PIGSKIN PARADE – The DVD Review

Review by Sam Moffitt

I can pinpoint the exact moment I became a film fan, a cinema buff, a Movie Geek if you will. It was while watching a television broadcast of Pigskin Parade, a college musical based around football, released by 20th Century Fox in 1936.

But a little background on myself first. Born in southeast Missouri in 1955 I can remember when television was a rare and exotic device. We knew a few neighbors near us in the little town I started growing up in, Hiram, Missouri who had televisions. Getting to watch it was a rare treat ,we knew a little old lady near us who had a television and she let us come over to watch shows like McKenzie’s Raiders and the Grey Ghost.

In 1959 my mother bought a television, a 19″ Motorola cabinet model. I can be sure of the year because I vividly remember the premiere episode of The Twilight Zone, “Where is Everybody?” and the effect it had on my young imagination.

Another broadcast that captured my attention was the yearly broadcast of The Wizard of Oz, somewhere between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Our television was black and white, of course, and I remember my brother Philip explaining to me the point in the movie when it switched from black and white to Technicolor, and if we only had a color TV we could see it.

We could only pick up one station regularly, Channel 12, KTTV out of Cape Girardeau, still in business the last I heard.

I developed a habit early on of watching anything that came over that television. Broadcasting was hit or miss back then, I can recall the station leaving the air for long stretches, and not for technical reasons, they just did not have anything to show!

My Mother enjoyed daytime soaps, when the shows were all sponsored by soap manufacturers. Shows with names like The Secret Storm, Edge of Night and Love of Life. Weekday afternoons were awesome with reruns of Superman and the oldest, funkiest looking cartoons, made by an outfit called Van Buren.

And on weekends afternoon movie matinees were a regular thing. It was a showing of Curse of the Faceless Man that scared the bejesus out of me and made me a monster movie fan for life.

And it was on one sunny Sunday afternoon I had the television all to myself and was watching a movie about college football and recognized Judy Garland from Wizard of Oz. “Hey, that’s Judy Garland!” I said to no one in particular. I have a sister named Judy, my only one she was born between two older brothers and two younger. Judy came in the living room and asked if I had called for her. “No, I was just saying that’s Judy Garland in this movie, from Wizard of Oz!” My sister found it amusing, just for a moment, that I would recognize Judy Garland and went back to whatever she was doing.

My sister, bless her heart, does not remember this little incident, nor the absolute terror Curse of the Faceless Man laid on me. Judy was in the house with me and thought it was hysterical that I kept leaving the room whenever the Faceless Man would get up and walk. I couldn’t have stood that monster movie all by myself. But I digress.

That recognition of Judy Garland, in a movie just a couple of years older than Wizard of Oz was the first indication I had that movies were made by people who did that for a living. That there were crews of people out in some half mythical place called Hollywood who made these entertainments for me, and who knew how many other people. I couldn’t have been older than 5 or 6 when that revelation came to me, I have been exploring the world of film ever since.
All I remembered about the movie for years, it involved Stu Erwin being able to throw melons for long distances, but only if his shoes were off so his toes could grip the earth. Stu’s character being a farm boy from Arkansas and all.

Beyond that I remembered a lot of singing and dancing and a final football game played in the snow and a happy ending.

Imagine my surprise a few years ago finding Pigskin Parade on VHS at a local rental shop here in St. Petersburg and wondering “Is this….?” Yes, that is the movie and it is actually pretty good. Now available on DVD Pigskin Parade tells the tale of how a little college in Texas got to play Yale in a bowl game, through the kind of mistakes and coincidences that only happen in Hollywood movies.

Pigskin Parade is a wonderful example of a genre that has vanished, the college musical. All the studios used to churn out dozens of these, usually based around the annual home coming or a “let’s put on a show” type of scenario.

Loaded with talent Pigskin Parade was directed by David Butler. Jack Haley (yes that Jack Haley, before Wizard of Oz) plays a football coach tasked with getting Texas State University’s football team ready to not only play Yale, but to beat them (apparently they had a good team back then, my not being a sports fan I really couldn’t tell you if that’s true or not). Patsy Kelly plays his wife and she is, as always delightful, she easily steals every scene she’s in. Betty Grable (yes, that Betty Grable and we do not get to see her legs!) and Johnny Downs play a ‘cute couple’ who try to help get the team in shape. Grady Sutton plays a jealous admirer of Dixie Dunbar who flirts with every male in the cast. Tony Martin is also onboard, billed as Anthony Martin.

In the most interesting bit of casting Elisha Cook Jr. plays a rabid left wing student rabble rouser. It is odd indeed to hear Wilmer the Gunsel spout vintage Socialist boiler plate about workers overcoming the rule of the bosses.
There is also a singing group called the Yacht Club Boys who sing several songs, too many really. These guys reminded me too much of the Ritz Brothers, only not as funny. The real singing sensation is Judy Garland, playing Stu’s sister, who somehow gets to go to college along with Stu in order for him to become the star football thrower for the team.

The special features include a wonderful documentary about the making of the movie. We learn this was Judy Garland’s first feature movie role. She was technically under contract to MGM already who loaned her to 20th Century Fox to see how she would do in a feature. And she does magnificently, only 14 years old she has a grace, style and confidence that is uncanny. When she launches into a song you can’t take your eyes off her. This is a young, unspoiled Judy Garland, before her ‘handlers’ at MGM started giving her pills to get through the day and get to sleep at night.

We also learn that a Fox musical was done differently than MGM or Warner Brothers. This movie is a true ensemble, there is a break out star in Judy Garland but it is not really her movie. Jack Haley is the nominal lead but he is off screen for entire sections of a tight 90 minute running time.

We also learn that, amazingly, Stu Erwin was nominated for an Oscar for his role in Pigskin Parade! Erwin was a likeable character actor, always playing a lovable doofus, taken to a hillbilly extreme in this movie. But an Oscar nomination? Well, the Three Stooges were also nominated for Men in Black for best short subject, so I guess anything is possible’

The DVD also has a set of photos, posters and lobby cards and the original trailer.