The Freshman (1925) on Netflix
Harold Lamb enrolls at Tate University, imitating his movie idol to become popular. The College Cad makes him the school joke; Peggy, his landlady's daughter, is his only friend.
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- Netflix4.3/5
- IMDb7.5/106,698 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes95%
Trailer
Plot summary
Harold Lamb is a bright-eyed but naive young man who arrives at Tate University determined to become popular. On the train he meets Peggy, and the two are drawn to each other. At school he emulates his movie idol, The College Hero, copying a small jig performed before greetings and taking the nickname Speedy. The College Cad turns him into the target of a running joke that Harold does not recognize. Peggy, his only true friend, is the daughter of his landlady. Harold wants a place on the football squad. The coach is not impressed by him, but when Harold damages the single practice tackle dummy, he is used to absorb the tackles himself. Chet Trask, the team captain, proposes that Harold be kept on as water boy while believing he has made the team.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Freshman (1925)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- American humorist H. C. Witwer sued Harold Lloyd in April 1929 for $2,300,000, claiming The Freshman was pirated from Witwer's 1915 short story "The Emancipation of Rodney". Witwer died before it was settled; his widow won a 1930 judgment, which an appeals court overturned, leaving her nothing.
- The football game sequence was shot on the field at the Rose Bowl, and its crowd scenes were filmed at halftime during the real November 1924 Big Game between UC Berkeley and Stanford at California Memorial Stadium.
- Hugely popular on its 1925 release, The Freshman sparked a craze for college films that lasted well beyond the 1920s.
- In 1990 the Library of Congress selected The Freshman for the United States National Film Registry in only the second year of voting, making it one of the first 50 films to receive the honor.
- Lloyd's granddaughter Suzanne Lloyd Hayes sued the Walt Disney Company in 2000, alleging that elements of The Freshman were copied into the 1998 comedy The Waterboy; a Los Angeles federal court ruled against her.
- The football game sequence from The Freshman was reused by Harold Lloyd and director Preston Sturges in Lloyd's last film, The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1947).
