User reviews

A young woman, the college president's daughter (20 year old Joan Bennett) is convinced that to fix the school's penchant for losing football games, she should seduce the best players from around the country to come play for good old Upton College. While it sounds flirty and naughty, it's really quite tepid, and the film meanders listlessly through romance, dopey comedy, a few short musical numbers, and football footage. Seeing actual college football players playing themselves was of some interest, e.g. Bill Banker, nicknamed the "Blond Blizzard" because of his hair and his playing without a helmet(!), as was seeing Bennett soaking wet (ahem). The antics of Joe E. Brown are mostly a nuisance, though his cheer of Uppppppppppton is pretty cool. Overall, just not much here.

There's not much to recommend to this movie. Joan Bennett, a good actress can't carry a movie. Flimsy story, flimsy plot, flimsy acting by a real set of all-American football team to play an all-American football team creates scenes of wooden acting. Maybe the one guy with nice cheek-bones who has one or two lines does good work. Joe E. Brown in an obvious supporting role to add levity to the proceedings is actually annoying and I like him in his lead roles. Nice hit song though titled "Maybe it's love" is song and played at least three times. Can't save the movie tho. No, there is no love lost with this movie.

Early Wellman is always entertaining, constantly throwing in weird directorial touches. This one's a genre football comedy (Horse Feathers etc.) that has quite a few amusing aspects. Number one is the young, intelligent and sexy Joan Bennett, who is amazing in the scene where she is under the canoe with a football player, and then back on shore with her wet dress showing everything she's got, pre-code. Wow! And then there's Joe E. Brown, who in those days speed-read a a script and tossed it aside. Watch for the scene with the lovers before, across, under and behind the fountain; the hand-held (!) camera following the lovers through the trees; the amateur actors/football players in so many encounters with Bennett. The plot of this film deals with sexual recruitment of football players, which reflects uncomfortably on current issues on the Colorado campus. Not a good movie by any means, but it has great acting, great direction and a few good laughs. Made by young people with an astonishing quantity of talent, way back when it was still possible to make a stale story shine. 1930!

Do yourself a favor. When this movie comes on, don't watch it, just save it. Then fast forward to about 15 or 20 minutes into the film, when Joan Bennett falls out of a canoe and climbs out of the water. Watch the one minute or so when she stands on the shore, soaking wet and apparently underwear-less in a clinging and largely transparent white dress. Then erase the movie. You've seen the best that this film has to offer.

I love Joe E. Brown, but he was a work in progress when this film was made. He greatly overdoes his loud, siren-like voice, and his slapstick is broad and unsubtle. All of the acting is wooden and stiff. And the gimmick of using real all-star football players in the cast certainly didn't add to the overall acting quality.

The script is nearly devoid of any actually funny lines, and the romantic "tension" that is supposed to develop isn't at all dramatic or interesting. There's not a bit of chemistry between the two actors who are supposed to fall in love. If you are a Joe E. Brown fan, he's made much better films. Although if you are a Joan Bennett fan, I have to admit, her other films probably never showed her off in quite the same way...

To help her college's faltering football team, beautiful Joan Bennett (Nan) must seduce hunky football players into transferring to her school. It's the bright idea of gay friend Joe E. Brown (Yates). Will the young men discover each other? Will Ms. Bennett find true love among them? Will Upton win the "Big Game"?

"Maybe It's Love / Eleven Men and a Girl" is interesting in that it features Bennett and Brown on their way to becoming successful in the "talkies". They aren't there yet - Bennett is unspectacular and Brown's shrieks are more annoying than funny; later, he would successfully refine his comic persona. The best scene is early on, when Bennett and one of her football players topple their canoe, and emerge soaking wet.

*** Maybe It's Love (1930) William A. Wellman ~ Joan Bennett, Joe E. Brown, James Hall

Joe E. Brown plays Yates--a football player for a second-rate college team. He's heard that his coach will be fired unless the team starts winning so he and the coach's daughter, Nan (Joan Bennett), come up with a really sleazy plan. She'll vamp a bunch of All-American players and convince them she's in love with them in order to get them to switch to her father's school! Not surprisingly, eventually the guys figure out that she's been stringing them all along and they are naturally furious. Sadly, she really has fallen for Tommy...but he won't believe she isn't leading him on as well.

This plot idea is a serious problem. It's just not that funny and you really can't help but think Nan is a real....well, IMDb won't let me use that word. It helps a bit that the football players really WERE All-Americans from the 1928-29 season...that is interesting. But they also weren't the best actors...nor was co- star Brown. While I've never been a huge fan of his comedies, here he has almost nothing to do other than to be annoying and make weird sounds periodically. The ending, also, is inexplicable. All in all, a forgettable film with lots of plot problems.

By the way, most of the comedians of the day made football films. Apart from Laurel & Hardy, Joe E. Brown, Wheeler & Woolsey, The Marx Brothers as well as The Three Stooges made football films and they sold very well.

Upton College President Sheffield's job is threatened after yet another football lost to rival Parsons College. His daughter Nan Sheffield (Joan Bennett) is desperate to help and her friend Yates (Joe E. Brown) comes up with an idea to recruit a whole new team. She has to take off her... glasses. She gets busy. Then there is the special case of Tommy Nelson (James Hall).

This is aka Eleven Men and a Girl. There are a couple of mildly humorous schemes to entice football players. These guys should have noticed that they are all after the same girl much sooner. Joan Bennett is a pretty pixie girl. This is a semi-musical. It has a few torch songs, but apparently the audience were getting a little tired of musicals during this time. It's not funny enough to be a comedy. The romance isn't that compelling. This movie seems to fall short on all sides.

This probably deserves a 6 or 6.5 but I gave it a 7 because Joe E. Brown has a few scenes that knocked me off my chair and Bennett is superb. It is one of their earliest roles so it is a must-see for anybody who admires these two greats. This is directed by William Wellman, right before he made The Public Enemy. Not one of his best works but important from a historical point of view. Captures a certain time and place.

I'm a Joe E. Brown fan from way back, but this film doesn't give him much to work with. He does his usual open-mouthed scream that starts out like a siren a few times, but little else other than move the story along. The idea of getting eleven of the All-American football stars from the 1928 - 29 season in a movie about football may have been a good one in 1929, but their names are meaningless (to me anyway) 70 years later. And their acting is awful. Even Joan Bennett, who uses her sexual wiles to get them to come to the college to form a winning team, seems to act very stiffly. Unless you are a football fan and enjoy watching some action, there isn't much to recommend.

A pretty coed uses an ancient feminine technique to entice an All-American team of football players to enroll at her father's college.

Comic Joe E. Brown dominates this mild little comedy from what is essentially a supporting role and there are longish periods of screen time when he all but disappears. Front & center, however, he is very funny, his elastic face and enormous mouth a sure sign of hilarity for the audience. Whether teaching young Joan Bennett how to flirt with boys, dealing with a honey-hungry bear, or becoming frantic while locked in a cellar during the final football game with a very belligerent millionaire, Brown always knows how to churn out the laughs.

While Brown is allowed no romantics of his own, that department is very capably handled by Miss Bennett & likable rich kid James Hall. Their sequences together are pleasant, although unremarkable.

An uncredited Anders Randolf plays Hall's wealthy, apoplectic father. The All-American Football Eleven from the late 1920's play themselves and they are a sturdy inclusion. One or two can even almost act.

This film is sometimes shown under the title ELEVEN MEN AND A GIRL (1930).

Along with the extraordinary output of William Wellman -- "Public Enemy, "Wings," "Wild Boys on the Road," "A Star is Born" and so forth -- there are a number of fairly ordinary entertainment films such as the studio would have wanted made. "Eleven Men and a Girl" -- which is the title I saw it under -- is one of them, a college football comedy played by Joan Bennett, Joe E. Brown and a squad of non-acting football players drawn from the ranks of the top teams of the two previous seasons. There are several visual touches that drive this above the purely ordinary, such as a graph of a football field, with positions indicated, each marked by a photo of the heroine (Bennett), whose gentle scheme is to get all of the fellas to believe that they have a sweetheart in her order to pump them up to greatness, as per George Ade's play "The College Widow," already filmed twice before. As the camera moves along the photos, cutaways are used to show the boys practicing hard, striving to make their game better. The film is dominated, however, by rubber-faced comedian Joe E. Brown, and this picture was important in establishing his popularity among film goers, although he would make better ones. Brown's trademark yowl is perhaps too much in evidence in the course of this picture, but audiences got the gag, and it was a sound-specific gag, important in 1930. Drawbacks, however, include Bennett's under-baked performance and those of the football players who prove that, in 1930 as now, the vast majority of footballers cannot act, despite whatever acumen they may have on the gridiron. For Wellman, this project may have just been something to get out of the way so that he could start work on "Public Enemy," but the film is at its best when he decides to linger on a detail; otherwise, it could have been a two-reeler.

A prestige college uses a co-ed's wiles to entice top football players to enroll so that the college can finally beat its long-time rival.

I suspect the main interest now in this slender concoction are the 1920's college All-Americans. Note that all are white, and one even plays sans helmet, the better to show off his mop of blond hair, I guess. Comedic moments are supplied by irrepressible Joe E. Brown, whose gaping mouth may scare little kids, but with enough nimble moves to match an acrobat. Then there's budding star Joan Bennett showing it all beneath a wet dress-- move over, Playboy. No wonder Edward G. Robinson chased her happily to his near doom in Woman In The Window (1944). Too bad about leading man James Hall. He's not much of an actor and apparently drank himself to death at only age 40 (IMDB). Not much to recommend with this antique, except for Brown and Bennett clearly on their way up the Hollywood ladder.

The only reason to watch this film is Joe E. Brown, who is funny under most any circumstances. But here he is not given good material and relies on his outsized mouth to holler from time to time. The other reason is to see Joan Bennett as a blonde. She is forced to carry the picture as best she can, and at least she is lovely to look at. Also on hand is the 1930 All-America Football team playing themselves and not given much to do acting-wise.

Interesting to note how popular tastes have changed. In 1930 there was a lot more enthusiasm for football and for those football heroes they called Big Man On Campus. Now it seems societal values are different and football is bigger off-campus than on. Most of the crowd here wore suits and ties and in one scene Brown wore the traditional raccoon coat of yesteryears football fan. Not much fun or excitement here and the plot is threadbare by now. Wonder if it was more watchable a long time ago.

Comedy star Joe E. Brown is given very little to do in a secondary role in this lame college football quickie. Twenty-year-old Joan Bennett stars as the university president's daughter who uses her charms to attract football talent to Upton in order to beat the school's rival and save her father's job. As a kind of gimmick, the cast includes several real-life collegiate football stars, but seen eighty-plus years later all that remains is amateur acting in a weak script (although admittedly I'm more of a baseball guy). Doughy leading man James Hall stands out like a sore thumb as the "star quarterback" among a roster of actual athletes.

Maybe It's Love (1930)

** (out of 4)

Joan Bennett plays a woman who's father is president at a local university and about to be fired unless the football team can bring a trophy home. With nothing to lose, the girl goes out and tries to get the best team possible. This comedy is best remembered for featuring eleven of the 1928 and 1929 All-American football players but they add very little laughs in this dry comedy. Joe E. Brown plays a supporting part and gets the best laughs during one scene where he mistakes a bear for a cow. Bennett isn't very strong in the film and the movie suffers from her non-comic performance, which all leads to a predictable ending.