Hold That Line

Tired and old Ivy Unviersity is struggling to find new blood. One member bets another over recruiting new students. They spot the Bowery Boys. They recruit the boys to attend the school and the bet is on. Football star Biff Wallace is the popular hunk on campus. The boys cause plenty of chaos. Sach mixes a drink in the chemistry lab and comes up with a super strength formula. He shows off on the field and impresses the coaches.

Rich jerks betting on poor people has been done many times over the years. I would like the bet to be clearer. I'm not sure about the parameters. Otherwise, this is basic Bowery Boys. It's Slip and Sach. Everybody does a bit of cross-dressing. It's all rather silly and that's perfect for the boys.

It's the later Bowery Boys at the top of their game in this well-paced and satisfying comedy farce. Two elderly rich men make a bet that the classless Slip, Sach, and the rest of the group can be enrolled in a well-to-do college and still make the grade. While in chemistry class, Sach (Huntz Hall) then develops his own secret formula which transforms him into a powerhouse with super-strength, becoming a new football hero rivaling the All-American Football champ of the campus.

A recommended entry in this everlasting series which stands out a bit from most of the films.

**1/2 (of four)

It was made for a certain audience at a certain time, and the producers, writers, directors and players delivered exactly what was called for...and had no idea that self-pointed critics would surface five decades later and...rate??? and critique it.

Against what? This one has two wealthy clubmen, Billingsley (Francis Pierlot) and Stanhope (Pierre Watkin), wanting to test a theory that their old school Ivy, can make blue bloods out of Bowery toughs. They didn't come any tougher and unpolished than the Bowery Boys and they are soon enrolled at Old Ivy.

Biff Wallace (John Bromfield), the college football hero wearing a name straight out of the days when only Yale, Harvard and Brown players made the All-American teams named by the Eastern sportswriters, Harold (Bob Nichols), editor of the school paper and determined to keep the hallowed halls pure and no white-trash or Commies allowed, Katie Wayne (Mona Knox), Penny (Gloria Winters), Candy Calin (Veda Ann Borg, evidently doing post-graduate work)and other students, are more than a bit dismayed to find the likes of Slip (Leo Gorcey) and Sach (Huntz Hall)---with lines---and Whitey (Gil Stratton Jr.), Chuck (David Gorcey billed as David Condon, because the producer didn't want more than two people named Gorcey in the cast) and Butch (Bennie Bartlett)---all with no lines but marks to stand on---mingling amongst 'em. The times, they were indeed a'changing at Old Ivy.

First rattle out of the box, Sach mixes up some vitamins that make him invincible as an athlete in all sports, and he did this without the aid of Balco Labs. Soon, the football team, thanks to Sach and no thanks to former BMC (Big Man on Campus)Biff, is undefeated and unbeatable. Biff is hacked and he approaches Big Dave (Al Eben) and his sexy girlfriend Candy (aha, she was more than a student)with a proposition. Dolls played by Veda Ann Borg were always open to propositions and sometimes came up with some on their own volition. Anyway, Candy vamps Sach just before THE BIG GAME with STATE, lures him to Big Dave's place, and Dave knocks Sach out with dope, and didn't even tell him it was an arthritis cream to be rubbed on his wrists so he'd be ready for baseball season.

Well, as usually the case when a college named Ivy plays one named State in Football, the odds are high that Ivy (even with handsome Biff in the lineup) will soon be getting their clocks cleaned and furrows plowed and this game is no exception. The questions now are will Biff confess so Sach can be rescued, will Sach be rescued and, if Sach is rescued, can he get to the game on time to win it for Old Ivy.

If you don't already know, far be it from us, to tell you.

But...any film with Mona Knox on the sidelines in a tight sweater, short-shorts two-sizes too small and carrying a megaphone and doing splits is a 10 (TEN)edging toward 11 (ELEVEN)...judged against any movie ever made.

In "A Chump at Oxford", Laurel & Hardy are both sent to Oxford by a beneficiary who does this to thank them for capturing some bank robbers. And, in "Trading Places" many decades later, two rich jerks take a man out of the gutter and make him over into a rich and successful stockbroker...just to see if clothes make the man! Both films are much like "Hold That Line" from the Bowery Boys.

The story begins at a rich gentlemen's club. Two of the members have made a bet. One insists that you could take a poor guy and place him in a top university and he'll be a success....the other disagrees. So they both go in search of a poor, undereducated soul to test the theory. In the process, they meet the Bowery Boys and decide to send all five to college!

At first, Sach nearly gets them thrown out of school when he accidentally creates dynamite in chemistry class. Later, Sach plays around with chemicals again...and he thinks he's created vitamis. Instead, he's made a formula that gives him phenomenal strength...and soon this boob is the star athlete of the school! And, when it comes to the big game, the film becomes a bit like "Horse Feathers"....when Chico and Harpo are kidnapped so they cannot play in (once again) the big football game!

As you may have noticed, there are quite a few story elements in "Hold That Line" that are very familiar. And, in a surprising twist, a newer film, "Trading Places", sure seems to be based, in part, on this Bowery Boys movie.

So is this any good? Yes, surprisingly so. While it's no classic, it had good momentum, a few laughs and kept my interest.

Hold That Line (1952)

** (out of 4)

A couple rich snobs make a bet that they can take any group of idiots off the street, send them to Ivy school and make them smart. Slip (Leo Gorcey), Sach (Huntz Hall) and the boys are selected but their dumbness follows them to college but Sach ends up making some "vitamins" that allow him to become a huge football star. As you can tell by the story, this was TRADING PLACES thirty-one years earlier than that classic 1983 film but don't expect the same quality. Yet again we've given a fairly weak story and not too much is done with it. Once again we have a plot where the boys get mixed up with gangsters who eventually kidnap Sach so that they can place bets on a big game. Other stuff in the film includes the boys of course mixing it up with the star football player, dealing with various college exams and we even get to see some football action. The football scenes are all filmed rather poorly and nothing else really works here either. The entire film has a very cheap look to it and it's clear that Beaudine is on auto-pilot as the scenes never really add up to much and the entire thing just feels rushed. There's one saving grace in the film and that's a sequence where the boys get hazed and must go into their old neighborhood in drag. The scene inside Louie's diner is very funny and seeing Louie in drag was well worth sitting through the film. Gorcey once again takes a backseat as his character really doesn't have too much to do. Hull takes over the lead and manages to be OK here and thankfully his character isn't as big a dope as some of the previous films. I'm sure fans of the series will want to check this one out but those new will certainly want to start somewhere else.