Hold 'Em Yale (1928)

This is quite a jovial tale of a fairly conceited Argentinian wastrel "Jaime" (Rod La Rocque) who is dispatched to Connecticut to study at Yale. Before he even arrives at the school, he manages to incur the wrath of an on-form Tom Kennedy's "Detective" - an ire that persistently follows him through his travails at the school where he is soon the freshman target for the upper students. That's until his skill with the football gets them, and his would-be girlfriend "Helen" (Jeanette Loff) paying him just a little more respect. The path to true love never runs smoothly, though, and his struggles see him take a pounding in a boxing ring - with some fun visual effects before much progress is made with her, even then it's a delicate game of cat and mouse.... I suspect that were it not that Cecil B. de Mille produced this, it would not exist in anything like the great quality of the print I saw recently. The story is really pretty simple and over-stretched, and though there is plenty of humour, it struggles to raise much more than a smile - and that's as much to do with the clever and lively photography as it has to do with the plot (though some of the vernacular on the inter-titles is quite witty.