1960 film
College Confidential is a 1960 American B-movie drama directed by Albert Zugsmith[1] and starring Steve Allen, Jayne Meadows and Mamie Van Doren.[2][3]
Plot
Sociology professor Steve McInter conducts a survey at Collins College about the lifestyles and sexual urges of the younger generation.[4] The father of one of his students, Sally Blake, confronts McInter about the survey and found that he was having an affair with a female student. Reporter Betty Duquesne receives an anonymous tip that McInter is corrupting the college students. McInter has a party at his house where a student film that had been spliced with a supposedly "pornographic" movie was shown. The professor is arrested and a trial was held where he is charged with corrupting the morals of minors, which attracted the attention of the media. After the trial, McInter attacked the "dirty-mindedness" of the town.[5]
Production
The film was an unofficial follow-up to High School Confidential from two years prior, although made for a different studio. Director Joe Dante, who spoofed said follow-up on the 1979 Ramones vehicle Rock 'n' Roll High School,[6] asked Allen about making College Confidential at one point and the latter said that it was going to be progressive. It has never been available on any home media.[7][8]
Randy Sparks performed two songs on the film: "College Confidential" and "Playmates", while Conway Twitty performed "College Confidential Ball".[5]
Reception
Howard Thompson of The New York Times thought the picture "best-described as punk", and wrote that "Steve Allen and Jayne Meadows are such personable, alert performers that it is truly painful to find them co-starring in a piece of movie claptrap like College Confidential." The students in the film were described as seemingly "even more adolescent, apparently never touch a book, continually grasp each other instead, or slither around mouthing a kind of steamy, beatnik jargon.".[2] The New York Herald Tribune said of the acting: "Earl Wilson and other members of the fourth estate show up in court to demonstrate their shortcomings as actors..."[9]
