College Lovers (Lost 1930 Film)

In 1930, a pre-code film entitled College Lovers was released from Warner Bros. under one of their subsidiaries First National Pictures, and was directed by John G. Adolfi. The film was based upon the story of the same name by Earl Baldwin, a man who wrote over fifty screenplays throughout his lifetime. College Lovers was about Tiny Courtley, a star football player who leaves his college, Sanford College, after he discovers that his girlfriend eloped with another man, but the student manager of the college's athletic association, Frank Taylor, knows that they need Williams to help them win an important football game against a rivaling college. Thus he makes a plan with his girlfriend to help get Williams back into the college to win the game.

The film was initially planned to be a complete full-scale musical comedy. However, due to film crowds growing tired of musicals, a majority of the musical numbers were cut from the movie. Though when the advertisements, and trailers were released, they claimed that there was music in the film, and that Jack Whiting, who played Frank Taylor, was a singing comedy star, despite the fact that there was no singing in the film at all. The cuts that happened accounted for the film's very short running time of 61 minutes. The cast of the film consisted of Jack Whiting, Marian Nixon, Frank McHugh, Guinn Williams, Russell Hopton, Wade Boteler, Phyllis Crane, Richard Tucker, Charles Judels, and Pauline Wagner.

No traces of this film are known to survive, but it's possible that the soundtrack, which was recorded on Vitaphone, could survive within private hands. Interestingly though, it turns out that there was a version of College Lovers released outside the United States, that contained the cut musical numbers, as outside the U.S., there was no protest or backlash against musical films. It is unknown if this version of the film exists.