In combination with changes in social conventions and dress codes, and inspired by best-selling novels about college life, such as Flaming Youth (1923) and F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise (1920), Americans had become fascinated with youth culture by the mid-1920s. Hollywood and the subject of college life were tailor-made for an audience so obsessed with youth, beauty and sex. The success of Colleen Moore's now lost film, Flaming Youth (1923), Harold Lloyd's The Freshman (1925), and Buster Keaton's College (1927) provided a foundation for the “the college life” genre.
A common scenario finds the bespectacled, shy bookworm with more talent for learning than athletics, dreaming hopelessly of dating the campus beauty. She, of course, is only interested in the big man on campus, often also the school's star quarterback. The Poor Nut follows this pattern closely. Jack Mulhall plays Jack, a botany student in love with Julie Winters (Jane Winton), the beauty queen of the rival college. He writes (but never sends) love letters addressed to her, lying about his fraternity membership and athletic skills. As a prank, one of Jack's letters is mailed to Julie, who responds and wants to meet. Knowing his dream girl will be looking for him when the two colleges compete in a track meet, Jack has to find a way to measure up to her expectations—and fast!
Rejecting conventional double standards, Julie seeks to indulge her own desires in meeting Jack, a man she hopes may be even more attractive than her current boyfriend, the star athlete of her college. A former Ziegfeld girl, Winton fits the part of Jazz Age coquette perfectly with her piercing eyes, bee-stung lips, and bobbed hair. In a rare appearance in a silent film, young Jean Arthur appears as a fellow botany student who admires Jack for his mind. —Philip H. G. Ituarte
35mm, tinted, silent, approx. 70 min. Director: Richard Wallace. Production: First National Pictures, Inc., Jess Smith Productions. Distribution: First National Pictures, Inc. Presented by: Joseph M. Schenck. Based on the play by: J. C. Nugent and Elliott Nugent. Screenwriter: Paul Schofield. Cinematography: David Kesson. Cast: Jack Mulhall, Charlie Murray, Jean Arthur, Jane Winton, Glenn Tryon.
Restored from a 35mm nitrate print.
