience acting in feature films, before the script had been written. [3] Penner also gave three performances at the Paramount Theatre in New York so that the screenwriters could witness how he performed before a live audience. [4]
Lanny Ross, who had recently signed a 70-week radio contract, continued to be heard on his Maxwell HouseShow Boat program, the nation's top-rated show, by live remote during the filming of College Rhythm. [5] [6]
Filming took place from mid-August until October 1934. [7] [8] It had originally been scheduled to begin in June 1934 but was delayed repeatedly, [9] including a two-week period just before shooting began in which the film's producers scrambled to find pretty girls with acting talent to fill two roles, which were won by Helen Mack and Mary Brian. [10]
The film's score, with seven new songs, was composed by the songwriting team of Mack Gordon and Harry Revel. [11]
The football scenes were shot at the Rose Bowl and featured the entire USC Trojans football team. [12] [13]
The College Rhythm title was originally intended for the unrelated film She Loves Me Not , but Paramount preserved the other film's original title because of the notoriety of its related novel and stage production. [14]
In a contemporary review for The New York Times , critic Frank S. Nugent called College Rhythm "a mad and generally merry concoction, unbelievable, nonsensical and designed solely for eye and ear amusement" and wrote: "[T]he plot hangs by less than a thread and the saving grace of the film is its ability to capitalize on the singing talents of Mr. Ross, the charm of Miss Roberti, the handsomeness of Misses Brian and Mack and Mr. Penner's clowning." [15]
This is a list of notable events in music that took place in the year 1933.
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Joe Penner was an American vaudeville, radio, and film comedian.
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Jack Oakie was an American actor, starring mostly in films, but also working on stage, radio and television. He portrayed Napaloni in Chaplin's The Great Dictator (1940), receiving a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
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Helen Mack was an American actress. She started her career as a child actress in silent films, moving to Broadway plays and touring one of the vaudeville circuits. Her greater success as an actress was as a leading lady in the 1930s. She made the transition to performing on radio and then into writing, directing, and producing shows during the Golden Age of Radio. She later wrote for Broadway, stage and television. Her career spanned the infancy of the motion picture industry, the beginnings of Broadway, the final days of vaudeville, the transition to sound movies, the Golden Age of Radio, and the rise of television.
The Big Broadcast of 1936 is a 1935 American comedy film directed by Norman Taurog, and is the second in the series of Big Broadcast movies. The musical comedy starred Jack Oakie, Bing Crosby, George Burns, Gracie Allen, Ethel Merman, The Nicholas Brothers, Lyda Roberti, Wendy Barrie, Mary Boland, Charlie Ruggles, Akim Tamiroff, Amos 'n' Andy, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, and Argentinian tango singer Carlos Gardel.
Lancelot Patrick Ross was an American singer, pianist and songwriter.
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College Humor is a 1933 American pre-Code musical comedy film, directed by Wesley Ruggles, and starring Bing Crosby, Jack Oakie, Richard Arlen, Mary Kornman and Mary Carlisle. Based on a story by Dean Fales, the film is about a college professor and the school's star football player who become rivals for the same beautiful student. Released by Paramount Pictures, the film co-stars George Burns and Gracie Allen.
Albert E. Lewis was a Polish-born Broadway and film producer. His family emigrated to the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York when he was a boy. He became a vaudeville comedian, then started a partnership producing one-act plays for vaudeville. Around 1930 he moved to Hollywood and worked as a film producer with Paramount, RKO, and MGM until after World War II.
New Faces of 1937 is a 1937 American musical film directed by Leigh Jason and starring Joe Penner, Milton Berle and Harriet Hilliard. Its plot is similar to The Producers (1968). Intended as the first film of an annual RKO Pictures revue series, poor reception ended plans for future productions.
She Loves Me Not is a 1934 American comedy film directed by Elliott Nugent and starring Bing Crosby and Miriam Hopkins. Based on the novel She Loves Me Not by Edward Hope and the subsequent play by Howard Lindsay, the film is about a cabaret dancer who witnesses a murder and is forced to hide from gangsters by disguising herself as a male Princeton student. Distributed by Paramount Pictures, the film has been remade twice as True to the Army (1942) and as How to Be Very, Very Popular in (1955), the latter starring Betty Grable. The film is notable for containing one of the first major performances of Bing Crosby, and it helped launch him to future stardom. This was also the last film that Miriam Hopkins made under her contract to Paramount Pictures, which began in the early 1930s upon her arrival in Hollywood. In 1935, the film received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song for "Love in Bloom", theme song of comedian Jack Benny.
This is a list of notable events in music that took place in the year 1934.
Rise and Shine is a 1941 American comedy crime film directed by Allan Dwan and starring Jack Oakie, George Murphy and Linda Darnell. It was produced and distributed by Twentieth Century Fox. It is inspired by the 1933 autobiography My Life and Hard Times by James Thurber.
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Collegiate is a 1936 American musical film directed by Ralph Murphy and written by Walter DeLeon, Francis Martin and Alice Duer Miller. The film stars Joe Penner, Jack Oakie, Ned Sparks, Frances Langford, Betty Grable and Lynne Overman. The film was released on January 22, 1936, by Paramount Pictures.
By the beginning of 1933 "Maxwell House Show Boat" was the top radio show in the country, a status it would maintain for the next two years. ...