College Coach

College Coach (1933)

*** (out of 4)

Warner film about Coach James Gore (Pat O'Brien) who is hired by a college to turn their football team into winners. Gore is able to do this in one season but some of the trustees don't like how he did it. Fixing test scores, playing players to come to school and overlooking various other violations are just some of the ways of winning. Dick Powell plays a player who wants to play fair, Lyle Talbot is the star of the team who doesn't care if he's failing all his classes and Ann Dvorak plays Gore's wife. There's a lot to enjoy in this film even though there are still quite a few flaws. The strongest thing going are the performances, which are really strong and that includes O'Brien who comes off like a real coach. Talbot steals the film however as the ruthless idiot who only knows football. Even John Wayne and Joe Sawyer plays small parts as members of the team. It was weird watching a football game from this era in the way it was played compared to today and I'm not sure if it's true but the film gives some numbers as to how many people are killed playing the sport during this time, which was pretty shocking.

This is a fairly predictable story about a mercenary college football coach who will jump at the best offer. Interesting that in the 1930's many of the issues surrounding collegiate sports are similar to what exists today. Pat O'Brien did his usual nice job, this time as a fast talking, somewhat unscrupulous coach. Just 75 minutes long and kept my interest.

Recently Turner Classic Movies ( TCM ), on cable television, hosted a day of college football related movies, including this vehicle for Dick Powell and Ann Dvorak, and "Huddle" with Ramon Novarro. They are two really great films but they are totally different in their approach to the social setting and context of college sports.

Without having a clear understanding of the dire economic situation then prevalent in the United States -- the Depression Era -- it isn't really possible to grasp the full and emotional meaning of either "College Coach," or "Huddle." The banking crisis of 1928 prefaced the infamous melt-down in the American stock market in 1929, when hundreds of thousands of small- and medium-sized investors lost their equity when stock prices tumbled. The reason so many lost their equities, was not specifically because the companies were failing ( or collapsing ), but because they had purchased stock issues 'on margin,' or by borrowing money against the future value of the issue.

The banking crisis -- which had its roots in the success of new farming methods, which perversely drove down agricultural prices as yields rose dramatically -- led to a tightening of credit and credit extension rules. So, the sudden drop and then free-fall of stock prices wiped out the value of equity and banks were forced to call the loans made to individuals and companies for their 'margin' purchases. Both the well-to-do and the new middle-class got hurt bad by this ...

Simultaneously, from 1919 to 1939, the supposedly amateur world of college football -- which had evolved rapidly in the years from 1890 to 1916 -- was itself revolutionized by the almost-hysterical frenzy of football fans, which arose during the "Roaring '20s". In the first decades of the collegiate game, the truly great football powers were also the leading elite colleges, like Brown, Colgate, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Holy Cross, Princeton, Harvard and Yale. The great State universities followed suit in this time, and this included Maryland, North Carolina and Virginia, and the football legends of Army and Navy, the U.S. service academies. In the '20s all these programs drew huge numbers of ticket-buying fans to their new stadiums.

The actual plot of "College Coach" is actually baffling: a movie fan going to see this film in 1933 would have easily identified with the dire situation of Calvert University, facing bankruptcy at the opening of the story, and would have accepted their crazy idea of reaping revenues from having a winning football team. And the only way to get a winning football team on the field ( Calvert hasn't won a game in three years at the beginning of this story ), is to hire a coach who has absolutely no scruples at all. A coach who looks at the playing field as a battlefield, and football as being war. A coach who can and will recruit 'tramp athletes,' or transients, who can provide the flash and firepower on the playing field that the sports-loving public adores.

That's what the "College Coach" they hire, does, exactly.

The subtext of this film is an indictment of the lesser tiers of the college football world in that time, as the tramp players get paid off with cash, off the books, and get excused from having to do any real academic work. None of that was allowed at the truly great institutions of higher learning, in the '20s and '30s, but it was done with "a wink and a nod" at a lot of the lesser schools. Some athletes played for as many as three different teams in one season, usually under different aliases ( and always for money ).

Both the structure and the resolution of the story in this film are examples of a very amoral philosophy: Sinclair Lewis highlighted some aspects of this way of thinking in his great novel, "Babbit." This is a great film, if viewed as being a social commentary, but it simply isn't a great "Dick Powell film." He's just barely in the movie at all, in terms of the reality of the storyline, set against the Depression.

The final scenes of "College Coach" rip into the stuffings of that amoral way of thinking while also settling the facts of the coach's economic propositions. This incredibly unscrupulous "coach" gets his big wins, by cheating, and he isn't punished for anything he's done that is wrong or unethical, or even fatal in its results. He and his luxury-loving wife are rewarded for this behavior ....

The moral of the story of "College Coach" is clear: bend the rules, break the rules, win, and if you get caught ... obfuscate, obfuscate, and then lie.

Seven years before Pat O'Brien played his most famous part as Knute Rockne he essayed the role of another college coach thereby giving same title to this flick. This guy is not the hero Rockne was. He's not above using a few dirty tactics to win a game. In a way this movie anticipates films like The Program, it's two generations ahead of it's time.

Dick Powell is also in this as a smart football player who realizes he's in college to get an education. Not so Lyle Talbot who has eyes for O'Brien's wife played by Ann Dvorak. He's a ringer that O'Brien's brought in to win games and O'Brien's so preoccupied with winning he doesn't see the moves Talbot's making.

Powell has one song to sing in this film, an item called Lonely Lane by Sammy Fain-Irving Kahal. Nice, but not up to the usual numbers Powell got in those Busby Berkeley extravaganzas.

Fans of John Wayne and Ward Bond will get a chance to see both of them as football players which is what they were when working as prop men at the studios for summer eating money when John Ford spotted both of them. Wayne was doing some B westerns for Warner Brothers at the time and this was one of a few films he appeared in as a supporting player. One of a small handful.

As I said, an interesting film and way ahead of it's time.

Interesting Pat O'Brien vehicle directed by William Wellman. Pat plays a college football coach with no morals or scruples at all. He's a totally corrupt, heartless SOB! Lyle Talbot plays the big-headed star of the team. Dick Powell is the honest goody-two-shoes who cares more about chemistry than football. Great support from Arthur Byron, Hugh Herbert, the lovely Ann Dvorak, Arthur Hohl, and Donald Meek. Nat Pendleton is also in this but he's way out of his depth as an immigrant student. Pretty terrible performance. Anyway, this one's worth checking out for the cast as well as the fact the movie flouts convention and basically has the "bad" people get away with everything!