Varsity Show

Director: William Keighley William Keighley

Overview

If you're wondering which Warners musical featured the songs "Old King Cole" and "Have You Got Any Castles?," we refer you to Varsity Show. Dick Powell stars as a musical producer, called back to his alma mater to stage the annual college variety show. Uptight dean Walter Catlett is dead set against Powell's "scandalous" form of entertainment. The college kids conspire with Powell to stage their show in an empty Broadway theatre during the off-season. Turns out that Powell has Busby Berkeley under contract; well, he doesn't really, but it is Berkeley who stages the "big show" finale, in a spectacular fashion that would be impossible for any stage, college or professional. Among the costars of Varsity Show are Rosemary Lane as the ingenue, Ted Healy (in his last screen appearance) as comic relief, and Our Gang's "Spanky," here billed more formally under his real name, George McFarland.

Product Details

Release Date:	04/25/2017
UPC:	0888574498931
Original Release:	1937
Rating:	NR
Source:	Warner Archives
Language:	English
Time:	1:20:00
Sales rank:	66,549

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Dick Powell	Charles 'Chuck' Daly
Priscilla Lane	Betty Bradley,Barbara 'Babs' Steward
Fred Waring	Himself
Walter Catlett	Prof. Sylvester Biddle
Ted Healy	William Williams
Johnnie Davis	Buzz Bolton
Lee Dixon	Johnny `Rubberlegs' Stevens
Mabel Todd	Cuddles
Spanky McFarland	Hap
Halliwell Hobbes	Dean Meredith
Edward Brophy	Mike Barclay,Mike Barclay
Emma Dunn	Mrs. Smith
Sterling Holloway	Trout
Scotty Bates	Scotty
Poley McClintock	Poley
Roy Atwell	Prof. Washburn
Ben Welden	Hammer
Carole Landis	Bit Part

Technical Credits

Louis F. Edelman	Producer
William Keighley	Director

Editorial Reviews

Precisely how good a movie Varsity Show was on its original release is something most of us in the early twenty-first century may never know -- issued at 120 minutes, the William Keighley-directed collegiate musical seems to have had a lot of plot and other elements that were deemed non-essential, because it was later cut to around 90 minutes, and that is the only way that it is available, as of 2012. The Busby Berkeley-directed finale, another one of the legendary choreographer's gravity- and geometry-defying extravaganzas, is still intact and worth seeing, but much of the rest is off-kilter, owing to the cuts. Characters' appearances and disappearances are, at times, abrupt, and the pacing of some of the plot-based humor is off, but not fatally so, especially as the plot of this picture can easily be dispensed with by any sensible viewer. Still, it would be nice to see how they filled 120 minutes of screen-time with this kind of a musical, at a point where most such pictures were more sensibly proportioned. As it is, the performances by Dick Powell and two of the Lane sisters (Rosemary and Priscilla) are enjoyable, and Ted Healy, who died before the picture's release, turns in some of his most effective second banana work (one hesitates to call him a "stooge," out of respect). One additional reward to be found in Varsity Show at any time since the era of its production is the quaint look at college life that it provides, in a time when less than five percent of the country partook of higher education. In that regard, it's a lesson in pop-culture history on a par with pictures such as Hold That Co-Ed.

All Movie Guide - Bruce Eder