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2.0 out of 5 stars
"You can't rumba with an old cucumbah," sings Frances Langford. She's right., February 11, 2009
This 52-minute low-budget college musical can be wincingly second rate, but it has its moments. Bear in mind that the height of its wit is the name of the two colleges: The all-girl Mar Brynn and the all-boy Quinceton.
When Mar Brynn president Matilda Collinge becomes worried over declining enrollment, the dean of Mar Brynn, Hap Holden (Harry Langdon), cooks up a scheme to rejuvenate the place. Mar Brynn will offer twelve scholarships in a contest for the loveliest of the lovely, with plenty of publicity. To make sure, there'll be a big notice that the men of Quinceton's Zeta fraternity cannot apply. Huh? Seems the Zetas are famous for their all-male reviews, with the guys dressed to the nines as girls, singing, dancing and fooling around. You can guess what happens. The Zeta's send their president and star lovely, Bob Sheppard (Johnny Downs), to apply for a scholarship as the ravishing Bobbie DeWolfe...and he makes it! For the rest of the movie Downs spends most of his time in drag. He doesn't look bad in a blond wig...a little like Jack Lemmon's Daphne.
Wouldn't you know it: Not only does Bob fall for co-ed Virginia Collinge (Frances Langford), Matilda's niece, but there is a big show to put on that will spotlight all the lovelies, including Bob as Bobbie. Yes, there will be mix-ups, confusion, endless drag jokes, songs and smirks. It's all innocent and bland, and some of the movie, in fact, is sort of nostalgic.
There's Harry Langdon, for instance, one of the greatest of the silent era comedians. Langdon didn't transfer well to sound. His ego didn't help, either. At 57, he still has that slim body and innocent baby face that, here, doesn't camouflage Hap Holden's more than academic interest in the girls. Langdon still is amusing in his mannerisms. Just as with Buster Keaton, you can look at his face and instantly remember his great years and his sad decline. Frances Langford doesn't bring much to the movie but her voice. For some, that might be enough. She was one of the great singers of the Forties with a creamy sound uniquely hers. She might look like a young co-ed but she doesn't sound like one. In 1946 she and Don Ameche teamed up on radio as John and Blanche Bickerson, a battling couple as stinging as they were funny. Says Blanche, "You used to be so considerate. Since you got married to me you haven't got any sympathy at all." "I have, too," says John, "I've got everybody's sympathy." Says Blanche, "Believe me, there's better fish in the ocean than the one I caught." Says John, "There's better bait, too." She and Ameche are just superb. There's lots of the Bickersons at Amazon, including
The Bickersons Volume One.
Not so good are the four songs. Three are aggressively, generically, cheerful, although one of them, "Up at the Crack of Dawn," gets a first-rate, swinging treatment from a trio called The Tanner Sisters. The big production number involves lots of skimpy fruit and vegetable costumes. Langford is stuck with the only ballad, a thing sung among the carefully posed co-eds on Mar Brynn's campus lawn. The music's not bad, with a kind of tango-ish quality, but those words...
Out of the silence come and cling to me
Out of the silence come and bring to me
That feeling of contentment when you're near
And that feeling of resentment will disappear
When out of the silence comes the sound of your voice
My heart goes leaping; I can't help but rejoice
I'm up in heaven from the bottom of the sea
When out of the silence you come to me
By the end of the movie Bob stops wearing his dress and puts aside his blond wig. He and Virginia embrace. All-American Co-ed is in the public domain. My version looks fairly clean. You might enjoy it better if you don't pay more than four or five dollars for it.
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3.0 out of 5 stars
A fellow gives cross-dressing the old college try, April 2, 2004
This review is from: All American Co-ed [VHS] (VHS Tape)
As far back as 1941, someone pondered the seemingly unlimited potential of motion pictures and decided that the world really needed to see men in drag. I'm not sure I'm comfortable with that, but All American Co-ed actually succeeds quite well as an entertaining diversion. Lest you see the name of Alan Hale, Jr. (better known as the Skipper from Gilligan's Island) in the cast list and panic, let me assure you that his small role is not a cross-dressing one; he's basically just a cotton-seed character. Bob Sheppard (Johnny Downs), though, spends a Flip Wilson-ish amount of time in dresses, however, for he (uh, she) is the point man (uh, woman) in a plot pitting two schools against one another. Mar Brynn is a girl's school famous for its traditionalist (meaning anti-male) foundation; unfortunately, it's not exactly prospering. To engineer some positive publicity, twelve scholarships are given out to girls brandishing special credentials. Nearby, at the all-boy Quinceton school, the Zeta fraternity brothers get their kicks by dressing up and performing as women. For reasons beyond my comprehension, Mar Brynn uses a reference to the Zeta drag queens as a publicity stunt, leaving the boys yearning for revenge. What better revenge could there by than passing one of their own off as a young lady and securing a scholarship to the all-girl school?
Naturally, you have a lot of jokes built around Bob trying to keep "Bobbie's" secret long enough to embarrass Mar Brynn at the appropriate time. Love ends up changing everyone's plans, but I probably don't need to even tell you that. It's all rather predictable, but the movie's assortment of musical numbers, tried-and-true comedy bits, and relatively short running time (clocking in at just over 48 minutes) allows All American Co-ed to succeed as a musical comedy that doesn't have time to grow old and annoying.
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