Pigskin Parade is the story of a small Texas college that, due to the sort of wacky mix-ups prevalent in 1930s musicals, is slated to play the powerhouse Yale football team. Like many Depression-era films, Pigskin Parade is chock full of people with the sort of bounding enthusiasm most often associated with speed freaks and manic-depressives. The entire movie seems like it's on an amphetamine kick, with every character cavorting about wildly and breaking into song at the drop of a hat. To add to the faint air of surrealism that pervades Pigskin Parade, the college's student body seems to consist largely of middle-aged Vaudevillians (including The Wizard Of Oz's Jack Haley), and the primary comic relief comes from a wide-eyed, mildly insane but basically amiable Communist who, in the high point of the film, is inspired to economic sabotage by what is probably the only Communist-revolution-themed production number in football-musical history. The movie's chief appeal lies in the powerhouse debut performance by a 15-year-old Judy Garland, who manages in a relatively small role to upstage even the frantically mugging performers that surround her. As both a fascinating time capsule and a damn entertaining film, Pigskin Parade is an eminently watchable oddity.