The Freshman is a 1925 silent comedy film directed by Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor. The film stars Harold Lloyd and Jobyna Ralston, and it is one of the earliest sports comedy films.
Directors: Fred C. Newmeyer, Sam Taylor
Production Company: Harold Lloyd Corporation
Distributor: Pathé Exchange
Cast: Harold Lloyd, Jobyna Ralston, Brooks Benedict, James Anderson, Hazel Keener, Joseph Harrington, Pat Harmon
US Box Office: $6,500,000 ($248,900,000 adjusted for inflation)
Film Format: Black & White (Silent)
Genre: Comedy, Sports
Release Date: September 20, 1925
Plot Summary: Harold “Speedy” Lamb (Harold Lloyd) is just starting college and he hopes to become the most popular man in his class. Harold befriends Peggy (Jobyna Ralston), and she falls in love with him, but Harold’s other college ventures don’t go so well. He tries his best to make friends, but a bully (Brooks Benedict) turns Harold into the laughingstock of the entire college; and when Harold tries out for the college football team, the grumpy coach (Pat Harmon) makes him the waterboy. However, Harold won’t let that slow him down, leading to tons of laughs and an exciting football game finale.
Production: In early 1924 comedy film star Harold Lloyd began planning his next film, a college-football comedy film titled The Freshman. Lloyd had always wanted to star in a football movie, though he had never had the chance to do so, and he thought that his next film would give him the opportunity to do so. Lloyd produced The Freshman himself and he chose Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor to direct the project. The two directors regularly worked with Lloyd and had co-directed him in his previous four films including Safety Last! (1923) and Girl Shy (1924). Jobyna Ralston was chosen to play the role of Peggy, the leading lady in the film. She had previously starred with Lloyd in Why Worry? (1923), Girl Shy, and Hot Water (1924). She would co-star with Lloyd in a total of seven films.
Lloyd originally planned to shoot the final football sequences first, but during the initial shooting attempt Lloyd felt that he wasn’t able to achieve the right tone. Lloyd typically had his films shot out-of-order around comic set-pieces as he thought them up. However, Lloyd realized that due to the more story-driven nature of The Freshman, he needed to shoot the film in order to properly get into character and set the right mood for the film.
The main filming on The Freshman began in late 1924. The train station scenes were filmed on location at the Southern Pacific Railroad depot in Ontario, California; and featured an actual train provided by the railroad company. Some additionally train station location shooting was done at the Culver City Pacific Electric depot. Most of the football game sequences were shot at the Rose Bowl stadium in Pasadena, California. The crowd scenes were shot at California Memorial Stadium during the halftime of an actual college football game between UC Berkeley and Stanford University in November of 1924. Additional location shooting was done near the USC campus in Los Angeles.
Fun Facts and Trivia: Harold Lloyd’s character in The Freshman is nicknamed “Speedy.” Lloyd later starred in a comedy film titled Speedy (1928) in which he plays a different character who is also nicknamed Speedy. The fictional movie that Harold idolizes in The Freshman is titled “The College Hero,” and in 1927 an actual film with that title was released. The Freshman and the real-life The College Hero both are comedies about college football, the later was almost certainly inspired by the success of The Freshman. The football team’s mascot dog was played by American Staffordshire Terrior “Pal the Wonder Dog” who was about only about six months old at the time. Pal later became well known for playing “Pete the Pup” in several of Hal Roach’s Our Gang comedy short films in the late 1920s. Shots from the football game sequence were later reused in The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1947), which was directed by Preston Sturges and was the last film to star Harold Lloyd.
Reception: The Freshman was released on September 25, 1925. The film was a major box office success, and was one of the top five highest grossing films of 1925. Interestingly enough, The Freshman actually had a higher box office than Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush on initial release. In retrospect, The Gold Rush has since become far more popular than The Freshman but this was not always the case. The popularity of The Freshman spawned a wave of sports-themed comedy including The Quarterback (1926), On Your Toes (1927), and Spring Fever (1927). The Freshman was occasionally rereleased in the 1930s and 1940s and clips from the film were used in Lloyd compilation films in the 1960s.
The Freshman received generally positive reviews from critics at the time. Robert E Sherwood, the film critic at LIFE magazine, gave The Freshman a positive review. He had mixed thoughts on the comedic scenes earlier-on in the film, but he had strong praise for the final football game sequence. Mordaunt Hall of The New York Times also gave the film a positive review. He thought that it was just as fun as Lloyd’s previous films, but that the film’s use of suspense made it even better.
Though it is not as iconic as Harold Lloyd’s earlier Safety Last! (1923), The Freshman is one of still one of Lloyd’s most popular and acclaimed films. In modern times The Freshman has continued to receive a mostly positive response from critics. Dave Kehr of the Chicago Reader gave the film a positive review. He thought that while Buster Keaton’s films had aged better due to feeling more natural, Lloyd had the funniest gags of any silent comedian. In 2000 the American Film Institute ranked The Freshman as the 79th funniest American film of all time for their list of the top 100 funniest American films.
Since its release in 1925 The Freshman has been the subject of two copyright lawsuits. In April of 1929 American author HC Witwer sued Harold Lloyd for $2,300,000, claiming that The Freshman ripped off a short story Witwer published titled “The Emancipation of Rodney” (1915). Witwer died in August of that year and his widow continued the suit against Lloyd. She initially won a judgement against Lloyd in November of 1930, but Lloyd appealed the ruling and the United States Court of Appeals ruled in Lloyd’s favor. In 2000 Suzanne Lloyd Hayes (the granddaughter of Harold Lloyd) sued the Walt Disney Company alleging that aspects of The Freshman were copied by the Adam Sandler comedy film The Waterboy (1998). The US District Court in Los Angeles ruled against Hayes.
Why You Should See It: The Freshman is a funny 1920s comedy film. Harold Lloyd does a great job with his slapstick comedic material. The scene where Lloyd hides a kitten in sweater, and the scenes involving Lloyd and the tailor (Joseph Harrington) during the party stand out to me as being exceptionally funny. The famous football scene is also hilarious, and very well-shot. Jobyna Ralston is good as the leading lady; her character is beautiful and very sweet. The version of The Freshman that I watched was accompanied by a modern score for the film composed by Carl Davis. Davis did an excellent job in coming up with a score that followed and reflected the events on screen.