Written by Linda
March 09, 2011
Boarding schools are ripe for drama, and the 1934 pre-code film Finishing School offers some surprisingly juicy, girls-gone-wild shenanigans courtesy of Ginger Rogers, of all people!
In the opening credits of Finishing School, the cast of characters are introduced one by one, culminating with "The Snob"... a picture of the school itself. My head for inflation conversion imploded when it showed a receipt for tuition and board for the new girl at $6000. That would be $6000 in 1933 dollars! I seem to remember that my grandparents' four bedroom urban home cost $3000 just a few years earlier in real life. I'm just saying.
Virginal Virginia (Frances Dee) is the new girl, all buttoned-up, prim, and demure. She is given the rundown on school rules: no drinking, no smoking, school uniforms (suck!)... then she meets her roommate "Pony" (Ginger Rogers) who is as sassy and frisky as a lil' pony herself. Pony and her pals immediately rifle through Virginia's stuff, and find a bottle of liquor. Will they drink it? Will Virginia allow them? Virginia shows moxie by not only NOT letting the girls drink it, but instead smashes the bottle in the fireplace. Is she a prude? Still hard to tell...
Pony and the girls haul Virginia along to the big city of New York for a weekend, under the guise of visiting an aunt. But there is no aunt! Only boys! And a hotel! And drinking! Wow. Actually I was impressed, and this is where a glint of the pre-code leniency comes into Finishing School. The only nice boy of the drunken evening is the hotel waiter, Mac (Bruce Cabot), a true gentleman, who may be poor and a waiter... but as is often true in movies, he is also studying to be a doctor!
Needless to say, the posh boarding school is not keen with Virginia being sweet on a waiter-boy who drives a crap car. But kids will be kids (even if they look like they are already 30 in this era). So, when Virginia starts looking haunted and peaked and doesn't want to see the school nurse, you know something came up, so to speak, on the snowy night in the boathouse! But then Finishing School, not being subject to the strict moral code that clouded Hollywood in later years, kind of lets it be. And there is a happy ending. Just when you think Virginia ought to toss herself off a balcony, as would be the case in just about any other similar (later) Hollywood film about teen pregnancy... all gets resolved, practically with back-slapping. Wow!
Finishing School is not a half-bad film. Virginia is the somewhat mousy, headstrong heroine, and Mac is a likable boy-interest. Honestly though? Ginger Rogers completely steals the show. She is brassy and sassy, and is a total hoot. Whenever the story strays from Pony (like the second half), the momentum stalls. But still, Finishing School is an interesting, and surprising document of how Hollywood's moral-code completely changed just a mere few years later.
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