Pigskin Parade (1936)

That was an excellent one.

So much average

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

In Pigskin Parade, a misunderstanding leads to a pretty funny comedy of errors. College bigwigs intend to invite a strong football team to the championships, but instead they invite the team of another college with a very similar name. That team is terrible, so they send out for a new coach-who's also terrible!Jack Haley stars as the poor excuse of a coach, with Patsy Kelley by his side as his wise-cracking wife. If you liked Jack in Poor Little Rich Girl, you'll be cracking up just as much as I was at his similar rapport with Patsy in this musical comedy. He's so endearing when he's an idiot, isn't he? Patsy is hilarious with her no-nonsense, common sense solutions, and underneath it all, you can tell she's still crazy about her goofball husband.Stuart Erwin, a veteran actor by the time 1936 rolled around, was nominated for an Oscar for his aw-shucks hick-turned-football-star role. It's almost funny when you see this movie to think that this was the one that won him ecognition from the Academy, when he did much more acting in 1933's Hold Your Man. Other soon-to-be stars joined the cast, including Betty Grable, Tony Martin, and Judy Garland in her very first film. If you decide to rent this, just be prepared for a very low-budget comedy, with lots of random songs interspersed to stretch out the story.

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.

No, not Oscar nominee Stuart Erwin (who must have impressed someone in the Academy for his ability of tossing watermelons across a field), but his on-screen sister, Judy Garland, who catches them in a net without falling into the mud. She sings three songs, and intercepts the audience's affection from the rest of the cast.Not that the rest of the cast isn't a dream. Long before a Kansas Tornado took Garland off to the land of Oz where she met Tin Man Jack Haley, he was the big city football coach assigned to Texas University by mistake, not the University of Texas. This corn-pone town could fit onto any university campus, and that makes his comically nagging wife Patsy Kelly want to head back to New York on the latest train. This film is all about the big game, ridiculously teaming them against Yale.This was an inauspicious debut for Garland in a full-length feature, not flatteringly photographed, but the magic in her presence transcends the awkwardness of the 12 year old initially seen in pigtails, bringing her big voice into the production number of "The Balboa" , "The Texas Tornado" and "It's Love I'm After". Something in her eyes and smile indicates that one day, she will be one of the biggest stars in the world. Another future legend, Betty Grable, also appears, although fellow co-eds Arlene Judge and Dixie Dunbar get more footage and storyline.The Yacht Club Boys get several rousing songs of mixed memorability, and Tony (billed her as "Anthony") Martin displays his fine young baritone. But when you've got the future Dorothy and Tin Man together three years before that legendary film, funny lady Patsy Kelly (swinging on the rings while tipsy, singing "The Man on the Flying Trapeze") and sexy Betty (even in what is basically a specialty), that's where the attention will lie and the memories will be sustained.

PIGSKIN PARADE (20th Century-Fox, 1936), directed by David Butler, the studio's answer to the wide range of college musicals made popular in the 1930s, contains its own assortment of comedy, songs and a football game finale (hense the title) all told in 93 minutes. With a credit list of staff and actors listed on a rolling football, Stuart Erwin, who appears late into the story, heads the cast, though the real leads are Patsy Kelly and Jack Haley in that order. By today's standards, its sole interest is on future musical film stars in smaller roles: Betty Grable (in 20th-Fox debut) and Judy Garland (on loan from MGM), resulting to one of the most musical college movies up of that time. The slight plot begins in a conference room where a deliberation meeting at Yale University as the board of directors select for its charity game the football team from the University of Texas to play against them in New Haven, Connecticut. A clerical error between Freddie (George Offerman Jr.) and Sparks (Eddie Nugent) has them getting the team from Texas State University in Prairie, Texas, instead. Winston "Slug" Winters (Jack Haley), a coach from Flushing, Long Island, arrives by train with his wife, Bessie (Patsy Kelly) to his new assignment in shaping up the team. "Biff" Bentley (Fred Kohler Jr.), the football captain chosen to lead the team to victory, meets with an accident of a fractured leg, forcing Winters to find an immediate replacement. Hoping to acquire Stanley Russell, Bessie, accompanied by fellow students, Chip Carson (Johnny Downs) and his girl, Laura Watson (Betty Grable), encounter Sairy Dodd (Judy Garland) whose older brother, Amos (Stuart Erwin) is seen tossing melons long distances into a basket. Impressed by his accurate throw, Amos is chosen as Bentley's substitute, acquiring a college scholarship for both he and his sister in the process. All goes well until the unexpected occurs.Taking amiable support for Arline Judge playing Sally Saxon, the college vamp; Elisha Cook Jr. as Herbert Terwillinger Van Dyke, the wimpy socialist; Dixie Dugan (Ginger Jones); Grady Sutton, and Sam Hayes playing himself as the radio announcer of the football game. Look quickly for future leading man, Alan Ladd, in a minor bit as one of the students. Along with Patsy Kelly's antics and sarcasms, and Jack Haley's bit of confusion, there's time for songs, lots of them. Composed by Sidney Mitchell and Lew Pollack, song interludes include: "T.S.U. Alma Mater" (sung by students); "You're Slightly Terrific" (Sung by Anthony "Tony" Martin, danced by Dixie Dunbar); "Woo-Woo" (written/performed by The Yacht Club Boys); "T.S.U. Alma Mater" (reprise); "We'd Rather Be in College" and "Down With Everything" (The Yacht Club Boys); "Balboa" (sung by Dixie Dunbar, cast members/Judy Garland); "You Do the Darndest Things" (sung by Jack Haley); "The Texas Tornado" and "It's Love I'm After" (both sung by Garland); "The Football Song/Texas Sunshine" (written and performed by The Yacht Club Boys) and "The Texas Tornado" (sung by cast). Although all the musical interludes are delivered in a very entertaining manner, the true musical highlight is unquestionably 14-year-old Judy Garland's rendition of three lively songs, much of them forgotten. Garland's scenes are limited but makes the most of it with her singing ability and transformation from barefoot hillbilly gal in pig-tales to talented singing teenager. The Yacht Club Boys as 14 year career students, are an interesting foursome of comic strip-type faced characters. They perform their specialty numbers well, never missing a beat. Interestingly, Betty Grable, singer and dancer in her own right, doesn't get a solo number to herself. As for Stuart Erwin has the distinction of being the only actor to head the cast and earn an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance. If anyone deserves an acting honor in the supporting category is Patsy Kelly, who, in true form, is very funny as the assertive wife who calls the plays for her husband. Television revivals for PIGSKIN PARADE have been few and far between over the years. In 1996, American Movie Classics selected PIGSKIN PARADE as part its annual film preservation series. Availability on home video came about that same time. The names of Grable or Garland, mostly Garland, are the reasons why this routinely done musical has been kept from oblivion.Clam shell video boxes with Garland's face on the cover might have made this an easy sell, but disappointment for those expecting her to be the lead. Later placed on DVD with Garland, Erwin, Kelly and Haley on the cover, Fox Movie Channel along with Turner Classic Movies (TCM premiere: January 7, 2011, as part of its Betty Grable tribute) have also taken part of cable television revivals. As silly as it appears, PIGSKIN PARADE is the kind of college musical made watchable for Depession era audiences, a sort of reminder of how films of this nature have proved successful with an assortment of stars working with limited plot material. (*** touchdowns)