Main Cast: Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Peggy Ryan, Martha O'Driscoll, Lon Chaney, Jr., June Vincent
Release Year: 1945
Country: US
Run Time: 90 minutes
Plot
At 88 minutes, Here Come the Co-Eds is one of the longest of Abbott & Costello's Universal starring vehicles, and though not necessarily the best, it manages to sustain a high comic content throughout. The scene is a financially strapped girl's college, where professional dancer Molly (Martha O'Driscoll) lands a scholarship. Molly's manager-brother Slat (Bud Abbott) has arranged this as a means to publicize his sister's showbiz career, which angers the college's chairman of the board (Charles Dingle), who threatens to foreclose on the school. To keep tabs on Molly and also find ways of raising the mortgage money, Slats and his pal Oliver (Lou Costello) takes jobs as school caretakers, immediately running afoul of ill-tempered groundskeeper Johnson (Lon Chaney Jr.) One of Slats' schemes involves a championship basketball game, in which Oliver, hypnotized into thinking that he's petite female student "Daisy Dimple", effortlessly sinks one basket after another (Costello, a top high school athlete, performed these scenes without the aid of a double). What ultimately saves the college is a concert by Phil Spitalny and his all-girl orchestra, featuring "Evelyn and Her Magic Violin." While the obligatory chase scene in Here Come the Coeds (this time involving a sailboat on wheels!) is a disappointment, several of Abbott & Costello's comic setpieces are hilarious, notably the time-honored "Jonah and the Whale" routine and the "oyster in the chowder" bit. Funniest line: while performing a musical duet with costar Peggy Ryan, Costello sighs "I feel just like Donald O'Connor." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Three friends, Oliver Quackenbush (Lou Costello), Molly McCarthy (Martha O'Driscoll), and her brother Slats (Bud Abbott) work for the Miramar Ballroom as taxi dancers. Slats plants a phony article in the local newspaper that declares Molly's ambition to raise money to attend Bixby College. The dean of Bixby (Donald Cook) reads the article and offers her a scholarship. She agrees, but only if her two friends can accompany her, so they are hired as caretakers.
Meanwhile, Chairman Kirkland (Charles Dingle), whose daughter Diane (June Vincent) also attends Bixby, holds the mortgage on the college and he threatens to foreclose if the dean continues to ignore traditions and does not expel Molly. Slats and Oliver run into some problems of their own as they continue to fail at every task assigned to them by their supervisor, Mr. Johnson (Lon Chaney, Jr.).
Slats and Oliver devise a plan to raise $20,000 to save the school by having Oliver wrestle the Masked Marvel. However, just before the match the Masked Marvel becomes ill and is replaced in the ring by Mr. Johnson. Despite this wrinkle, Oliver wins the match and Slats takes the $1,000 winnings and bets it on the Bixby basketball game, at 20-to-1 odds. Unfortunately the bookie is not pleased with the prospect of losing the bet, so he hires a professional team to play in place of Bixby's opponent. Oliver dresses in drag to join the Bixby team, and halfway in the game he receives a bump on the head and believes he is Daisy Dimple, "the world's greatest woman basketball player" as Oliver described her. The Bixby team starts to win again, but Oliver suffers another bump on the head and regains his memory, and ends up losing the game for Bixby, causing everybody (including Slats) to hate him for that. To make up for it, he steals the bookie's money and after a crosstown chase (in a sailboat on a trailer), they manage to arrive in time to pay the mortgage and save the school.
North Hollywood Park was the filming location of Bixby college, while the school's main building was a Universal backlot home that was also used in another Abbott and Costello film, The Time of Their Lives.
This film includes the "Oyster" routine, where Costello attempts to eat a bowl of soup containing an oyster that spits the soup back at him whenever he tries to take a sip. (The routine was used in another Abbott and Costello film, The Wistful Widow of Wagon Gap. That film used a frog instead of an oyster).
Another routine, previously used in One Night in the Tropics, is "Jonah and the Whale". In this routine, Costello attempts to tell a joke that he claims to have written himself, but Abbott informs everyone of the punchline.
DVD Release
This film has been released twice on DVD. The first time, on The Best of Abbott and Costello Volume Two, on May 4, 2004, and again on October 28, 2008 as part of Abbott and Costello: The Complete Universal Pictures Collection.
