I stumbled into Pigskin Parade this morning because my cold kept me from sleeping. Was I surprised at how much I enjoyed this screwball football musical-comedy. We begin with a conference of the directors at Yale University, where they are deep in a serious debate
and then we learn it's about who to invite to play football in a big charity game in November. Fearing Michigan is too tough, (and here I wished they had said, "How about Ohio State?") they settle for the University of Texas.
Only the idiot assistant cannot differentiate between the famous school in Austin, and Texas State University in Prairie in his directory, so they invite a weak team no one has ever heard of to their big game. That the dummy that made the mistake works for Yale really starts the comedy in this film.
It happens that TSU has just hired a new football coach from Flushing, New York (we learn he was coaching high school there). Winston "Slug" Winters is played by Jack Haley. He and his wife Bessie, played by Patsy Kelly are really the stars of this more than anyone else. Some of the best scenes feature this pair.
The new coach has barely settled in when the invite from Yale comes. They excitedly accept and now need to build a winning team. Bessie finds out that while they haven't won a football game in years, they have a terrific basketball team, with four members of that group also on the football team. She gets Slug to realize that they can do well with basketball-like passes (laterals) among those four. Led by the athletic-looking passer Biff Bentley, the team begins the season rolling over everyone they play.
Mixing in all through the plot are songs at every pep rally, and at dances after every game. We see little game action, mostly read newspaper headlines. The Yacht Club Boys are featured. I thought the quartet interesting in that two of them wore neckties and two bows ties all the time. Their songs were humorous, particularly the one about how they are so proud to still be in college, now sophomores, just 14 years after they started college.
Magnum, P.I. fans will likely recognize Icepick (Elisha Cook, Jr.) who checks in at a fraternity early in the film. Many scenes later, we learn that he hasn't registered for classes. He is a socialist, busy working on distributing his propaganda material.
About halfway through the season Bessie takes away some gin from students right before that week's big dance. Unfortunately, she winds up drinking it. Unfortunately for TSU, she encounters Biff and tries to show him how to be tougher at stopping a blocker/ball carrier. She knocks him into the wall, breaking his leg.
Now they need to find a replacement. Bessie takes two students with her, one of them Betty Grable, to track down some hotshot passer in Arkansas. That doesn't pan out, but they stumble onto a kid (Stuart Erwin) in a melon field who can fling watermelons long distances with great accuracy—putting them into a large net held by his sister, Sairy, played by Judy Garland. They whisk the two of them off to good ol' Texas State, eager to show the coach his new passer.
What they hadn't considered was that the passer, Amos Dodd, doesn't have the qualifications for enrollment at the school. Here's where the little socialist comes in. The students trick him into breaking a large window in the bank, so he will get put in jail for 60 days. Amos assumes his role, and spends his days in school as Herbert Van Dyke.
Things go well for a while, with plenty more songs, but another problems crops up that leads to Bessie getting a chance to pretend to be jealous of her husband making love (1930s-meaning) to a coed where she clubs him wife a shotgun butt, to again save the day for the team.
Finally everyone boards the train for the big trip to Connecticut. Amid the football scenes, there are some humorous things like the way the crowd seems whipped in a frenzy on every scene, even a second-down punt. Virtually all the Texas State fans are wearing large white cowboy hats. We got lots of quick reaction shots of fans in a large bank of stands. I wonder if it was the same bank of fans, just wearing Eastern hats for the shots of Yale fans and cowboy hats for the Texas State fans.
It's a defensive struggle, with TSU holding a 6-0 lead most of the game, before Yale scores and converts for a 7-6 lead. Most of the game is played in a howling snowstorm. At halftime, the TSU band comes over to the Yale side to perform a special song they planned. Here the Yacht Club Boys are reluctant, but proceed with "The Football Song/Texas Sunshine" where they sing about how they brought the Texas sunshine with them, that without it, they wouldn't have a chance to win, etc., that makes for a comical song.
During the second half, Bessie keeps having the usher hand notes to her husband, who mostly ignores them. Late in the game, she winds up on the bench beside him. The bench is more like a baseball dugout, and right after Bessie says, "We don't have a chance," Winston stands up and bangs his head on the roof, knocking himself out. She immediately declares, "Now we do have a chance." I can't be spoiling anything by revealing that she sends in the next play and TSU scores right before the final gun to win the game.
Loaded with fun songs and funny lines, I found this a most enjoyable film. Funnier than most musicals, to me, the songs were more fitting than you often find.
Only the idiot assistant cannot differentiate between the famous school in Austin, and Texas State University in Prairie in his directory, so they invite a weak team no one has ever heard of to their big game. That the dummy that made the mistake works for Yale really starts the comedy in this film.
It happens that TSU has just hired a new football coach from Flushing, New York (we learn he was coaching high school there). Winston "Slug" Winters is played by Jack Haley. He and his wife Bessie, played by Patsy Kelly are really the stars of this more than anyone else. Some of the best scenes feature this pair.
The new coach has barely settled in when the invite from Yale comes. They excitedly accept and now need to build a winning team. Bessie finds out that while they haven't won a football game in years, they have a terrific basketball team, with four members of that group also on the football team. She gets Slug to realize that they can do well with basketball-like passes (laterals) among those four. Led by the athletic-looking passer Biff Bentley, the team begins the season rolling over everyone they play.
Mixing in all through the plot are songs at every pep rally, and at dances after every game. We see little game action, mostly read newspaper headlines. The Yacht Club Boys are featured. I thought the quartet interesting in that two of them wore neckties and two bows ties all the time. Their songs were humorous, particularly the one about how they are so proud to still be in college, now sophomores, just 14 years after they started college.
Magnum, P.I. fans will likely recognize Icepick (Elisha Cook, Jr.) who checks in at a fraternity early in the film. Many scenes later, we learn that he hasn't registered for classes. He is a socialist, busy working on distributing his propaganda material.
About halfway through the season Bessie takes away some gin from students right before that week's big dance. Unfortunately, she winds up drinking it. Unfortunately for TSU, she encounters Biff and tries to show him how to be tougher at stopping a blocker/ball carrier. She knocks him into the wall, breaking his leg.
Now they need to find a replacement. Bessie takes two students with her, one of them Betty Grable, to track down some hotshot passer in Arkansas. That doesn't pan out, but they stumble onto a kid (Stuart Erwin) in a melon field who can fling watermelons long distances with great accuracy—putting them into a large net held by his sister, Sairy, played by Judy Garland. They whisk the two of them off to good ol' Texas State, eager to show the coach his new passer.
What they hadn't considered was that the passer, Amos Dodd, doesn't have the qualifications for enrollment at the school. Here's where the little socialist comes in. The students trick him into breaking a large window in the bank, so he will get put in jail for 60 days. Amos assumes his role, and spends his days in school as Herbert Van Dyke.
Things go well for a while, with plenty more songs, but another problems crops up that leads to Bessie getting a chance to pretend to be jealous of her husband making love (1930s-meaning) to a coed where she clubs him wife a shotgun butt, to again save the day for the team.
Finally everyone boards the train for the big trip to Connecticut. Amid the football scenes, there are some humorous things like the way the crowd seems whipped in a frenzy on every scene, even a second-down punt. Virtually all the Texas State fans are wearing large white cowboy hats. We got lots of quick reaction shots of fans in a large bank of stands. I wonder if it was the same bank of fans, just wearing Eastern hats for the shots of Yale fans and cowboy hats for the Texas State fans.
It's a defensive struggle, with TSU holding a 6-0 lead most of the game, before Yale scores and converts for a 7-6 lead. Most of the game is played in a howling snowstorm. At halftime, the TSU band comes over to the Yale side to perform a special song they planned. Here the Yacht Club Boys are reluctant, but proceed with "The Football Song/Texas Sunshine" where they sing about how they brought the Texas sunshine with them, that without it, they wouldn't have a chance to win, etc., that makes for a comical song.
During the second half, Bessie keeps having the usher hand notes to her husband, who mostly ignores them. Late in the game, she winds up on the bench beside him. The bench is more like a baseball dugout, and right after Bessie says, "We don't have a chance," Winston stands up and bangs his head on the roof, knocking himself out. She immediately declares, "Now we do have a chance." I can't be spoiling anything by revealing that she sends in the next play and TSU scores right before the final gun to win the game.
Loaded with fun songs and funny lines, I found this a most enjoyable film. Funnier than most musicals, to me, the songs were more fitting than you often find.