Two Minutes To Play (1936) On DVD

Franklin College junior Martin Granville is a superb athlete and the coach wants him to quarterback the football squad. Unfortunately, the boy's father has forbidden him to play. The coach recruits beautiful co-ed Pat Meredith to persuade Martin to join the team. Pat is the girlfriend of Jack Gaines, team captain, whose family are bitter rivals of the Granvilles. When Pat starts doing "her job" and dating Martin, the two start to develop real feelings for one another, infuriating Jack. He strikes back by publicly humiliating Martin as a coward, afraid to play football, and tension between the two young men reaches the boiling point.

Olympic silver medalist Herman Brix started his acting career playing the title role in The New Adventures Of Tarzan (1935). Later, as Bruce Bennett, he had memorable roles in screen classics such as Sahara (1943), Dark Passage (1947), and Treasure Of The Sierra Madre (1948). In Two Minutes To Play he is joined by a strong supporting cast including Edward Nugent, Betty Compson and Duncan Renaldo.

TWO MINUTES TO PLAY is a cheap but energetic Sam Katzman-produced vehicle for Olympic champion Herman Brix. The star plays Martin Granville, an over-aged but undeniably muscular college football hero. Martin finds himself in competition with Jack Gaines (Eddie Nugent) for the affections of cute coed Pat Meredith (Jeanne Martel). In this way, Martin and Jack are emulating their respective fathers, who'd been bitter rivals ever since their own college days. As expected, the story, and its attendant conflicts, are resolved in the climactic Big Game. Herman Brix did rather better for himself when he moved to Columbia and changed his screen name to Bruce Bennett.