... and I can tell that is what Paramount was aiming for. How they missed so badly is inexplicable. Maybe because they were trying to splice some previous college themed musical comedies with their Big Broadcast films so very shortly after the advent of the production code is part of the reason this one lands with a thud.
The number that opens the film - "Sweethearts Waltz" - is the only memorable song in the film. Two collegiate strangers - Marsha Hunt and Leif Erickson - dance to this tune and fall in love without knowing anything about each other, when Hunt's character - Sylvia Smith - is abruptly called away because her father has had a nervous breakdown. So Erickson's character is left only knowing her last name and that she is from California. He's like the prince with nothing but the glass slipper to go on in finding Cinderella.
This boils down to Sylvia trying to save her dad's hotel with the help of the partner that sank the hotel in the first place -Davis Bowster (Jack Benny). He, in turn, needs time from the hotel's mortgage holder, a goofy woman (Mary Boland) who is into eugenics. This is where the script just loses its way. Benny tells Boland that he is going to bring back to the hotel a bunch of college students so she and her weird friend the professor can do a eugenics experiment. But he tells the college students that they are coming to California to be entertainment for the hotel. How can he make both things happen? How is this going to save the hotel? And why are all of these eugenics kooks dressed like the ancient Greeks?
Much of the film is spent trying to keep the collegiate guys away from the collegiate gals - apparently a requirement of Boland's character. And after about two minutes the joke wears thin. How could you possibly miss with George and Gracie, Jack Benny, and a still teenage Martha Raye, all staples of Paramount 30s musical comedies? Watch this film and find out. There are a bunch of big holes in the plot too, but suffice it to say I could have dealt with that if I could have just gotten a few laughs out of it.
