Texas at the Movies



The cast of Pigskin Parade, 1936

 This January Term at Austin College, I am teaching a course on the representation of Texas in the movies. Films can bring history and culture alive by using sound and visual images to represent people, places, and events in the past.  Films, especially feature films, can also distort the past by stereotyping, idealizing, or changing the fact base to meet the dramatic or cinematic needs of the film maker. This course is an experiential examination of the major themes, myths, and stereotypes held in culture within the context of southwestern and Mexican regionalism, as seen motion pictures. “Pigskin Parade” is the first film that I showed in the class this week. This zany and madcap musical farce dealing with football in Texas was filmed during 1936 at the Paramount Studios in Hollywood with exterior locations shot at Occidental College, the Los Angeles Coliseum, and the Rose Bowl. The film had its roots in the national attention that came to Texas that year because of the state's Centennial Celebration and also by the fact that Southern Methodist University played Stanford in the January, 1936 Rose Bowl game. SMU lost but garnered much respect and acclaim in the sport's world. As a sidelight, one of the spectators at that fabled 1936 Rose Bowl game was Texas oilman J. Curtis Sanford who wondered why a similar football bowl competition could not be played in Dallas, so he decided to create the Cotton Bowl Classic, first played in 1937 and which today has its roots in events that also helped to motivate this film. Paramount's goofy "Pigskin Parade" is filled to the brim with syncopated 1930s collegiate music, a good deal of football mayhem, corn pone Texas humor, and a shallow plot that manages nonetheless to say a great deal about the role of football in Texas and the popular stereotypes of Texas from that era. The film notably features a several second un-credited cameo appearance by former Texas Governor Miriam A. "Ma" Ferguson. Today, outside of Texas film history circles, this film is chiefly remembered as the then 14 year-old Judy Garland's first major screen appearance.