College Swing (1938)

My Review

“College Swing” is a hilarious comedy film featuring scores of familiar faces like Gracie Allen, playing a young woman who fails to graduate from a college founded by her grandfather after attending for nine years in a row. Her grandfather then puts a codicil in his will that he will leave ownership of the college to the first female to graduate from the institution. She hires a fast-talking friend, played by Bob Hope, to help her in her quest for a degree, and is opposed by a woman-hating professor (Edward Everett Horton) and his secretary, played by Gracie’s real life husband George Burns.

This film was superbly directed by Raoul Walsh (“Me and My Gal” 1932) with a sterling screenplay by Walter DeLeon and Frederick Hazlitt Brennan. The stellar cast includes George Burns, Gracie Allen, Bob Hope, Edward Everett Horton, Betty Grable, Martha Raye, Jackie Coogan, John Payne, Robert Cummings, Ben Blue, Jerry Colonna, and Mary Livingstone (Mrs. Jack Benny).

Music by Hoagy Carmichael and others are also featured in “College Swing,” top-rate entertainment from Raoul Walsh and Paramount Pictures. It was filmed at the Paramount Pictures backlot in Hollywood with numerous scenes shot on the UCLA campus.