Some films are simple, sweet and nicely presented like this one. They remain etched in the viewer's mind as a pleasant motion picture experience. It had been awhile since I watched SORORITY HOUSE, but I remembered enjoying it very much...namely because of Anne Shirley's central performance, as well as Dalton Trumbo's intelligent screenplay.
Miss Shirley is playing a grocer's daughter who has spent her life in a small town getting good grades, getting along with everyone and getting customers to come back to her father's store. However, she would like to attend college and dreams of attending a place called Talbot University in a nearby city.
She doesn't think they can afford the tuition, but dear old dad takes out a loan from the bank so she's able to go. The story kicks into gear when Shirley's character arrives on campus a short time later.
She finds lodging at the boarding house of a kind old woman (Margaret Armstrong) and ends up sharing a room with two other girls (Barbara Read and Pamela Blake). Miss Read is a perfect contrast to Miss Shirley, playing a world-wise type who is the complete opposite of the naive qualities that Shirley projects.
As for Miss Blake, her role is that of a very insecure upperclass girl who is just dying to be invited to join a sorority...and this is where the title and story's main theme come into focus.
Trumbo's screenplay highlights the cattiness and desperation of rich snobs struggling to maintain a way of life for their own sort of people, while middle-class girls like Shirley can become upwardly mobile if they are pretty enough and have winning personalities.
At the same time we see the dreeps, a made-up word that Read uses, which is a combination of dreary and weep-- basically dreary girls who weep because they will never fit in anywhere. You know the ones I'm talking about-- they wear thick glasses and knit, because they have nothing to do on a Saturday night. Such pitiful creatures.
They will never be asked to move into a sorority house on the hill, and will spend their entire college career at the boarding house. Stereotypes? Oh yes. But that gives the story its edge, because we see how these girls and the perception of where they're from and where they're going in life, determining who they are.
The movie would not be complete if there wasn't a bit of wholesome romance worked into the 63-minute plot. RKO contract player James Ellison, who also worked with Miss Shirley in ANNE OF WINDY POPLARS, plays a somewhat older medical student who ditches a snooty sorority gal when he gets to know Shirley and develops feelings for her.
There's a very cute scene where the freshman girls must have physical exams, and Shirley goes to Ellison for hers. There is nothing inappropriate about the scene...she is overly modest, and he kids her when taking her blood pressure. He asks her on a date which makes her BP go up. It goes up even more when he says she's the most attractive female he's seen on campus.
The "climax" of this mild film involves the decision-making process of the sororities. Especially how it affects Miss Blake's character when she is not chosen to join one of them, but Shirley and other girls are. She goes into the bathroom to kill herself, but is stopped in time. Shades of the suicide scene in STAGE DOOR, which was much more tragic.
In addition to this, we have a nice reconciliation between Shirley and her father, after she had started to act haughty and was embarrassed to say she was a grocer's daughter. In the end, Shirley and her roommates decide to stay at the boarding house and start their own club, for the more independent girls like them who want to be together. I guess you could say they are starting their own sorority!
Miss Shirley is playing a grocer's daughter who has spent her life in a small town getting good grades, getting along with everyone and getting customers to come back to her father's store. However, she would like to attend college and dreams of attending a place called Talbot University in a nearby city.
She doesn't think they can afford the tuition, but dear old dad takes out a loan from the bank so she's able to go. The story kicks into gear when Shirley's character arrives on campus a short time later.
She finds lodging at the boarding house of a kind old woman (Margaret Armstrong) and ends up sharing a room with two other girls (Barbara Read and Pamela Blake). Miss Read is a perfect contrast to Miss Shirley, playing a world-wise type who is the complete opposite of the naive qualities that Shirley projects.
As for Miss Blake, her role is that of a very insecure upperclass girl who is just dying to be invited to join a sorority...and this is where the title and story's main theme come into focus.
Trumbo's screenplay highlights the cattiness and desperation of rich snobs struggling to maintain a way of life for their own sort of people, while middle-class girls like Shirley can become upwardly mobile if they are pretty enough and have winning personalities.
At the same time we see the dreeps, a made-up word that Read uses, which is a combination of dreary and weep-- basically dreary girls who weep because they will never fit in anywhere. You know the ones I'm talking about-- they wear thick glasses and knit, because they have nothing to do on a Saturday night. Such pitiful creatures.
They will never be asked to move into a sorority house on the hill, and will spend their entire college career at the boarding house. Stereotypes? Oh yes. But that gives the story its edge, because we see how these girls and the perception of where they're from and where they're going in life, determining who they are.
The movie would not be complete if there wasn't a bit of wholesome romance worked into the 63-minute plot. RKO contract player James Ellison, who also worked with Miss Shirley in ANNE OF WINDY POPLARS, plays a somewhat older medical student who ditches a snooty sorority gal when he gets to know Shirley and develops feelings for her.
There's a very cute scene where the freshman girls must have physical exams, and Shirley goes to Ellison for hers. There is nothing inappropriate about the scene...she is overly modest, and he kids her when taking her blood pressure. He asks her on a date which makes her BP go up. It goes up even more when he says she's the most attractive female he's seen on campus.
The "climax" of this mild film involves the decision-making process of the sororities. Especially how it affects Miss Blake's character when she is not chosen to join one of them, but Shirley and other girls are. She goes into the bathroom to kill herself, but is stopped in time. Shades of the suicide scene in STAGE DOOR, which was much more tragic.
In addition to this, we have a nice reconciliation between Shirley and her father, after she had started to act haughty and was embarrassed to say she was a grocer's daughter. In the end, Shirley and her roommates decide to stay at the boarding house and start their own club, for the more independent girls like them who want to be together. I guess you could say they are starting their own sorority!