This Ivy University is in a league of it's own when the Bowery Boys come calling. Former seasoned graduates of the esteemed college bet among themselves that it's possible to take a below average student and make them successful given the right environment. This all sounds strangely like the same idea that's gotten underachieving high school grads who can't read or do basic math, into degree programs today some sixty plus years later. Well, at least the Bowery Boys didn't need safe spaces on campus to make the grade, no place was safe once they arrived on the scene.Right around the time this film was coming out, Gloria Winters was about to begin a lengthy series run on TV's 'Sky King', so it was a nice surprise seeing her show up in this flick. She was Kirby Grant's niece Penny King in that show, so one might conclude that her name was borrowed from her character in this movie, Penny Wells. She didn't really have a lot to do here, but managed to be part of the 'in crowd' on campus so to speak, hanging out with the football team's hunky Biff Wallace (John Bromfield), girlfriend Katie (Mona Knox), and second string boyfriend Harold (Bob Nichols).This picture turns out to be Sach's (Huntz Hall) show pretty much all the way, as 'Hurricane' Jones concocts some magical lab potion that makes him a man of steel on the gridiron and Ivy University's newest football hero. To pass a fraternity hazing, the Boys do a drag routine at Louie's (Bernard Gorcey), who we learn after all this time that he has a brother Morris who looks just like him - who would have guessed?Well with a couple of hoods betting on Ivy's big season ending game with State University, Sach gets sidelined by the gang's moll Candy Calin (Veda Ann Borg), but it won't be enough to stop the Bowery juggernaut. Slip (Leo Gorcey) picks up the ball and manages to get tackled into the end zone on the last play of the game to notch a win for Ivy. To Slip's credit, this film offers him the opportunity to utter what might be the longest stream of malapropisms on record in any of the Bowery films, a degree worthy achievement in it's own right.

It's a pity that How To Succeed In Business was a decade away from its creation. The song Grand Old Ivy would have made a perfect theme for this Bowery Boys comedy as the boys sample a bit of higher education in Ivy College. They probably could have used a bit of lower education before sampling Ivy.Slip and Sach and the rest go to school on a bet by two older alumni of Ivy as to whether a bit of learning smooth the edges out in the roughest kind of material. Well they certainly picked the roughest material out there.While there Huntz Hall plays around in the chemistry lab and discovers a formula that makes him super strong. Where else to use this new found ability but the gridiron.I think you can figure the rest. This is Bowery Boy hijinks as usual but also with the added attraction of Veda Ann Borg as the gambler's moll trying to seduce Sach. No film with her should ever be missed.It might have been interesting if Leo Gorcey had ever learned in college the real meanings of the words he mangles in every picture. But if he did half the comedy of the Bowery Boys would be gone.

Hold That Line (1952) ** (out of 4) A couple rich snobs make a bet that they can take any group of idiots off the street, send them to Ivy school and make them smart. Slip (Leo Gorcey), Sach (Huntz Hall) and the boys are selected but their dumbness follows them to college but Sach ends up making some "vitamins" that allow him to become a huge football star. As you can tell by the story, this was TRADING PLACES thirty-one years earlier than that classic 1983 film but don't expect the same quality. Yet again we've given a fairly weak story and not too much is done with it. Once again we have a plot where the boys get mixed up with gangsters who eventually kidnap Sach so that they can place bets on a big game. Other stuff in the film includes the boys of course mixing it up with the star football player, dealing with various college exams and we even get to see some football action. The football scenes are all filmed rather poorly and nothing else really works here either. The entire film has a very cheap look to it and it's clear that Beaudine is on auto-pilot as the scenes never really add up to much and the entire thing just feels rushed. There's one saving grace in the film and that's a sequence where the boys get hazed and must go into their old neighborhood in drag. The scene inside Louie's diner is very funny and seeing Louie in drag was well worth sitting through the film. Gorcey once again takes a backseat as his character really doesn't have too much to do. Hull takes over the lead and manages to be OK here and thankfully his character isn't as big a dope as some of the previous films. I'm sure fans of the series will want to check this one out but those new will certainly want to start somewhere else.

***SPOILES*** The "Bowery Boys" end up in the ivy league collage Ivy University on a full scholarship not because of their soring IQ's but for the exact opposite reasons. There not even qualified to attend grade school much less kindergarten.Diuring a boring session of chess two Ivy U alumnus' A,J Billingsley & Morgan T. Stanhope made a bet that anyone can attend and graduate from Ivy U if just given the chance even a borderline moron. And it's there where the boys, Slip Sach Junior Chuck & Butch, come in. Checking the poor and uneducated side of town, The Bowery, Billingsly & Stanhope come upon Louie's Sweet Shop and see the boys, acting like a bunch of jerks, in action and realize that they found what they were looking for. At collage things don't go quite right for the "Bowery Boys" in them making complete buffoons, which isn't that hard, of themselves. That's until Sach, who's known as test tube head, starts to play with chemicals in the collage's chemistry department. Mixing a batch of goodies and gulping them down Sach soon becomes superhuman to the delight of the frustrated collage's football team's coach Rowland. Putting Sach on the team he becomes its star running back getting Ivy U into the collage finals against the hated State University who had beaten it the last 15 straight times that the two teams met.***SPOILERS*** As you would have expected in films like this the local mobsters get involved in the big game in trying to fix it that the under dog State U who's a 1-3 in the betting wins with then putting a bundle of cash on it! The one thing that can make that happen is that Sach is somehow not able to get in the game. More or less average "Bowery Boys" movie with the exception of the ending that comes straight out of left field. In not that the person, Sach, whom you would have expected to come out of the bleachers or clubhouse and save the day for Ivy U but the person whom you would have expected to lose it!