Slapsie Maxie Rosenbloom hit Boston yesterday with a thud as of a rotten tomato and with odor to match. Poor gags, far-fetched puns, drawn-out dialogue, and a well-nigh non-existent plot combine to make "Harvard, Here I Come" as a rather tedious ordeal. Except for the local interest in Hollywood's presentation of what bodes ill to become its favorite subject, Harvard, the show is merely another low metabolism slapstick comedy.

Almost concealed by the weight of burlesque applied with superhuman travail by Maxie lies the counterpart of the message of social snobbery which J. P. Marquand gave to the world in the now famous "Pulham." Harvard's intellectual snobbery, a form of the disease as distasteful as its social counterpart and even more prevalent around Cambridge, deserves a shellacking, but the heavy hand of Hollywood molded Maxie's opus into the general style of belly-laugh comedies, abandoning all thought of satire.

As far as the material aspects of Harvard are concerned, Robert Benchley (the senior) or whoever did the technical work on the problem, succeeds fairly well. There are no burly football players nonchalantly sporting their "H's." No shots of the "campus," to which the players habitually refer, are shown. The general atmosphere is one of restraint and luxury, with an understandable accent on luxury.

Marie Wilson, incidentally, plays the cutest and dumbest Racliffe girl in history.

The first feature, "Confirm or Deny," presents Don Ameche bringing history up to date as a reporter during the air attack on London of September, 1940. Joan Bennett is pleasant, and the romance is discreetly played down.