Jeanskynebu the audience applauded

SnoReptilePlenty Memorable, crazy movie

RipDelight This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

Roxie The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

JohnHowardReid One of producer Hal B. Wallis' best films, this is a delightfully brittle comedy of manners with great production values including an A-1 cast (Henry Fonda, Olivia de Havilland, Joan Leslie, Jack Carson. Eugene Palette, Hattie MacDaniel), smartly directed by Elliott Nugent, who played the Fonda role on Broadway. The James Thurber—Elliott Nugent stage play has been ingeniously opened out, though still retaining most of its smart talk. Fonda is superb, and receives excellent support from the entire cast, including – most unexpectedly – Don DeFore who has by far his best cinema moments here. True, he and Herbert Anderson seem a bit old for college kids, but who's worrying?

spamcahn This may be hard to fully appreciate outside the context of the football-mania of OSU in football season, but even in exclusion, the comedic performances of Jack Carson and Eugene Palette upstage one of Henry Fonda's great performances. There was an element of mad cap thirties comedy pushed into a script that is classic James Thurber. Look for Jack's description of the fake fake (apparently). Ex Football players will want to get out there and really fight once they're through looking for the cream pitcher. Hattie McDaniel's reactions alone are reason enough to see the movie and if you're worried about Fonda showing up, don't - and Bartolomeo Vanzetti may get some peace.

raskimono Henry Fonda is our intellectual, idealistic professor at Midwestern University. He is married to a woman much younger than him played by Olivia de Havilland. Fonda is going to read a letter as an example in his English class to give an example of great speeches written by illiterate people. The problem is, the man was condemned as an anarchist and traitor and sentenced to death. This gets the trustees of the University bent out of shape and try to stop him. His wife, an ex-cheerleader is being romanced by this ex-football QB played by Jack Carson. They once dated and he feels less of a man around him. The trouble in his professional and domestic life propel this comic satire. This film is based on the play by Elliot Nugent who also directs. Obviously, this movie is taking on current issues of the day to which I am unfamiliar but eager to research. It is so current that it can be applied to today's environment and politics; people who are fearful and criticize things they haven't heard or seen as the letter Fonda intends to read; nobody knows the contents. The pressure to conform and governments who censor political opinion that is dissenting or alternative, school bodies who train our students to focus on the material issues over the immaterial ones. For, the Chancellor is only interested in the winning football team they have and he feels that has ensured his greatness and reputation making him a man to be reckoned with. But other things make a man and Fonda who probably has delivered the best monologues in movies in such movies as The Grapes of Wrath, 12 Angry men, Ox-bow incident, Mister Roberts and Fail-safe delivers another one here that makes the movie. Study this movie for its take today on the follies of censorship.

sryder@judson-il.edu Anyone could enjoy this film as a pleasant diversion; but that's about all. The acting is a disappointment. Henry Fonda had already done some striking portrayals in Grapes of Wrath and Young Mr. Lincoln, in which he came on strong an idealist, Even though this role should have fit that mold perfectly, his performance as a "liberal" professor persecuted for his use of a letter by Vanzetti in an English class does not carry much conviction; perhaps because of the attention given to the second plot involving his wife's attraction to a former football star and a football game. As in most of her Warner films, deHaviland gives no indication of her future two academy awards as a dramatic actress. If two plots were not enough, there is a third pointless plot, clearly intended to mirror the athletics/academic rivalry of the professor and the returning football hero, with an "intellectual" (you can tell by his glasses and suit) male student supporting the "radical" ideas of the professor and a rivalry with a football jock. (This may not have been part of the original stage play, since it adds nothing.) In one of his first major roles,as the returning hero,Jack Carson comes across as the strongest member of the cast, and, since the character is basically a nice guy, may well evoke more sympathy than Fonda. (I am a college professor, and this character comes across to me as somewhat whiny. The Broadway production probably ran over two hours, and may have been able to handle both plots without so much confusion.