Film #214 - Hold That Co-ed (1938)
Hold that Co-ed must have seemed at the time to be an innocuous little comedy about a Governor, Gabby Harrigan (John Barrymore), and his attempts to win a seat in the U.S. Senate. He does this, in typical 1930’s style, by buying the electorate. In this case, he uses the power of his office to aid the State University football team, going as far as to hire professionals to come and play for the team to insure victory.
The “Co-ed” of the title is one Marjorie Blake (Marjorie Weaver), a girl brought onto the team because she can kick the ball better than any man. She, the paid players, an many other payoffs are all there to help Harrigan beat back a rival bid by fiscal conservative Maj. Hubert Breckenridge. (This is the 30’s, so naturally, Breckinridge, the Republican, is played as a fool for believing in things like not spending government money to help a college cheat at football.)
Everything comes to a head when the State University is set to play Clayton University, on whose board of trustees Breckenridge sits. Harrigan challenges him to a bet whereby if Clayton win, Harrigan will withdraw and if State U. wins, Breckinridge will withdraw. Again, this is the 30’s so, naturally, Breckenridge is bullied into accepting, despite the fact that it flies in the face of the lawful election of the people’s representatives.
I suppose in those days, when people were being trained to become more and more dependant on the government through FDR’s various programs, this sort of abuse of power was something that could be chuckled at. Looking at it after seventy years of such abuses, with a government growing ever larger and the populace ever more demanding of government solutions to even the smallest of their troubles, I find it harder to do so. This films stands as a memorial to the age when the people willingly turned their lives over to Uncle Sam and did so with a smile on their faces.
On top of that, the songs are lousy, the jokes aren’t funny and I honestly sat there just waiting for Barrymore’s Hannigan to get his ass thrown in jail like he deserved. Of course, it never happened. Watching Hold that Co-ed was one of the most irritating, aggravating and downright awful times I have ever spent on a film. With all the films that have been lost to decay over the years, why couldn’ they have lost this one?