The four-eyed comic took advantage of the college football craze to make this, one of his most beloved films.
by Rich Watson
One of his biggest hits, the 1925 film The Freshman, put him on a college campus as an aspiring football player.
College football movies and the sport’s growth
There are plenty of college football movies. Not many were big hits, but here are a few you probably know:
- Horse Feathers. Everyone says they love the Marx Brothers, who wreak their madcap antics on the gridiron of fictitious Huxley College.
- Knute Rockne, All American. The Notre Dame player and coach is the subject of this biopic, the one where Ronald Reagan says “win one for the Gipper.”
- Rudy. Another Notre Dame-based biopic, this one based on the story of the under-sized athlete who dreams of playing for his favorite school.
- We Are Marshall. Yet another true story: when a plane crash claims members of a college football team, its school finds the will to carry on.
- The Waterboy. Lloyd’s granddaughter sued the Walt Disney Company, parent of distributor Touchstone Pictures, because she thought this movie stole from The Freshman. The court ruled against her.
American (and Canadian) football, at the collegiate level, evolved in the nineteenth century from rugby, thanks to modifications to the game made by Yale student turned coach Walter Camp, such as adding a line of scrimmage and creating the quarterback position. When on-field violence threatened to destroy the sport, the organization known today as the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) formed, from 62 different schools in 1906, to set rule changes.
The newer version of football took off by the time Lloyd made his movie.
Harold Lloyd: the four-eyed thespian
In the book Hollywood: The Oral History, edited by Jeanine Basinger and Sam Wasson, Lloyd describes the evolution of his bespectacled on-screen persona:
I saw a film about a fighting clergyman who wore glasses…. And I was sort of intrigued with the nonchalance he had with wearing those glasses. He looked like sort of a milquetoast type, but his actions belied the whole thing. He was really a go-getter…. And I said “Gee, I like that type of an idea for a character—not anything to do with his being a parson.” I thought that would be good for a comedy series, a young college kid that was so studious and shy and so forth. But when they started to work on him, they found out that he was a tiger in a lamb’s coat.
The Nebraska native worked in repertory theater as a kid. At twenty, he moved to LA where, with filmmaker Hal Roach, he created his first film character, Lonesome Luke, in 1913. Roach paired Lloyd with Bebe Daniels. Their films did well financially.
His glasses-wearing character (in reality, they didn’t have lenses) came four years later, in shorter films at first. Lloyd thought of him as more humanistic, and audiences agreed.
His most iconic film is 1923’s Safety Last!, the one where he’s dangling from the hands of a clock. It’s part of the Library of Congress’s National Film Registry and is on the American Film Institute’s “100 Years… 100 Laughs” list.
The Freshman: big man on campus
So in The Freshman, originally called “Rah Rah Rah,” Lloyd, newly enrolled at Tate University, wants to fit and be popular. In time, he concludes the best way to do that is by being a football player. It’s not easy, of course; he’s mocked for his over-compensating ways and screws up the chances he gets to make a good impression.
Fortunately, he’s got Jobyna Ralston, with a Pickfordesque hairdo, in his corner, keeping his spirits up. Ultimately he gets his opportunity in an actual game. Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor co-directed.
Lloyd proved surprisingly good at evading tackles—or perhaps the opposition was surprisingly bad. His glasses held up well under the combined weight of half a dozen linemen, too, both in game situations and when he’s used as a tackling dummy in practice. I genuinely laughed in places, though I wouldn’t call the film a riot. Clever use of titles, which were witty.
The film used the LA Memorial Coliseum, home of the USC Trojans. At the time it was still brand new; it opened in 1923. It seats 77,500. The Trojans would claim their first national championship in 1928. Head coach Gus Henderson was a consultant on The Freshman.
Exposition Park doubled as Tate University, along with select parts of the USC campus and constructed sets. The Rose Bowl and Cal-Berkeley’s Memorial Stadium were also used, for the crowd scenes.
“The Freshman 2”?
Post-script: Lloyd made a… I guess you could call it a spiritual sequel twenty-two years later, well into the sound era. Preston Sturges used footage from The Freshman in his movie The Sin of Harold Diddlebock, Lloyd’s last film. His character is meant to be the same, but Sturges changed the surname.
It could’ve easily been made without the connection. I wasn’t convinced Lloyd played the same character and the film isn’t that funny. It did have Margaret Hamilton (one scene) and the best use of a lion since Bringing Up Baby. It made the movie feel more like a sequel to Safety Last!
———
Have you seen The Freshman? Leave a comment and let me know!
Next post comes Tuesday, December 30, then back to Wednesdays starting January 14.
Share if you liked this post
⬇️
No comments:
Post a Comment