Max Davidson (1875-1950) was a German-born actor who found regular work in Hollywood as comedic Jews, including a rare lead role in Pleasure Before Business (1927).
Davidson has a bit in So This Is College as Moe Levine, the bemused tailor at the other end of Eddie’s fake call to a girl. He also made uncredited appearances in The Cat and the Fiddle and Rosalie.
Pauline Theresa Moran (1893-1952) was a seasoned vaudeville performer when she became a Mack Sennett Bathing Beauty in 1914. After years of slapstick with Sennett she signed with MGM and was teamed with Marie Dressler for the first time in 1927, a partnership that lasted nine pictures in total.
Moran appeared alongside Dressler in two numbers in The Hollywood Revue of 1929. She was the fraternity cook in So This Is College, then sparring again with Dressler in Chasing Rainbows. Her final musical for Metro was Hollywood Party, as Henrietta Clemp, wife of the multi-est millionaire in Oklahoma.
Anna McKim (1911-79) made her name as an actor of great talent in Scarface (1932) and flourished for a time at Warner Bros. But only a couple of years earlier she had been a regular member of the chorus line in no fewer than eleven of Metro’s early musicals. She is prominent in all her appearances, largely owing to her unique beauty and a screen presence that would be fully revealed by Howard Hawks.
Dvorak is cited by some sources as assistant choreographer to Sammy Lee, who certainly was the dance director on most of her MGM appearances. This would certainly explain her prominence.
Dvorak starts off big in The Hollywood Revue of 1929 in a two-shot with Jack Benny. She gets to speak two words (“Pardon me”) and slap Benny in the face. After playing a student in So This Is College, she was back in the chorus line in It’s a Great Life, supporting the Duncan Sisters.
After that, Dvorak was in Devil-May-Care, Chasing Rainbows, Lord Byron of Broadway, Free and Easy and Children of Pleasure. She was another student in Good News, another chorus girl in Love in the Rough and, finally, a party-goer in the zeppelin in Madam Satan.
Dvorak also worked on The March of Time before it was abandoned.
Sarah Kathryn Sturm (1909-1996) was only a teenager when she appeared on Broadway in George White’s Scandals of 1924. After signing with MGM she became Sally Starr, which has led some sources to attribute her with films of the 1910s made by an actor with the same name.
So This Is College was Starr’s only musical for the studio and, obscure though it is, is her best-known film. She retired from acting in 1938.
The mature roles undertaken by Robert Montgomery (real name Henry) (1904-1981) include the killer Danny in Night Must Fall (1937), a naval commander in They Were Expendable (1945) and Philip Marlowe in The Lady in the Lake (1947). It is easy to forget that he started out playing a jock named Biff in So This is College and predominantly worked in light comedies.
By no means a gifted singer, Montgomery still performed in three early MGM musicals. As well as So This Is College, he made Free and Easy and Love in the Rough in quick succession, then called it a day with musicals, apart from archive footage of him at a premiere in Going Hollywood.
Later in life Montgomery asserted that So This Is College had shown him that making a picture is a “great co-operative project”. This is arguably more true of musicals than any other type of film.
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 |
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….
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.
