The why of collegiate told by one who writes them

COLLEGE students invariably at Hollywood's conceptions of then life, conceptions in which and saxophones play more important than textbooks, fraternity houses resemble royal suites at the Bitz and professors croon while leading the class in the latest dance rage.

Team remember when I shared to the general indignation. "Why can't those guys ever produce a real, honest to gosh, down to earth picture of undergraduate life?" I used to ask myself. Having recently been one of "those guys", I can cite several reasons why college pictures are as they are and perhaps always will remain much as they are.

The average theater-goer associates youth, music, love, beauty, gaiety, and laughter (never books) with college life, and consequently expects to see these elements in a college picture. The film producer, whose natural show manly preference lies more in the direction of snappy dialogue and dance routines than classroom dignity, knows this and is prepared to meet the demand. His pictures are intended for the film-going public as a whole, and not solely for a few hypercritical students. For this reason most college films, outside of the annual football epic (for which I offer no apologies) are musicals.

Producers feel, and perhaps rightfully, that they are giving the great mass of theater-goers what they expect. A painstakingly produced picture based on college life as it actually is might be a dismal failure. We college people might not even appreciate it. After all, twentieth century pioneering, especially in the cinema, comes a bit expensive, and the producer, if he wants to stay in business very long, must keep his eye on box office grosses, not on the embittered criticism of a few collegiate purists. He holds his job by the amount of black ink he can put on the company ledger, not by the number of artistic hurrahs he is able to arouse.

NOR can alumni, no matter how perfectly they conformed to the collegiate pattern of life in pre-diploma days, be expected to defend undergraduate realism. A year off the campus and the average alumnus is more apt to remember the good time he had a such and such Christmas formal, the weekend of the Purdue, game, or in the Mask & Wig show rather than the fact that during exam weeks he ordinarily lost ten pounds and annexed a few grey hairs. It is the same with college grads in a studio conference. Confessing no serious intent, they strive to put as much entertaining frivolity as possible in the scenario-dramatizing college life never was meant to be a sad task.

In preparing any college story it is amazing to discover how very readily all college types, both real and imaginative, lend themselves to caricature. The Joe College freshman; the cross Dean, a perfect heavy in every case, the co-ed-heroine, usually portrayed as a sweet, delectible Dream Princess; the hard-boiled football coach, always a character builder; the towering Adonis who plays full-back and causes feminine hearts to flutter; and as for the absent-minded professor pick up any college comic magazine and you'll find plenty of jokes about him.

When one takes into consideration the natural tendency toward exaggeration for dramatic effect in presenting these characters, it is little wonder they appear as they do on the screen. Realism doesn't seem to have a place in a college picture. And for this reason college pictures always have been and, I am afraid, always will be designed to please the eye and ear and not provide food for cerebral meditation.

COLLEGE students invariably at Hollywood's conceptions of then life, conceptions in which and saxophones play more important than textbooks, fraternity houses resemble royal suites at the Bitz and professors croon while leading the class in the latest dance rage.

Team remember when I shared to the general indignation. "Why can't those guys ever produce a real, honest to gosh, down to earth picture of undergraduate life?" I used to ask myself. Having recently been one of "those guys", I can cite several reasons why college pictures are as they are and perhaps always will remain much as they are.

The average theater-goer associates youth, music, love, beauty, gaiety, and laughter (never books) with college life, and consequently expects to see these elements in a college picture. The film producer, whose natural show manly preference lies more in the direction of snappy dialogue and dance routines than classroom dignity, knows this and is prepared to meet the demand. His pictures are intended for the film-going public as a whole, and not solely for a few hypercritical students. For this reason most college films, outside of the annual football epic (for which I offer no apologies) are musicals.

Producers feel, and perhaps rightfully, that they are giving the great mass of theater-goers what they expect. A painstakingly produced picture based on college life as it actually is might be a dismal failure. We college people might not even appreciate it. After all, twentieth century pioneering, especially in the cinema, comes a bit expensive, and the producer, if he wants to stay in business very long, must keep his eye on box office grosses, not on the embittered criticism of a few collegiate purists. He holds his job by the amount of black ink he can put on the company ledger, not by the number of artistic hurrahs he is able to arouse.

NOR can alumni, no matter how perfectly they conformed to the collegiate pattern of life in pre-diploma days, be expected to defend undergraduate realism. A year off the campus and the average alumnus is more apt to remember the good time he had a such and such Christmas formal, the weekend of the Purdue, game, or in the Mask & Wig show rather than the fact that during exam weeks he ordinarily lost ten pounds and annexed a few grey hairs. It is the same with college grads in a studio conference. Confessing no serious intent, they strive to put as much entertaining frivolity as possible in the scenario-dramatizing college life never was meant to be a sad task.

In preparing any college story it is amazing to discover how very readily all college types, both real and imaginative, lend themselves to caricature. The Joe College freshman; the cross Dean, a perfect heavy in every case, the co-ed-heroine, usually portrayed as a sweet, delectible Dream Princess; the hard-boiled football coach, always a character builder; the towering Adonis who plays full-back and causes feminine hearts to flutter; and as for the absent-minded professor pick up any college comic magazine and you'll find plenty of jokes about him.

When one takes into consideration the natural tendency toward exaggeration for dramatic effect in presenting these characters, it is little wonder they appear as they do on the screen. Realism doesn't seem to have a place in a college picture. And for this reason college pictures always have been and, I am afraid, always will be designed to please the eye and ear and not provide food for cerebral meditation.

Team remember when I shared to the general indignation. "Why can't those guys ever produce a real, honest to gosh, down to earth picture of undergraduate life?" I used to ask myself. Having recently been one of "those guys", I can cite several reasons why college pictures are as they are and perhaps always will remain much as they are.

The average theater-goer associates youth, music, love, beauty, gaiety, and laughter (never books) with college life, and consequently expects to see these elements in a college picture. The film producer, whose natural show manly preference lies more in the direction of snappy dialogue and dance routines than classroom dignity, knows this and is prepared to meet the demand. His pictures are intended for the film-going public as a whole, and not solely for a few hypercritical students. For this reason most college films, outside of the annual football epic (for which I offer no apologies) are musicals.

Producers feel, and perhaps rightfully, that they are giving the great mass of theater-goers what they expect. A painstakingly produced picture based on college life as it actually is might be a dismal failure. We college people might not even appreciate it. After all, twentieth century pioneering, especially in the cinema, comes a bit expensive, and the producer, if he wants to stay in business very long, must keep his eye on box office grosses, not on the embittered criticism of a few collegiate purists. He holds his job by the amount of black ink he can put on the company ledger, not by the number of artistic hurrahs he is able to arouse.

NOR can alumni, no matter how perfectly they conformed to the collegiate pattern of life in pre-diploma days, be expected to defend undergraduate realism. A year off the campus and the average alumnus is more apt to remember the good time he had a such and such Christmas formal, the weekend of the Purdue, game, or in the Mask & Wig show rather than the fact that during exam weeks he ordinarily lost ten pounds and annexed a few grey hairs. It is the same with college grads in a studio conference. Confessing no serious intent, they strive to put as much entertaining frivolity as possible in the scenario-dramatizing college life never was meant to be a sad task.

In preparing any college story it is amazing to discover how very readily all college types, both real and imaginative, lend themselves to caricature. The Joe College freshman; the cross Dean, a perfect heavy in every case, the co-ed-heroine, usually portrayed as a sweet, delectible Dream Princess; the hard-boiled football coach, always a character builder; the towering Adonis who plays full-back and causes feminine hearts to flutter; and as for the absent-minded professor pick up any college comic magazine and you'll find plenty of jokes about him.

When one takes into consideration the natural tendency toward exaggeration for dramatic effect in presenting these characters, it is little wonder they appear as they do on the screen. Realism doesn't seem to have a place in a college picture. And for this reason college pictures always have been and, I am afraid, always will be designed to please the eye and ear and not provide food for cerebral meditation.