Varsity Show (1937) Online
Winfield College students who are trying to put together the annual varsity show come into conflict with their faculty adviser, a stodgy old professor whose ideas are hopelessly out of date, and who won't even let the new "swing" music be played in the show. They decide to get ahold of a former student who is now a big Broadway star and have him direct their show. What they don't know is that this "star's" last three shows were big flops.
Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
Dick Powell | - | Charles 'Chuck' Daly | |
Fred Waring and His Pennsylvanians | - | Fred Waring Orchestra | |
Ted Healy | - | William Williams | |
Rosemary Lane | - | Barbara 'Babs' Steward | |
Priscilla Lane | - | Betty Bradley | |
Walter Catlett | - | Professor Sylvester Biddle | |
Johnnie Davis | - | Buzz Bolton (as Johnny Davis) | |
Ford Washington Lee | - | Buck (as Buck) | |
John W. Bubbles | - | Bubbles (as Bubbles) | |
Fred Waring | - | Ernie Mason | |
Sterling Holloway | - | Trout | |
Mabel Todd | - | Cuddles | |
Scotty Bates | - | Scotty | |
George MacFarland | - | Hap | |
Poley McClintock | - | Poley |
When Fred Waring was approached to play a starring role in this film, he brought his famous glee club, The Pennsylvanians, to the shoot and planned on using the college glee club from Pomona College for additional singers. When he arrived at the campus he found the Glee Club conductor was ill but his replacement was a young, energetic man named Robert Shaw. After the movie was finished, Shaw followed Waring to New York, where he founded the Collegiate Chorale and the Robert Shaw Chorale. Robert Shaw went on to be one of the most important personalities in American choral music in the 20th century.
Film debut of Priscilla Lane.
Fred Waring created an archive for his music library, recordings, photographs, films, correspondence and ephemera in the Special Collections department in the library at Pennsylvania State University.
About 40 minutes were removed for the 1942 re-release, and, to date, this seems to be the only version which has publicly survived.
This film's earliest documented telecast took place in Tucson Saturday 29 September 1956 on KDWI (Channel 9); it first aired in Bellingham WA Monday 26 November 1956 on KVOS (Channel 12), in Albuquerque Wednesday 28 November 1956 on KOAT (Channel 7), in Salt Lake City Sunday 2 December 1956 on KUTV (Channel 2), in Boston Monday 24 December 1956 on WBZ (Channel 4), and in Phoenix Thursday 24 January 1957 on KVAR (Channel 12). This would have been the severely shortened re-edited 1942 re-release, which is the same version presently in the Turner Classic Movies film library, and occasionally shown on cable TV on TCM.
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