Pigskin Parade

Pigskin Parade was the first of 20th Century-Fox's many college football musicals of the 1930s. Gridiron coach Jack Haley will lose his job if he doesn't find a football hero for his college team. Haley and his wife (Patsy Kelly) scour the countryside, until they finally a slow-witted farm boy (Stuart Erwin) who practices his throwing skills by tossing watermelons an astonishing distance - which convinces the couple that he could do the same with the pigskin and thus become a sports hero. The bucolic young man is enrolled in the college, where his classmates do everything short of cheating to keep him academically qualified for the team. Thanks to the boy's natural sports talent, the team makes it to the Yale Bowl. Pigskin Parade is distinguished by a blockbuster musical cast, including The Yacht Club Boys (a "gentile" variation of the Ritz Brothers.), Johnny Downs, Betty Grable and Dixie Dunbar. But the film is stolen by 13-year-old Judy Garland, making her feature film debut as Stu Erwin's kid sister, who belts out several songs with the virtuosity of an entertainer twice her age.