The Band Plays On Reviews

In this monotonous tale, four street punks (Robert Young, Stuart Erwin, Russell Hardie, and William Tannen) are brought before a kindly judge for stealing a Ford. He assigns the boys to a special program run by a football coach (Preston Foster) who teaches them the meaning of teamwork, loyalty, and honor, and they prove themselves to be gifted athletes. In addition to its other problems, the film is marred by a poor job of matching newsreel footage of football crowds with the staged shots. Harry Stuhldreher, one of Notre Dame's famous "Four Horsemen," was the coauthor of one of the stories on which THE BAND PLAYS ON is based.