College Swing 
                                                   
Director: Raoul Walsh
Year: 1938
Rating: 7.0
"In a world of Clark Gables, I found you", Gracie Allen sings to Edward Everett Horton in this fizzy cocktail of comedy and music. She then breaks into an Irish jig. Paramount brings back some of the same players as were in College Holiday two years previously but thankfully leave the black face and eugenics behind. Instead of Jack Benny, this time we get Bob Hope along with George Burns and Gracie Allen, Martha Ray and Ben Blue. Burns and Allen had been in College Humor for Paramount in 1933 with Bing Crosby, so perhaps this was a series of sorts. The romantic couple here are John Payne and Florence George. Payne was two years away from leading man status and for some reason George only appeared in one other films - she is gorgeous and has a strong operatic voice. Hope is credited below Burns and Allen and next to Martha Raye - that would change soon with Road to Singapore.



The beginning of the film had me wondering if I wanted to go further in. It is 1738 in a small school room with the children singing hymns and being led by Horton. Among the children though is Gracie and I knew I had landed in the right place. She has failed class for the 9th consecutive year and her grandfather who owns the school says he will set up a trust fund for the first female in the family that passes the class. Jump ahead two hundred years and Gracie is still as dimwitted as possible, now trying to pass class in a large university. This is my kind of college with everyone looking well out of their teens, Florence George singing on her balcony in a negligee, the Slate Brothers as waiters in the college malt shop (they do a great song and skit that is half Ritz Brothers and half the Three Stooges) and Betty Grable singing in the same malt shop with the band. The next year she would star in Million Dollar Legs but her song here has future star written all over it.



This is Gracie's movie - George is in it but she isn't really partnered with him. Bob Hope talks her into letting him help her pass the test. For money. By cheating. If she does, she gets the trust fund and the college. In her final exam which she has to pass, Hope gets a copy of the questions and writes the answers down on his laundry slip - Gracie ends up reading the laundry slip and coincidentally they are the right answers. So, she gets the college and makes a few changes - thinks it is unfair that only students who pass high school should get into college and brings in all new professors - Martha Raye teaching French which she doesn't know and Ben Blue girl's gym class.



Raye and Hope do a great funny duet. All the songs here were written by Frank Loesser (Guys and Dolls and How to Succeed in Business) with different composers and they are all good and lively. Written specifically for the film with amusing lyrics. Gracie is such a nitwit that the big money behind the college Horton won't believe she passed and wants her tested again on the national airwaves. He is a famous recluse who stays away romantically from women (true to his real life as a gay man) and so goes to the college and is of course seduced by Gracie. Poor George. Not much of a plot but a lot of charm and music. This is directed by Raoul Walsh.