Summary
A gilded ne’er-do-well, Jack Bennett, is dispatched to campus with a meager purse and a dynastic engagement; his swagger collides with the cold machinery of fraternity vendettas, dean’s-office puritanism, and the machinations of Bruce Howard, a rival who covets both the hero’s girl and his father’s government tender. After a rigged scandal—an undressed co-ed planted in his quarters—Jack is cast out, disinherited, and stripped of identity. The sole witness, a scullery waif named Daisy Woods, becomes his Virgil, guiding him through humiliation toward self-forged redemption. Armed with pilfered blueprints and a mother’s secret loan, Jack underbids the very elders who banished him, turning disgrace into a coup that rewrites filial loyalty and reorders the marriage market. The film ends with Jack spurning the heiress whose affection was always counterfeit, choosing instead the orphan whose gaze had never been transactional.
Synopsis
Jack Bennett has been leading a gay life; his father has just received a bill from one of the café proprietors for damage committed by his son and others of a party the night before. He summons the young man and proceeds to lecture him soundly, stating that in the college career upon which he is about to start, his allowance is to be $20 per week. Jack's fiancée is Irma Brentwood, the daughter of his father's partner in business. She, however, prefers Bruce Howard, an upperclassman in the college. It is the plan of the fathers that their children shall marry when Jack finishes college. At school Jack and Bruce are bitter rivals and belong to opposing Greek letter fraternities. Jack is stopping at Mrs. Blanding's boarding house. In Mrs. Blanding's employ is little orphan girl Daisy Woods, who conceives a violent admiration and semi-love for Jack. He scarcely notices her, although he is friendly when by chance he meets her. Jack and his frat brothers plan to attend the theater, but find that the opposing fraternity, including Bruce Howard, have taken possession of the theater and that there is nothing left for them. Howard's crowd starts a rough-house, which ends in their being driven from the theater with a fire hose. Jack and his boys, entering by the stage entrance, arrange with the girls to visit the frat house for a little evening, no evil intended. Disgruntled, Howard's crowd learns of what has happened and of how the other fellows have put it over on them, and they plan to inform the dean of the college. Jack's friends learn of this bit of treachery and smuggle the girls out of the house, while, to cast off suspicion, half of the fellows masquerade as girls. Howard, however, is determined to have revenge, so he arranges with one of the girls a scheme to humiliate his rival. He bribes the girl and smuggles her into Jack Bennett's room at the boarding house, being observed, however, by little Daisy Woods. Jack returns and finds the woman in his room. Jack is expelled and his father disinherits him. Jack is brokenhearted, but acting on the advice of little Daisy Woods, resolves to be a man and make good. Jack, with an eye to the welfare of his little friend, writes a note to his father, explaining that Daisy knows the truth and can explain all. Daisy arrives at the home of Jack's father and tells her story to both his father and his fiancée. His fiancée is apparently unaffected, but the father is repentant and offers forgiveness to his son through Daisy. Jack rejects the offer, stating that he has decided to make good unaided. Mr. Bennett, Jack's father, and Mr. Brentwood, Irma's father, are figuring on a large government contract bid. One evening when calling upon Irma, Bruce Howard sees papers upon which the two fathers have been working lying upon the table, and he at once realizes their value. He slips them inside his pocket, being observed by Daisy, who is acting as Irma's maid. She succeeds in securing the papers without his knowledge and, knowing of their great value, plans to give them to Jack. Jack realizes the value of the papers, and securing an advance from his mother, who has always been his friend, he succeeds in underbidding Howard, as well as his father and partner. He is re-established in the eyes of the fathers, by thus saving the contract. The true story of Howard's duplicity comes out. Irma's father again offers her to Jack, who coldly turns his back upon her and places his arm about the little orphan, Daisy.
Review Excerpt
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The projector clatters like a typewriter drunk on gin, and out of the amber fog emerges The College Orphan—a film that treats the ivy-draped campus as both playground and abattoir for the idle rich.
Jack Bennett’s introduction is a blur of toppled champagne towers and shattered jazz-age crystal; the café owner’s damages list reads like a Dadaist poem—one chaise longue, two mirrors, three reputations. Father, a granite titan of industry, shrinks the boy’s allowance to a church-mouse twenty per..."
