Search for a command to run...
State College is a coeducational school where the athletics are more important than academics. All there are preparing for a big multi-sport match with arch rival Dale College. Students Arthur and Florence are brother and sister, each with love troubles. Their romantic problems are resolved against a background of leggy singing, dancing coeds in this 2 reel musical.
A pretty Chicago teenager (Gale Storm), who's being courted by an older man, is sent by her worried parents to live with her uncle on his Iowa farm.
Alexander Schonath is an exceptionally gifted musician who plays first violin in a philharmonic orchestra. But when the orchestra runs into financial difficulties, Alexander is the first to leave and join a dance band – the other musicians, especially his father, see him as a "deserter." In Alexander's absence, his younger, perpetually sickly brother Hans makes a career in the philharmonic and becomes engaged to Maria, the daughter of the orchestra's chairman, Herbert Hartwig.
Ian Bonar is Stevie, a wannabe musician whose look is a hybrid of Jarvis Cocker and early Elvis Costello. Working with his drummer pal Neil (Matthew Baynton) in a call centre, they dream of breaking into the indie music scene. To do this they require additional band members. Step forward the driven (and drinking) guitarist Billy (Kieran Bew) and slightly scatty bassist Emily (Lyndsey Marshal), who has a sideline in making sculpture from hair.
Based on Ruggero Leoncavallo's opera Pagliacci. The film recounts the tragedy of Canio, the lead clown (or pagliaccio in Italian) in a commedia dell'arte troupe, his wife Nedda, and her lover, Silvio. When Nedda spurns the advances of Tonio, another player in the troupe, he tells Canio about Nedda's betrayal. In a jealous rage Canio murders both Nedda and Silvio. The only actor in the cast who also sang his role was the celebrated Italian baritone, Tito Gobbi, but the film is largely very faithful to its source material, presenting the opera nearly complete.