Sweetheart of the Campus

Okay, I tuned in to see the 1950's favorite white bread couple before they hit the big time. Not surprisingly, Ozzie is his usual low-key amiable self, while Harriet warbles a few tunes and shows some spunk as a put-upon secretary. The plot's a familiar one from the time— a hep-cat swing band tries to loosen up the college fuddy-duddies led by an impressively uptight Kathleen Howard. Keeler injects some spark with her shapely toe-tapping, but Ozzie's band gets little solo time, and truth be told, he was wise to go into radio sit-com. (Under that easy-going exterior was a really shrewd businessman as his years of radio & TV production demonstrate.)

The most memorable part may be a really early look at television and a receiver set I wish we saw more of— both real curiosities that the movie surprisingly makes very little of. At some 60-minutes and with Keeler as the only 'name' star, the movie's nothing more than a pleasant little programmer that I suspect Columbia used to demote Keeler after her A-picture career—she made no more for some 30-years. All in all, it's the kind of material Rooney and Garland could explode the screen with; at the same time, this version manages a mild 'pop'.