High School Hero

I had not heard about this series from Monogram depicting high school life in the 40s. If this is an example I could have stayed ignorant.

For one thing all the cast members who are teens are old. Far worse than is normally the case where in 90210 in the 90s. Our lead is Freddie Stewart a minor singer from the 40s.

Our protagonist school has a rivalry with another school in town and they are anticipating losing, but as a gag one of the cheerleaders goes in drag in a football uniform and the girl can do some great broken field running. She might be a secret weapon.

With no less than the governor in the stand it all blows up, but as you can imagine it all works out as it usually does.

Typical Monogram sloppy editing, I had problems picking up the plot in a few places. Three Stooges fans can see Curly Joe DerIta in a small part as a high school kid and soda jerk. Try that one on for size.

A Sam Katzman gobbler.

We just watched this for a 2nd time, and for the life of us can't figure out who the target audience was. The "students" were all old enough to have high school kids of their own - and it's set in a high school, despite the campus, faculty, etc., CLEARLY being a college. Did either group watch and say "HEY, this is SOOOO us!!!". Yeah, don't think so.

The story is barely coherent, the characters are SOOOOOOO not high school kids... I won't comment on the music because the fact that WE found it coma-inducingly boring, perhaps in 1946 it was hot... If so, it's no wonder Elvis and rock'n'roll went instantly stratospheric if THIS was the sort of music kids were listening to.

It's mindless silliness, so as a glimpse at the past, it's worth a viewing. If you're snowed in. And this is the only thing available. And all the cat videos online have somehow disappeared. It's an overly-long (SNL-long, yes, THAT overly long) episode of Our Gang, but the kids have grown up, their voices have changed, and they're all trying desperately to act like they're sitll 9.

If you watch this, do it via Rifftrax. Trust me.

I was fortunate to snag an original 16mm reduction print of High School Hero, for many reasons. First off I wanted to see Freddie Slack and His Orchestra, having grown up playing the Will Bradley boogie woogie 78rpm records that featured Slack an piano. And this was one of their best jams! "Southpaw Serenade" which Slack released on a Capitol 78rpm record. It was a great scene in this "B" movie flick that was allegedly the first time the idea of a "teenager" was introduced to the movie going public. That's another topic that's worth your time to research. This flick is a high school football / musical farce that's a lot of fun! I love these 1940's "B" movies as they are called. For one thing, Jan Savitt and His Orchestra also gets to jam! His singer is beautiful Andalusian Lita Baron known as "Isabelita" who also sang with the Xavier Cugat outfit. As a bonus (and if you are a Three Stooges fan, and what normal human being isn't) Joe DeRita who played Curly Joe and who was the last of the Stooges is also in this flick! One of the teens in the picture is played by Freddie Stewart who was a damn good tenor, there is a scene with him and actor Warren Mills, who need to see Jan Savitt, as the try and sneak by the watchman, (an old Irishman) who is bias to anybody Irish, and is conned into believing that Freddie is a famous Irish tenor. To prove it, he breaks out into song "Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms". Bringing the old watchman to tears and letting them go through. I kind of got a little teary-eyed and hell I'm not even Irish! Today critics would say that the actors were all in their 20's and not high school age kids at all. However, if you look at old 1940's high school yearbooks, the young people look older and more mature than the idiots from the 1970's on! Young people wanted to grow up and become adults back in the 1940's. Now adults are are still adolescents and never grow up! Times were better then! The best thing about these flicks, they are all under 90 minutes which is good! There are no cell phones, computers, television sets, screaming idiots using the "F" word every other minute. No Covid-19 masks, no Trump's, no Biden's! No Tattooed morons with colored hair and rap music blasting from their car! No sex scenes, no stupidity! Just good old clean 1940's American fun! It's a blast in black and white! It's when movies were the best entertainment! Love the 1940's chicks with the nice legs, and beautiful long hair. It's like fairy-gifts, fading away! See it on a motion picture film print if you can! Who knows what happened to the 35mm nitrate negative? It's most likely in the landfill. Sad!

There are several films in this series (think Bowery Boys) and this is no real better or worse than the others, BUT this one has the weaker music and dance numbers. Like Grease the cast are all adults playing HS kids, but they are all good--especially if you follow them through the series. This is simply good wholesome fun. I like to think of these films as prototypes of the later Elvis films. Freddy's singing is a highlight (as with Elvis) and the story set around the songs is compelling enough to get you through the ONE HOUR runtime. I found the 4 movie series on Amazon Prime, you can too, and then see for yourself the kind of Wholesome, fun entertainment they don't make anymore.