Summary
On a frost-laced quadrangle where Presbyterian piety collides with Baptist braggadocio, a president’s daughter—already a serial mourner of engagements—becomes the strategic ace in a gridiron cold war. Jane Witherspoon, campus siren and self-anointed ‘college widow,’ is dragooned into seducing Billy Bolton, the millionaire scion whose golden calves have carried Hingham to victory for three autumns. The bait: Billy’s transfer to despised Atwater; the switch: Jane’s inconvenient heart. What begins as a calculated recruitment quickly unspools into a carnival of forged transcripts, thousand-dollar wagers, and a barn-burning finale where love itself is carried across the goal-line through walls of flame. In the smoke-stung aftermath, reputations are scorched, alliances reversed, and the only trophy worth hoisting is the girl who once trafficked in farewells.
Synopsis
Atwater and Hingham are two rival colleges in the Middle West, and Hingham has for several seasons bested Atwater at football. There is a well-grounded impression that Atwater's weakness on the Gridiron must be attributed to the inherent opposition of its president, Dr. Witherspoon, who has a notion that Atwater, being a Presbyterian institution, should play gentle and unbloody football, and the members of the squad must attend recitations. Fortunately, football has two enthusiastic champions in the president's daughter, Jane, known as "The College Widow" because she bids farewell to her fiancé at every commencement, and Mrs. Dalzelle, a grass widow, who is the convenient and unwatchful chaperone of all the young women who have the entree of the Atwater Campus. These two, after much earnest argument, succeed in convincing the doctor that true college supremacy can only be attained through the excellence of its football team, and the paramount consideration is the defeat of Hingham, a Baptist institution, not far distant. The Atwater eleven, under the charge of Jack Larrabee, a graduate coach, and Matty McGowan, a professional trainer, proves so hopeless as a possible conqueror of Hingham, that Stub Tallmadge, an undergraduate, is sent abroad to search for new athletic timber. After many peregrinations among the farms and manufacturing towns he succeeds in unearthing a young giant named Murphy, who seems to have every qualification and being totally unschooled. It is arranged that he shall enter Atwater as a special student in a course of art, but even the ponderous Murphy is not potent enough to pull the team out of the rut into which it has fallen, and further building up of the team becomes more and more of a necessity every day. Comes there at this time to Atwater a millionaire named Bolton, whose son has for three years been the unapproachable half-back of Hingham, and the arrival of the two creates great enthusiasm among the college athletes. But when it is discovered that Billy's presence with his father is only to secure the services of a tutor, to squeeze him through the fourth freshman year so that he may claim to have spent four years at college, the consternation in Atwater knows no bounds. Coach Larrabee determines to secure the famous halfback at all hazards, and although he is supposed to be almost engaged to Jane Witherspoon, he evolves a plot by which she shall work her wiles upon Billy Bolton, and induce him to enter Atwater as a regular student. This, as usual, proves to be no difficult task, for poor Billy falls in love with Jane at first sight. His father is a long-time patron of Hingham, which institution has often conferred honorary degrees upon him in return for financial assistance, and before leaving Atwater for a quick trip to Europe, he leaves a check for $1,000 in his office as a bet that Atwater cannot beat Hingham in the Thanksgiving game. But he has not reckoned on the wonderful deftness of the college widow as a temptress, for, no sooner has he sailed from New York, when she induces his son to resign from Hingham and become half-back for Atwater. "The plans of mice and men gang aft aglee," however, and in luring the love of the great Hingham star, she falls deeply in love with him herself. On the night of the victory, when he won his game almost by his own exertions, At water is ablaze with lights and fireworks, and the students despoil many stores of their signs and fences of their gates. Then it is that for the first time he discovers that he has been made the dupe of a flirt and decides upon moving west with his father, where even mention of the very name of Atwater would not be possible. At the same time, Jack Larrabee discovers that his plot has become a veritable boomerang, for it has resulted in losing forever the love of Jane Witherspoon, A great celebration of the victory is arranged for the evening of the game at a hotel near the college and while the merry band of revelers are dancing about the mighty bonfire, these disclosures are made, and two fathers announce that their children shall go to the west together. During the progress of the banquet which is to terminate the festivities of the day an accident happens in the kitchen which causes a rapid and devastating conflagration and the guests escape death only after the most superhuman efforts, many of them being compelled to walk through fire or jump from windows into fire nets. To the horror of all, it is announced that Jane has become lost in the scramble for the two stairways and is in the burning building. Billy has been injured by a leap from a window, but Jack Larrabee offers to risk his life to save Jane. The firemen and police, however, assure him that such an effort would be nothing less than a plunge to death, and mass in front of the burning doorway to prevent him from entering. Calling upon his football team, a wedge is formed, which ploughs a way through the massed firemen. Jack feels his way through the fire and smoke, and places his lost love in her more worthy lover's arms.
Review Excerpt
"Imagine a Midwest autumn that smells of crushed pigskin, coal smoke, and theological one-upmanship. Into this arena The College Widow drops like a nitrate firework: part recruitment caper, part bedroom farce, part sermon on the seductive sins of winning at any cost. The film—released in the twilight of silent cinema, when talkies were already whispering promises—survives today only in brittle stills and the breathless recollections of those who saw it at a campus chapel converted into a movie-ho..."
