Torn out of Greta Garbo's arms in Mata Hari (1931) only to be handed a pigskin and a leather helmet for the college football drama Huddle (1932), Ramon Novarro had good reason to wonder if his handlers at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer had his best interests at heart. At 33 years of age, the Mexican expatriate turned movie idol (and successor to Rudolph Valentino) was cast as an 18 year-old Italian-American steelworker from Gary, Indiana who wins a $2,000 scholarship to Yale on the strength of his prowess on the gridiron. During preproduction, the role of immigrant scion Tony Amatto had been earmarked for both Robert Montgomery and Johnny Mack Brown (a former star player for the University of Alabama's Crimson Tide) but with the success of Mata Hari it was Novarro who found himself suiting up for the Big Game. Due to the release of Universal's likeminded college football drama The Spirit of Notre Dame (1931), the setting of Francis Wallace's original story (serialized in The Saturday Evening Post) was shifted from Notre Dame to Yale University. To appeal to Novarro's foreign fanbase, director Sam Wood was ordered to shoot alternative takes of the film's game scenes as soccer matches - though Huddle did better domestically than it did overseas. The result was a box office disappointment for MGM and an unsatisfying experience for Ramon Novarro, whom the studio let go in 1935.

By Richard Harland Smith