Category: Films

So This Is College

Synopsis

It is registration day at the University of Southern California and best friends Biff and Eddie are reunited after the vacation. Both have many girlfriends, but they agree to “cut out the women” until the football season is over.

Biff (Robert Montgomery) and Eddie (Elliott Nugent) getting ready to “cut out women”

Immediately afterwards, they each meet Babs Baxter, a new co-ed. Eddie says he will see her at 8, but Babs’s preference is for Biff, with whom she makes a date.

Back at their fraternity house [College Days], Eddie and Biff both announce that they have met a new girl. At dinner, Biff is offended by Eddie’s intention of sharing his new girl, even though that is what they always do [Until the End].

That evening, at Babs’s sorority house [I Don’t Want Your Kisses If I Can’t Have Your Love], Eddie and Biff discover they are interested in the same girl. A number of other young men turn up and Babs asks the other girls in the house to help her out, stipulating that Biff is hers [Campus Capers].

Eddie and Biff continue to argue over Babs during an entomology field trip. Babs tricks Eddie into leaving them, then tricks Biff into giving her his fraternity pin.

Babs (Sally Starr) about to get her hands on Biff’s fraternity pin

The boys race caterpillars to decide who will accompany Babs to the Glee Club Hop. Biff wins, though by cheating. On the night of the Hop, Biff sends Eddie’s dress trousers to the cleaners so he won’t be able to go. [Sophomore Prom]. Eddie gets there by stealing a freshman’s trousers, then inserts his name into Babs’s dance card.

Biff comes close to telling Babs he loves her. Eddie and Biff continue to compete for Babs during a tag dance [The Farmer in the Dell].

Back at their room, Biff tells Eddie that he is serious about Babs and plans to ask her to marry him after college. Eddie agrees to back off, but then realises that he also loves Babs.

Some time later, Babs gets Eddie to go for a drive and asks why he has been avoiding her. Eddie kisses her and she kisses him back. Biff sees Eddie and Babs arriving back very late and kissing. Eddie wants to tell Biff what has happened, but Biff pretends to be asleep.

The following evening, on the eve of the Big Game, Eddie gives Babs his fraternity pin and Biff punches him. Babs attends the game with Bruce Nolan, and is wearing an engagement ring. When the game starts, Eddie and Biff both play badly and USC is trailing at half-time. The coach threatens to substitute them if they do not improve.

Eddie and Biff overhear Babs telling Bruce that they both mean nothing to her. Back on the field, their play improves and USC gains ground, but Eddie is injured. Biff wins the game with a kick in the dying seconds of the game. Later, Eddie and Biff promise never to let a girl come between them again–and then they see a beautiful girl….

February 1, 2026

The Hollywood Revue of 1929

Principal Crew

Charles Reisner	Director
Christy Cabanne	Director (uncredited)
Norman Houston	Director (uncredited)
Al Boasberg	Dialogue
Robert Hopkins	Dialogue
Joseph Farnham	Skit writer (uncredited)
Harry Rapf	Producer (uncredited)
Irving Thalberg	Producer (uncredited)
John Arnold	Cinematographer
Max Fabian	Cinematographer
Irving G Ries	Cinematographer
John M Nickolaus	Cinematographer (uncredited)
William Gray	Editor
Erté	Art Director
David Cox	Costumes
Erté	Costumes (uncredited)
Henrietta Frazer	Costumes (uncredited)
Joe Rapf	Costumes (uncredited)
Richard Day	Settings
Cedric Gibbons	Settings
Douglas Shearer	Sound
Arthur Freed	Lyricist
Nacio Herb Brown	Composer
Ray Klages	Composer
Jesse Greer	Lyricist
Martin Broones	Composer
Andy Rice	Lyricist
Louis Alter	Composer
Jo Trent	Lyricist
Fred Fisher	Songwriter
Gus Edwards	Composer
Joe Goodwin	Lyricist
Arthur Lange	Arranger
Ray Heindorf	Arranger
Ernest Klapholz	Arranger
Sammy Lee	Dances and ensembles
Joyce Murray	Speciality dancer

February 1, 2026

Sammy Lee

Sammy Lee (1890-1968), born Samuel Levy, was the first in a line of important choreographers at MGM, though he arguably achieved greater success on Broadway and at Twentieth Century-Fox.

Lee is uncredited on The Broadway Melody, which he might have been quite happy about, given the rudimentary nature of the dance numbers. He had worked on Ziegfeld’s Follies in 1927, but this is not reflected in the style of the fictional Zanfield’s show. Lee and director Harry Beaumont could not, in this first-ever film musical, determine how to make a stage performance cinematic. Nor were the chorines of the quality Lee would have been used to on Broadway.

Lee’s first onscreen credit was for ‘Dances and Ensemble’ in The Hollywood Revue of 1929, where he did his best with non-professional dancers Joan Crawford and Marion Davies. He also essayed a pre-Berkeley overhead shot of the chorus.

Lee went on to stage dances for It’s a Great Life, Chasing Rainbows, Lord Byron of Broadway, They Learned About Women, Free and Easy, Children of Pleasure, Good News, Love in the Rough (which includes an al fresco number performed at a real golf club), A Lady’s Morals, Broadway to Hollywood and Dancing Lady.

A move to Twentieth Century-Fox earned Lee Academy Award nominations for King of Burlesque (1936) and Ali Baba Goes to Town (1937). He was back at Metro for Honolulu, Hullabaloo, Cairo, Born to Sing, Meet the People and Two Girls and a Sailor.

Lee had a parallel career as the director of a series of undistinguished shorts.

January 31, 2026
Marianne (1929)

William Randolph Hearst’s Cosmopolitan Pictures was essentially a vanity project for the production of films starring Marion Davies. That films like Marianne are far more than vanity projects is largely owing to Davies’s talents as a comic performer.

Marianne is a sound remake of a silent film, also starring Davies, that had been made only a few months earlier. Apart from her brief appearance in The Hollywood Revue of 1929 , it was Davies’s talking debut and, whatever the merits of the film, it is a small triumph for her personally. She overcame the stammer which had made her fearful of speaking on screen. More than that, she uses a French accent, sings, and shares screen time with a pig. She even demonstrates her skills as a mimic, impersonating Maurice Chevalier and Sarah Bernhardt.

“Every little breeze seems to whisper Louise” Marianne (Marion Davies) does Maurice Chevalier

The film itself is overlong at approaching two hours, but technically more proficient than many contemporaneous talkies. It is also the first Metro musical to combine a non-backstage setting with a bespoke songlist. (Hallelujah was intended by King Vidor to include only traditional songs and its two Irving Berlin numbers were included against his wishes.) Three songwriting partnerships contributed these songs: Ahlert and Turk (four numbers), Klages and Greer (two), and Freed and Brown (one).

Marianne is not an integrated musical in the sophisticated sense of the Freed unit’s output in the 1950s, but its musical numbers do arise naturally from the action. The title song, ‘Marianne,’ is performed three times. André sings it in French and the words specifically relate to his departure and his wish that Marianne remain faithful to him. Later, the words are spoken in English by Marianne herself, to explain why she cannot go with Stagg. Finally, Stagg sings to Marianne, saying “The words could be mine as well as his, couldn’t they?”. This is a sophisticated use of a song to develop the story.

Similarly, ‘Just You, Just Me’ has lyrics appropriate to Stagg’s final attempt to persuade Marianne to go with him. He sings the love song to her alone, but while surrounded by dancing couples singing a completely different song. Again, director Robert Z Leonard is employing a sophisticated technique for the period, utilizing sound rather than simply recording it and incorporating a song to move the story forward.

Stagg (Lawrence Gray) sings ‘Just You, Just Me’ to Marianne

Elsewhere, Cliff Edwards and Benny Rubin make the first of their many appearances as vocal and comic support to a musical’s star players. Edwards subsequently had a chart hit with a recording of ‘Just You, Just Me’.

January 30, 2026

Marianne

Songs

Songs	Songwriters	Performers
Marianne	Fred E Ahlert, Roy Turk	George Baxter; Marion Davies; Lawrence Gray
When I See My Sugar	Fred E Ahlert, Roy Turk	Cliff Edwards
Blondy	Arthur Freed, Nacio Herb Brown	Lawrence Gray
Just You, Just Me	Ray Klages, Jesse Greer	Lawrence Gray; Marion Davies; Cliff Edwards
Hang On to Me	Ray Klages, Jesse Greer	Cliff Edwards
Oo-La-La-La-La	Fred E Ahlert, Roy Turk	Marion Davies
The Girl from Noochateau	Fred E Ahlert, Roy Turk	Benny Rubin
Louise	Fred E Ahlert, Roy Turk	Marion Davies

January 29, 2026

Charles Maxwell

Karl Max Schneefuss (1892-1962), who worked under the name Charles Maxwell, started his career at MGM as assistant to William Axt, compositing additional music for Marianne.

Most of Maxwell’s career in musicals was spent as an orchestrator, in which capacity he worked on The Cuban Love Song, Dancing Lady,The Cat and the Fiddle,The Merry Widow, Naughty Marietta, Here Comes the Band , A Night at the Opera, Rose-Marie,The Great Ziegfeld, San Francisco, The Firefly and New Moon.

January 29, 2026
William Axt

William Axt (1888-1959) was a composer and conductor who joined the MGM music department in 1929 and went on to write hundreds of scores. He composed for a number of musicals, mostly early in his career: Marianne, It’s a Great Life, Devil-May-Care, Chasing Rainbows,The Rogue Song, Free and Easy, Call of the Flesh, Madam Satan, Hollywood Party, The Great Ziegfeld, Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry, Everybody Sing and Listen, Darling.

Axi’s work was also taken off the shelf for use as stock music in New Moon, Student Tour, Balalaika and Little Nellie Kelly .

January 29, 2026
Adrian

The costumes he designed for The Wizard of Oz, which included the iconic ruby slippers_, were unquestionably the high point of the career of Adrian Adolph Greenburg (1903-59), known simply as Adrian. But his designs were included in hundreds of MGM features, mostly between 1928 and 1941, including 34 other musicals. These included eleven Jeanette MacDonald pictures: The Cat and the Fiddle, The Merry Widow, Naughty Marietta, Rose-Marie, San Francisco, Maytime, The Firefly, The Girl of the Golden West, Sweethearts, New Moon and Bitter Sweet.

Adrian was very active during 1929-31, designing for Marianne, Devil-May-Care,The Rogue Song, Montana Moon, In Gay Madrid, Madam Satan, New Moon andThe Cuban Love Song.

Dancing Lady reunited Adrian with Joan Crawford a year after the white mousseline de soie dress he created for her in Letty Linton (1932) was copied commercially and sold over 500,000 units.

Going Hollywood, Hollywood Party, Reckless, Broadway Melody of 1936, The Great Ziegfeld, Born to Dance, Broadway Melody of 1938, The Great Waltz and Honolulu led up to the triumph ofThe Wizard of Oz. Adrian then worked on Balalaika, Broadway Melody of 1940, Ziegfeld Girl andThe Chocolate Soldier before leaving MGM in 1941 to open his own fashion business.

He continued to freelance for a variety of studios and returned to Metro for a final musical, the aptly-named Lovely to Look At.

January 29, 2026
Jesse Greer

Jesse Greer (1896-1970) published over 100 songs, but perhaps only ‘Just You, Just Me,’ written with Ray Klages for Marianne, and reprised years later in This Could Be the Night, has become a standard.

Greer and Klages also wrote a number featured in So This is College.

January 27, 2026
Ray Klages

Raymond Klages (1888-1947) and his composer-partner Jesse Greer are perhaps the least-known of the three songwriting partnerships that contributed to Marianne, but it is their song ‘Just You, Just Me’ that went on to become a jazz standard that has been recorded by dozens of artists. It was used again by Metro almost thirty years later in This Could Be the Night.

Klages and Greer’s only other work for the studio was a song in So This is College.

January 27, 2026