Elliott Nugent (1896-1980) was a playwright and stage actor who performed for a few years in Hollywood before taking on a new role as director. In this capacity, his best known films are probably the Bob Hope vehicles The Cat and the Canary (1940) and My Favorite Brunette (1947). In the fifties he directed the original Broadway production of The Seven Year Itch. So This Is College was Nugent’s only musical.
Songs
| College Days | Martin Broones, Al Boasberg | Cliff Edwards |
| Until the End | Martin Broones, Al Boasberg, Fred Fisher | Chorus |
| I Don’t Want Your Kisses If I Can’t Have Your Love | Fred Fisher, Martin Broones | Robert Montgomery; Elliott Nugent |
| Campus Capers | Charlotte Greenwood, Martin Broones | Sally Starr, Cliff Edwards |
| Sophomore Prom | Ray Klages, Jesse Greer | Cliff Edwards |
| The Farmer in the Dell | Traditional | Robert Montgomery, Elliott Nugent |
Principal Crew
| Sam Wood | Director |
| Al Boasberg | Screenplay & Dialogue |
| Delmer Daves | Screenplay |
| Joseph Farnham | Dialogue |
| Sam Wood | Producer |
| Leonard Smith | Cinematographer |
| Frank Sullivan | Editor |
| Leslie F Wilder | Editor (uncredited) |
| Cedric Gibbons | Art Director |
| Douglas Shearer | Sound |
| Henrietta Frazer | Costumes |
| Martin Broones | Composer |
| Al Boasberg | Lyricist |
| Fred Fisher | Composer |
| Charlotte Greenwood | Lyricist |
| Ray Klages | Composer |
| Jesse Greer | Lyricist |
| Arthur Lange | Arranger |
Cast
| Elliott Nugent | Eddie |
| Robert Montgomery | Biff |
| Cliff Edwards | Windy |
| Sally Starr | Babs Baxter |
| Phyllis Crane | Betty Jackson |
| Dorothy Dehn | Jane |
| Max Davidson | Moe |
| Ann Brody | Momma – Moe’s Wife |
| Oscar Rudolph | Freshie |
| Gene Stone | Stupid – Gawky Freshman |
| Polly Moran | Polly – Fraternity Cook |
| Lee Shumway | Coach |
| Ernie Alexander | Student (uncredited) |
| Ward Bond | USC Player – #30 (uncredited) |
| Richard Carle | Entomology Professor (uncredited) |
| Ray Cooke | Student (uncredited) |
| Delmer Daves | USC Player (uncredited) |
| Ann Dvorak | Sorority Sister (uncredited) |
| Joel McCrea | Bruce Nolan (uncredited) |
| Grady Sutton | Football Spectator (uncredited) |
| USC Trojan Marching Band | Trojan Marching Band (uncredited) |
| Sam Wood | Football Game Commentator (uncredited) |
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.
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.
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….
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 |
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.
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.
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.
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’.
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 |
