Ramon Novarro Carries The Ball

College Romance and Gridiron Glory in Huddle (1932)

Steel worker Ramon Novarro gets a Yale scholarship and grid glory that undermines humility for awhile --- wouldn't it yours? --- but Madge Evans is there with promise of love and upward mobility. Huddle reminds that much of then-H'wod output, especially at Metro, was about class difference and how poor could turn rich, or at least move toward same, with help of a right partner choice, that being, after all, what golddigging was all about. Ramon's classmates include Kane Richmond, Una Merkel, Joe Sawyer (here Sauers), and sweetheart off Hal Roach's comedy campus, Martha Sleeper. Novarro was thirty-three by enrollment here, more than a little old to don a frosh cap, and wouldn't death be a consequence of quarterbacking the big game when you have advanced appendicitis? MGM may have been toughening up Novarro in hopes of renewed popularity; he's scrappy here beyond reason and our patience. Turns out Huddle did lose money, so it was back to more or less passivity for what was left of Novarro's starring career.