Cinevent Notes: CAMPUS KNIGHTS (1929)

[Richard M Roberts]

Party Animal Earl Hastings (Raymond McKee) is frequently mistaken for his identical twin brother Ezra, who, of course, is a meek professor at an all-girls college, and of course, some of Earl’s antics, especially his flirtations with various college females, get him mistaken for the innocent Ezra and the innocent Ezra gets into trouble with the Dean. Then, of course, a woman pursuing Earl for breach of promise gets the twins mixed up and causes a major scandal for Ezra at the School.

The success of Harold Lloyd’s THE FRESHMAN in 1925 sparked a spate of College Comedies. Thanks to a generally good economy in the 1920’s the rise of middle-class college attendance suddenly made it mainstream and neat to be matriculating at some University or another. If the resulting films like Universal’s four-year (1926-29) running series THE COLLEGIANS was any example, it was more for the sports, partying and the rise of co-education rather then the education itself, same as now.

By the time CAMPUS KNIGHTS was released in 1929, college capers cinematically were far from new news. Buster Keaton had already gone to class in COLLEGE (1927), and any number of major and minor studio knockoffs like BARE KNEES (1928), OUR DANCING DAUGHTERS(1928) and WALKING BACK (1928) had already come and gone, and the Broadway success of DeSylva, Brown, and Henderson’s GOOD NEWS guaranteed college musicals would invade the talkies in continuing copycats like SWEETIE (1929) with Nancy Carroll, SUNNY SKIES (1930) with Benny Rubin, and MGM’s own legit film transfer of GOOD NEWS in 1930, preserving the “Varsity Drag” for future generations.

So the smaller independent company Chesterfield Pictures Corp was just following a trend with CAMPUS KNIGHTS, but like so many Chesterfield releases, it was still a solid and entertaining comedy, not huge of budget, but a fun farce for the small town houses.

Raymond McKee was heading towards the end of a long twenty-year film career in Silent Films. He had come to the movies via the Lubin Manufacturing Company in 1912, working on the East Coast and Jacksonville, Florida where he worked with and befriended Oliver “Babe” Hardy. When Lubin folded its Florida operations in 1915, McKee moved to Edison where he became a star in their late-to-the-game feature program, and stayed with the Company until it folded in 1918. Moving to Hollywood, Raymond joined Fox in 1919 and continued to work steadily in films like KATHLEEN MAVOURNEEN (1919) with Theda Bara and THE LITTLE WANDERER (1920) with Shirley Mason. Freelancing in 1922-23, McKee starred in a series of two-reelers for East Coast Producer C.C. Burr, co-starred with Lon Chaney in Goldwyn’s A BLIND BARGAIN (1922), and stayed busy until he joined the fledgling Warner Brothers Company in 1924, appearing in supporting roles in films like BABBITT (1924), THE GIRL OF THE LIMBERLOST (1924), and Ernst Lubitsch’s THREE WOMEN (1924).

In 1925, McKee signed with Mack Sennett to star in comedy shorts, and he was soon starred with Ruth Hiatt and little Mary Ann Jackson in the Smith Family Comedies, which if anything is what McKee is best remembered for today. In 1927, McKee was let go along with all of Sennett’s contractees as Sennett retooled for sound, end even though Pathe continued to release new Smith Family Comedies into 1929, McKee was freelancing at studios like First National and Chesterfield, where he made CAMPUS KNIGHTS. In 1929, McKee signed with Comedy Producer Jack White to head the first series of Talking Mermaid Comedies to be released through Educational, these would be Raymond’s only and last sound films. Whatever the reason, perhaps he did not like working in sound films, McKee retired from motion pictures altogether, but lived a long, happy retirement, passing away in Long Beach, CA in 1984.

CAMPUS KNIGHTS Director Albert A. Kelley is not a name that comes up much of recent, but he keeps the film light and frothy. Connecticut-born, and Brother of Cinematographer George F. Kelley, Albert started as an Assistant Director in the late teens, and helmed his first film, HOME STUFF, starring Viola Dana, for Metro in 1921, but after one more film, he did not resurface behind a megaphone until 1926, when he began directing films for B. P. Schulberg. Kelley then bounced around the independents through the 20’s handling an anti-Birth Control feature in 1929 called NO MORE CHILDREN (odd title for an anti- Birth Control Film, shouldn’t that be LOTS MORE CHILDREN!?) which garnered him some attention.

This attention snagged Kelley a directing job on THE WOMAN RACKET at MGM in 1930, but no permanent berth resulted there after this film starring Tom Moore and Blanche Sweet. Kelley then did find his most prolonged period of employment at Universal doing their revival of the “Leather Pushers” series of short comedies which lasted one season, and Kelley’s apparent expertise in directing sports-related subjects had him remaining at the studio through the end of 1931 making shorts about football and basketball.

No credits for Albert Kelley through 1932, but in 1933, he co-directed (with Harry Hoyt) a racy little potboiler for I. E. Chadwick called JUNGLE BRIDE, starring Charles Starrett and a post-MGM Anita Page who flaunts it pre-code style in this Desert Island Fantasy on her way out of the Movie Business. This odd independent is probably Kelley’s most well-known film today.

Kelley was obviously in some other line of work through the rest of the 30’s, but amazingly he resurfaces in the Directors Chair in the early 1940’s, making a handful of PRC and Republic programmers like DOUBLE CROSS (1941) and SUBMARINE BASE (1943). Then in 1948, Kelley wraps up his directing career with another exploitation “story of life” feature, STREET CORNER, warning potential “out of wedlock” moms about the pitfalls of premature parenthood, so if the auteurists need to find an underlying theme to Albert H, Kelley’s directorial oeuvre’, pregnancy seems to be it (JUNGLE BRIDE even spends an inordinate amount of time being concerned about Starrett and Page’s unmarried island coupling potentially bearing fruit as well).

After STREET CORNER, only one more right-wing patriotic short, AMERICA FOR ME (1953) had Kelley’s name attached to it, after that, he slips through the cracks of film history. He must have had some other means of support as he passes away May 2, 1989 at the age of 94, and while his career is no ones textbook example of the word “distinguished”, Albert H. Kelley had thirty-plus years on and off in the Industry, no mean feat in itself, though don’t expect and festival retrospectives or biographical paragraphs longer than you see here.

Leading lady Marie Quillan is, in-fact, the Sister of actor/Comedian Eddie Quillan, and though she is a winsome and charming heroine in CAMPUS KNIGHTS, she obviously had little interest in pursuing a movie career, with only ten movie credits, mostly small parts (her only other notable role is in a 1933 RKO Tom Keene western called THE SADDLE BUSTER) to her name. Giving up acting for marriage, Marie lived a long-life, passing away in 1998.



RICHARD M ROBERTS