The Fair Co-Ed (1927) User Reviews

A Fun college comedy

[psteier · 7/10 · 21 March 2001]

Marion Davies is a young woman who goes to college to chase Johnny Mack Brown, a student. Finding that he is women's basketball coach, she joins the team and becomes the teams star, but quits the team to avoid co-operating with Jane Winton, who is Johnny's current beau.

Many fun scenes, especially the students returning to campus in protest of the college's no auto policy. Marion Davies gets most of the screen time and does very well.

1920s College Hijinks

[rogerskarsten · 7/10 · 16 April 2007]

There are several extant films of the 1920s that focus on college life, which Hollywood seemed to define as little more than the social activities surrounding one big sports event after another. In this film, that sports event is basketball--and what may come as a surprise to many today, WOMEN's basketball. If nothing else, this movie provides a fascinating glimpse of the game as played in 1927 (you'll smile when you see the final score)--complete with turtleneck uniforms for the women players!

This is a Marion Davies vehicle all the way, but the character she plays is really not that likable. I'd compare "Marion Bright" to any one of the cocky, wisecracking characters played by William Haines in MGM films of the same time period. Yet Haines always infuses his performances with a kind of pathos that makes his transformation at the end more believable. Throughout THE FAIR CO-ED, Marion Bright is so belligerent and stubborn that it's hard to muster much sympathy for her in the "conversion scene" when she realizes the error of her ways. To be sure, Davies does fine work as a comedienne, but the script just doesn't allow her character's heart of gold to shine through, making her reconciliation with the team quite hurried and unbelievable.

On another note, who knew that 1920s youth slang was peppered with so many intentional archaisms (e.g. Elizabethan verb conjugations!), and that the use of the word "fly" (as in "he thinks he's so fly") was common parlance in 1927! The intertitles for this film, written by Joe Farnham, won an Academy Award in the first year of that prize's existence.

The Fair To Middling Movie

[boblipton · 6/10 · 30 January 2024]

The copy of this movie that I saw was in poor condition. It's about how Marion Davies goes to Bingham College because she has a yen for Johnny Mack Brown. He's coaching the woman's basketball team, so she shows up and proves to be the star player. But when Brown won't fall at her feet, she walks out of the team.

Will Marion develop a love for good old Alma Mater? Will she rejoin the team for the big game? Will she score the winning basket at the last moment? Will she and Brown end in a clinch? Will the movie have anything to do with academic pursuits? The answer to exactly one of those questions is "No" and I'm pretty sure you can guess which.

It's a potentially interesting gender-reversal comedy, with Miss Davies in competition for Brown's affections with Jane Winton, and women's basketball the big sport at the co-educational college Unfortunately, there isn't much in the way of farce, despite the source material being a George Ade play. Still, after her costume dramas, this must have been an inexpensive movie to shoot.

Listed extras include Joel McCrea, Jacques Tourneur, and Lou Costello. I doubt I could have identified any of them even if the copy had been better.

Marion Davies the Winner

[drednm · 15 July 2007]

Another terrific comedy for Marion Davies. Interesting plot has Davies go off to college where she joins the basketball team to be near the coach, Johnny Mack Brown. She instantly makes a rival of Jane Winton, who's also interested in Brown. Davies (in a William Haines sort of role) refuses to play with Winton and after being chided quits the team rather than play with Winton.

The team begins to lose, to the delight of Davies, and as the "big game" approaches she hears the students razzing her at a pep rally. Davies swallows her pride and re-joins the team but the girls won't play with her. During the half-time Brown tries to get the girls to make up. Davies admits she's been a cluck and all is forgiven.

Interesting role-reversal for 1927 with the women's basketball team seemingly the idol of the co-ed campus (no men's team is mentioned). Davies and Winton spar over the love interest (Brown). Davies does her usual great comedic work here but also has an incredibly physical role. That's really MARION DAVIES playing basketball: running, shooting baskets, reaching for toss-ups. Very impressive and very funny film.

Thelma Hill plays Rosie, Lillian Leighton the dorm mother. Among the students are Joel McCrea (as the jerk in the bleachers) and of all people, Lou Costello, who can be glimpsed a few times wearing a beanie.

No music or sound effects. Zilch! Deduct two points!

[JohnHowardReid · 8/10 · 20 October 2017]

Marion Davies (Marion), Johnny Mack Brown (Bob Dixon), Jane Winton (Betty), Thelma Hill (Rose), Lillian Leighton (housekeeper), Gene Stone (Herbert), Joel McCrea (student), Lou Costello (extra) and James Bradbury senior.

Director: SAM WOOD. Adaptation and continuity by Byron Morgan. Titles: Joe Farnham. Based on the 1909 stage play of the same name by George Ade. Photography: John Seitz. Film editor: Conrad A. Nervig. Art directors: Cedric Gibbons and Arnold Gillespie. Costumes: Gilbert Clark. Producer: Sam Wood. Executive producer: William Randolph Hearst. A Marion Davies Production.

Copyright 20 October 1927 by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Distributing Corp. A Cosmopolitan Picture. New York opening at the Capitol Theater, 23 October 1927. U.S. release: 15 October 1927. 7 reels. 6,408 feet.

U.K. release title: The VARSITY GIRL.

SYNOPSIS: Two students eventually fall in love. He is working his way through college as a basketball coach. She joins his team, but quits to avoid the coach's current flame.

NOTES: Academy Award to Joseph Farnham for Title Writing (which he shared with his Laugh, Clown, Laugh and Telling the World). Exteriors filmed at Pomona College, near Los Angeles.

COMMENT: Surprisingly, this turns out to be a silent film. I mean real silent. No synchronized music score, no sound effects, nothing!

Of course, when the film was first released, a full orchestra in showcase cinemas accompanied the movie every minute of the way. And when it played the neighborhoods, even the local flea-pit at least ran to an organ or a piano. Seeing the movie without any sound at all certainly presents it at a distinct disadvantage.

Nonetheless, one soon warms to Marion Davies who is so heart-struck on basketball coach Johnny Mack Brown, she even enrolls in his idiot school to be near him. Needless to say, Marion soon becomes the team's number one star, but Johnny only has eyes for cute Jane Winton (and who will blame him?), much as Marion tries to elbow her out of the way.

I liked the vignettes of student life. It seems college undergraduates back in 1927 were much the same as the rebellious lot our institutions of learning harbor today. I particularly enjoyed their noisy protest rally against the college's "No autos" policy.

As said, Davies comes across delightfully in the lead role, whilst the other players render more than able support. Sam Wood's direction and other credits are as skilfully smooth as we'd expect from MGM.

And I will admit that the often amusing titles certainly read snappily and lucidly enough, but whether they deserved an Academy Award, however, is open to question.

Early Women's Basketball in the College Sports Comedy Genre

[Cineanalyst · 10 July 2021]

This is an old write-up based on a poor-quality copy of "The Fair Co-Ed" (so I'm not going to rate it), which has been circulating on the web and looks as though it were copied from an old VHS tape. Faces and the image in general appears bleached and non-intertitle writing within scenes (e.g. Letters and signs) were sometimes illegible as a result.

I haven't seen many of them thus far, but college-sports comedies seem to have been popular in the late silent era and age of early talkies. It was the Roaring Twenties, after all, and peace and prosperity led to increased college enrollment and an increase in the popularity of leisure activities such as sports. This one stars Marion Davies, who spends her freshman year at Bingham College chasing boys and playing basketball. Her academic record is addressed in only one punny title card regarding "passing." Get it--'cause basketball?

It was the times of Jack Dempsey, Red Grange, Walter Hagen, Babe Ruth, Bill Tilden and the horse, Man o' War. Besides the general reversal from the norm of these things, basketball, the subject of this film, wasn't yet a top-tier sport in terms of popularity. And, it's no wonder why after watching "The Fair Co-Ed." Personally, basketball is my favorite sport, but it was a very different game back in 1927. The jump shot hadn't been invented, let alone the NBA or WNBA, the shot clock, slam dunks or three-pointers. Instead, there were set shots, jump balls between every possession and more violence. Although not in the film, games were still sometimes played in cages. The knockabout humor here suites it. Besides the complete lack of any coherent plays (Coach Bob Dixon, the love interest of Marion, may be attractive, but he's a lousy coach), the film probably isn't that far off in its representation of the sport then.

Apparently, the students of Bingham take girls' hoops seriously, though. They throw a cultish pep rally, and the entire student body seems to turn against Marion when she quits the team. But, when she, of course, returns to help win a game, they celebrate with her again.

"The Fair Co-Ed" has most of the elements of the genre. Adults are grumpy, especially the dean, and they're always trying to dissuade the kids from having too much fun. There's dormitory and locker room gags, but nary a classroom to be seen. There's plenty of boys chasing girls, girls chasing boys, inappropriate relationships (i.e. Coach and student athlete) and general unruly behavior. A funeral service for their automobile license plates followed by a bizarre parade of various transportations employed by the students in response to the school's ban on the horseless carriage--also not that old of an invention at the time--is a highlight.

Additionally, the title cards were one of the reasons I watched this, as they were written by Joseph Farnham, who won the only Oscar for the category that year, although not for any specific picture. Anyways, they're plentiful here and provide much of the humor--full of snide insults, puns, slang and other wordplay. My favorite part, however, are the dialogue intertitles for a parrot.