College Coach

College Coach isn't a bad film in any respect and better than most of it's contemporary college football-themed brethren, but I'd like to make a few admittedly mild observations: watching it reminded me of the 40-year old looking college "kids" that would do walk-ons on Ozzie and Harriett in the early 60's. Almost all the principal football players here are over 30 (Lyle Talbot was 31, Guinn "Big Boy" Williams 33, Nat Pendleton was 37!)... even Dick Powell was 28 or so. This one's got almost all of Warner's stock company: Donald Meek, the underrated Arthur Hohl, Herman Bing (a tragic comedic character actor), daffy Hugh Herbert, and Guy Kibbee's brother, Milton. It seemed like half the cast of Footlight Parade's here. Another thing: even as late as 1933, college life was an unattainable netherworld to most of the audiences that paid 15-cents to see this. Having the college on the verge of insolvency managed to humanize an institution that might've as well been on Mars to most Depression-era Americans. Made during the late spring-early summer of pre-code 1933, this one's nowhere near as racy as many of the studio's other releases of the year. Bonus: keep your eyes peeled for John Wayne taking one of his many 1933 walk-on breaks from Warner's micro-budget Lone Star oaters. His future buddy (and fellow right-winger) Ward Bond is also on hand as an assistant coach. Still I don't know how Wellman (who had an astounding 7 films released that year!) sandwiched this between timely Wild Boys of the Road and the steamy Female.

The cast of COLLEGE COACH (1933) reads like a veritable "Who's Who" of 1930s supporting players. Familiar faces abound, albeit in small parts. In this one film we see similar beefy types Guinn "Big Boy" Williams and Nat Pendleton side-by-side, along with Joe Sauers (Sawyer). I was thinking that all we were missing was Ward Bond in one of his early bit roles, but he turns up as well. (I'm sure the football-themed story had a lot to do with this assemblage.) The main stars are Pat O'Brien, Lyle Talbot, Dick Powell, and Ann Dvorak, who are supported by Hugh Herbert and Donald Meek. The unmistakable Herman Bing has a scene, and who has a brief exchange with Powell in an early scene but a young John Wayne.

The story involves a college hiring a hotshot football coach in hopes of generating enough revenue from the team's success to save the school. The plot is then driven by three characters: Pat O'Brien as the dirty coach who builds championship teams through unethical means, Lyle Talbot as the hotshot football star whose ego is an issue on the field and off, and Dick Powell as the honest student-athlete who's captain of the team and a wiz in the chemistry lab. Ann Dvorak is O'Brien's neglected wife who begins spending her free evenings with Talbot.

The movie seems to be sending some odd messages. O'Brien's coach is an unlikable character. He runs a racket building his football legacy. He secretly enlists paid athletes (mercenaries) for the school team and rigs their academic standing to keep them eligible to play. He has a publicist build up his public image while he runs crooked financial deals behind closed doors. His ruthless on-field tactics lead to tragedy. He hops from one school to its rival for a fatter paycheck. And on top of it all, he neglects his poor wife.

But it seems clear that Pat O'Brien is the star attraction of the movie and that the audience is meant to somehow sympathize with him. Toward the end of the movie, the audience is asked to root for one unlikable character (Talbot's show-off quarterback) to come to the rescue of another unlikable character (O'Brien, who's facing ruin without his star players). The only likable character in the mix is Powell, who wanders out of the plot for a while, before returning to save the school, not O'Brien. O'Brien deserved some sort of comeuppance. The script ultimately rewards his behavior.

This is a minor film from the Warner Bros. vaults, but worth checking out if one is a fan of any of the stars. It also offers an intriguing look at the game of football, circa 1933. The manual scoreboards seem so complicated (cluttered?).

Dick Powell, fresh off his successes in Busby Berkeley musicals, is pretty good as a clean-cut college student who's not afraid to get tough. He puts cocky teammate Talbot in his place on more than one occasion. The most interesting angle in the movie, I believe, is the relationship between the two. Two sides of the same coin. An odd couple. Teammates on the field, roommates off it. They hated each other's guts, but they joined forces at the end. Too bad this angle wasn't developed as much as it could have been, with Powell's character quickly losing relevance to the main Pat O'Brien plot.

The movie's okay, but nothing special. The cast of bit players is interesting for 1930s movie buffs. But it seems odd that the movie makes a hero out of such a shyster.

"Calvert University" is facing bankruptcy. The board of trustees regret putting money into a science laboratory instead of financing football. "A winning football team is the answer to our problems," they agree. Since the Calvert players haven't won a game in three years, the college hires hard-nosed coach Pat O'Brien (as James Gore) to heat up the gridiron. Singing chemistry major Dick Powell (as Philip "Phil" Sargeant) is star player and the son of headmaster Arthur Byron (as Phillip Sargeant). Brought in to beef up the team, Lyle Talbot (as Herbert "Buck" Weaver) laments that Mr. Powell can't cook as the two become roommates...

With some sissy spoken innuendos, Mr. Talbot seems to have an implicit sexual interest in Mr. Powell. Nothing happens there, apart from their fight being peculiarly shot from the waist down. Instead, Talbot becomes interested in Coach O'Brien's neglected wife, sexy Ann Dvorak (as Claire). She's hard to resist. Football players seem to pass exams without even turning in test papers, which irks Powell. Everything comes together for the climactic big game. John Wayne has a bit part after about 11 minutes, welcoming Powell to the picture. "College Coach" is interestingly immoral, and nicely directed by William A. Wellman.

****** College Coach (11/4/33) William A. Wellman ~ Pat O'Brien, Dick Powell, Lyle Talbot, Ann Dvorak

College Coach is the story of a college that invests so much of it's money into schooling that it becomes financially insecure. The board decides that what the school needs to bring in the necessary revenue is to hire an excellent football coach and focus on the sport. Coach Gore is hired (Pat O'Brien), a tough, somewhat crooked man whose interest in money and winning makes for an unbeatable team. Phil Sargeant (Dick Powell) and Buck Weaver (Lyle Talbot) are the two stars of the team. Phil also has an interest in integrity and chemistry while Buck is only interested in fame and in his coach's wife (Ann Dvorak). However, with success comes failure and several pitfalls hinder the team including the discovery that Coach Gore has passed some players that should have failed simply to win games.

If this film sounds interesting to you, it is probably because you already like football. If you're looking for a look at relationships, then skip this movie. And if you're a big Dick Powell fan like I am, don't expect to see much of your star. He sings one mediocre song and fades into the background fairly early in the film despite being credited first. It is really O'Brien that is the star with Talbot following closely after.

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.