Classic campus hijinx may only be on film

Bill Knight column for 6-15, 16 or 17, 2020 

Come fall, colleges that reopen may stress a new type of test, for COVID-19, plus low-density dorms, socially distanced classrooms and face coverings.

For some sense of what campus “normalcy” had been, 2020 students may look at old movies.

Films using campuses as plot devices or settings are as different as riots and raccoon coats, calculus and college football, “The Wonder Boys” and “Legally Blonde.”

Moviegoers’ fascination with college life has endured from before the Roaring Twenties to the 21st century. Campuses are isolated, physically and philosophically, and one microcosm of U.S. society, though hardly representative of Americans as a whole. However, that microcosm can show the good and the bad in people.

 “The Freshman,” a silent comedy starring the hilarious Harold Lloyd, was the one of the first campus films, ushering in not only many more comedies, but dramas and melodramas, musicals and thrillers. Comedies have been the most numerous, including “Dead Man on Campus,” “The Mind Benders” and “Genius”; “The Nutty Professor” (both versions) and “The Absent-Minded Professor” (both versions); plus Ronald Reagan in “Bedtime for Bonzo” and Clark Gable in “Teacher’s Pet,” “Blondie Goes to College” and “Mr. Belvedere Goes to College,” “School Daze,” “Mother Is A Freshman” and “Revenge of The Nerds.”

Within each type are several characteristics: collegial learning and interaction within the academy, the Ivory Tower and wild Greek life, Big Men on Campus and coeds, stereotypical professors and college radicals, jocks and geniuses. Settings are stately buildings and tree-lined campuses, dorms and frat houses, bars and communities off campus – surrounding the protected “zone” schools can be. Whether in the classroom or on the gridiron, dating or demonstrating, colleges were for learning and growing – not always simultaneously.

Romances and farces range from “Love Story” to “Sex Kittens Go to College,” with “Hold That Coed” and “The Male Animal,” Barbra Streisand in “The Way We Were” and Barbara Stanwyck in “Red Salute.” Thrillers include “The Sorority House Murders” and “Flatliners”; military academies were settings for “Brother Rat” and “The West Point Story.” Others include “The Strawberry Statement,” Educating Rita” and “The Student Prince,” “Oxford Blues” and “Tea and Sympathy,” “Fraternity Row” and “Final Exam.”

Here are 10 top college films:

“The Affairs of Dobie Gillis” (1953). Eventually made into a TV sitcom starring Dwayne Hickman, Max Schulman’s collegian was first played on the big screen by Bobby Van in this musical co-starring Debbie Reynolds and Bob Fosse.

“Animal House” (1978). Technically titled “National Lampoon’s Animal House,” this John Landis comedy is a nice slice of life about the idyllic, mythic and goofy early ’60s. It stars Tim Matheson, John Belushi and Verna Bloom in the adventures of a misfit fraternity.

“College” (1927). Buster Keaton satirizes campus life in this silent film with Keaton as a serious student trying to win back his girlfriend, who dropped him for an athlete.

“Good Will Hunting” (1997). Matt Damon stars as a college janitor who’s also a prodigy torn between old friends such as Ben Affleck, and new challenges, from education to romance. The Oscar-winner co-stars Robin Williams and Minnie Driver.

“Higher Learning” (1995). A group of freshmen face various crises in this compelling social drama directed by John Singleton, who tackles racism, sexism and campus unrest. Laurence Fishburne and Ice Cube star.

“Horse Feathers” (1932). The best of the comedies featuring all four Marx Brothers, this has Groucho as a college president trying to build a winning football team, with Zeppo as his philandering upperclassman son. Thelma Todd co-stars as a “college widow.”

“The Paper Chase” (1973). Timothy Bottoms is a first-year student at Harvard Law School, dealing with studies and love. Co-starring as a demanding professor and father of the woman the student romances (Lindsay Wagner), John Houseman won an Academy Award.

“PCU’ (1994). This wild comedy stars Tom Lawrence as a freshman at Port Chester University, where a variety of special interest groups – from an “anti-meat brigade” to student Republicans – aren’t as attractive as a party-hardy fraternity. David Spade and Jeremy Piven co-star.

“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” (1966). Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, George Segal and Sandy Duncan star in the adaptation of Edward Albee’s Broadway hit. The directing debut of Mike Nichols, this dark-drama free-for-all pits a professor against his “faculty wife,” along with a young teacher and his wife, alcohol, sex and vicious verbal sparring. It won five Oscars.

“With Honors” (1994). Brendan Fraser stars as a Harvard student whose computer crashes, leaving him with one paper copy of his thesis, which is lost and found by a homeless man (Joe Pesci). In exchange for returning the thesis (page by page), Monty feeds and houses Pesci, and the two men bond. The touching gem feature Gore Vidal as a professor.