|
|
Post by topbilled on Mar 16, 2024 16:54:43 GMT
I like this ⇧ movie, it's just fun. These are some brief comments I wrote nine years ago:
"Sun Valley Serenade," a fun, fluffy, 1941 romantic comedy staring Sonja Henie and John Payne with decent-sized roles for Glen Miller (yup, that Glen Miller) and Milton Berle (not really my cup of tea, but it is interesting to see him so young).
The movie has two things going for it. One, Miller's music - he and his band - is integrally woven into the plot highlighted by a full-bore version of what is basically an early music video of "Chattanooga Choo-Choo" (as always, showing how everything dates back way earlier than it seems - MTV started up in 1981). Two is the movie's overall charm from the Sun Valley setting - with early ski lodge coziness and beautiful ski and skating scenes - to Henie's spirited romantic innocence (with just a bit of necessary chicanery) that provides perfect escapism.
There is nothing challenging here - but good light-hearted entertainment. Also, it's funny to see all the 1940s ski sweaters as it looks like a current-day ad for Ralph Lauren (who openly acknowledges his debt to '20s - '50s American sartorial style). |
|
|
|
Post by topbilled on Mar 30, 2024 14:05:09 GMT
This neglected film is from 1939.
Marriage with music
The wife in the story is played by Loretta Young, who was nearing the end of her long-term contract with 20th Century Fox and refusing to extend her hitch. So in some ways the real-life actress was not unlike the diva she portrays in this film. For the husband we have Warner Baxter, who had settled comfortably into a series of modestly budgeted crowd pleasers at the studio. Baxter’s most frequent and perhaps favorite leading lady, Myrna Loy, was to be borrowed from MGM. But I suppose expense got in the way of that trade, and as a result, Young was assigned.
For the role of the friend in this comedic affair we have Binnie Barnes, who had been a leading lady in her native Britain in the early part of the decade. But at this point in the game, she was usually hired to play second leads in Hollywood. She married a producer who ensured she stayed in front of cameras until the 1970s, meaning she had a longer motion picture career than her costars.
Based on a story by James Cain, known more for melodramatic offerings, the script was written by Nunnally Johnson. Fox reused Johnson’s script for a remake a decade later, 1949’s EVERYBODY DOES IT. I guess the idea is that everybody does sing (you thought It meant something else, didn’t you?); though some are better at it than others. The general premise concerns a vainglorious wife who thinks she has it in her to be a great singer. Truth be told, she can’t carry a tune in a paper bag. Try telling her that!
The laughs come from the poor husband’s long-suffering routine putting up with such a woman. But even bigger laughs are generated in the next sequence, when the husband who is a working class construction contractor, is heard singing…and surprise of all surprises, he actually has talent. Of course, this sets the stage, literally, for him to explore a career outside his comfort zone. A vocal coach (Barnes) will help him attain great heights on a tour with her, to be followed by a role in an opera no less.
Of course, we have the wife (Young) struggling to adjust to this unexpected turn of events. The marriage is in jeopardy, since she has to acknowledge that she failed as a singer, then her ego must take another beating recognizing her husband will have the career she dreamed of…not an easy treble clef to swallow. While this is going on, she becomes jealous of the time that her husband spends with the other gal.
The only way things can go back to the old status quo is if the husband forsakes his new career and returns to his work in the construction business. Undoubtedly, the wife will find something else to try, a new artistic pursuit in which she’s again out of her depth. But they will always have each other.
The remake features Paul Douglas as the husband, and to be honest I feel that Paul Douglas is more convincing in blue collar roles than Warner Baxter is. The role of the wife is taken by Celeste Holm, another actress who was a diva off-camera. And the music teacher is played by Linda Darnell, slightly miscast, though she had successfully teamed up with Douglas in A LETTER TO THREE WIVES. Both versions feature the very best character actors in the supporting parts, and you really can’t go wrong watching either picture.
|
|
|
|
Post by topbilled on Apr 14, 2024 14:39:00 GMT
This neglected film is from 1936.
“You don’t know what you’re passing up, she’s one in a million!”
A show promoter (Adolphe Menjou) is stuck at a Swiss inn with his group of traveling musicians and his sarcastic wife (Arline Judge, who has some great zingers) when he makes a fortuitous discovery. The discovery is the daughter (Sonja Henie) of the innkeeper (Jean Hersholt), who is a natural ice skater— what else— and someone that Menjou realizes could be a star with his guidance.
Of course Menjou sees dollar signs more than he sees a chance of nurturing talent, but he does have the connections to turn Henie into a bonafide professional, which is something she might like. In the meantime, her father’s been training her for the Winter Olympics, which in 1936 were held in Germany. Footage from the ’36 Winter Olympics is edited in to the movie. Miss Henie had just competed at those games earlier in the year and won her third gold medal for her home country (Norway not Switzerland), before retiring from amateur competition to become a real-life professional skater.
The events of this film in some respects seem to mirror Henie’s own life up to this point. For instance, there is considerable dialogue about amateur sports and professional sports. Also, her character performs at Madison Square Garden at the end of the movie, and by the time Henie had signed with 20th Century Fox, she had also developed a deal to play top venues as a touring ice show performer.
Henie would remain under contract at Fox for the next seven years, appearing in ten films for the studio— nine as the star and one in which she just made a cameo appearance. ONE IN A MILLION was her first hit for Fox; a Hollywood star was born. Her leading man Don Ameche would also team up with her for HAPPY LANDING a year later, which became her most financially successful picture. There are plenty of nice moments between Henie and Ameche, who is cast as a smooth talking newspaperman. But the best parts, obviously, are when Henie’s on ice.
As for the supporting cast, Menjou and Hersholt deliver excellent performances, though Menjou’s style is more comedic and exaggerated. The plot’s most dramatic moment is handed over to Hersholt. This occurs later in the story when there is a mix-up, where Henie is believed to have skated professionally for Menjou, before winning an Olympic medal as an amateur. Hersholt takes the medal back to the committee to disqualify her, and he appeals to the Olympic Secretary (Montagu Love) to be compassionate and spare his daughter from any public embarrassment.
Of course, because it’s a mix-up, Henie is not in the wrong. She gets to hold on to the gold medal, retire from amateur competition and work as a professional without any scandal. She also gets to have her happily ever after with Ameche.
The most romantic scene with Henie and Ameche takes place inside a German Hofbräuhaus, with Ameche singing to her. In addition to this musical number, there is a number with an ensemble known as Borrah Minevitch and His Harmonica Rascals; they’re certainly energetic and fun to watch even if harmonica music is not your thing. Oh, and the Ritz Brothers, in their second film for 20th Century Fox, pop in and out with their comic shtick. One bit has them doing a horror boys routine.
One final note: Sonja Henie was not married when she made ONE IN A MILLION. Ironically, her first marriage in 1940 would be to future New York Yankees owner Dan Topping, who at this point, in 1937, was married to Henie’s costar Arline Judge. Topping had enjoyed the limelight playing on the amateur golf circuit; but I guess he wasn’t ambitious enough to forge a side career as an actor in a series of golf musicals!
|
|
|
|
Post by topbilled on Apr 18, 2024 14:02:05 GMT
This neglected film is from 1942.
Two teams of nine and four bases in a diamond-shaped design
This is one of those delightful B films with a sports theme that doesn’t exactly wow the viewer but certainly entertains. The picture’s two stars, Carole Landis and Lloyd Nolan, share an easy rapport and they’d go on to make MANILA CALLING later in the year. The country was already at war, but it was nice to know that a pleasurable American pastime like baseball might still be enjoyed.
Landis plays a society chick, born in Brooklyn, but now living in posh Manhattan, who doesn’t like to remember where she’s from originally. But when a wealthy auntie (Sara Allgood) dies, Landis and a bunch of other relatives are left with controlling interest in a Brooklyn baseball team (which is not referred to as the Dodgers, but it is implied).
One amusing plot point is that Landis and the other snooty family members have no real understanding of baseball like Allgood did. To them, it’s just an asset they’d rather sell to pocket some more cash. Nolan, an ex-player who was recruited to manage the team by Allgood before she passed on, can see that he’s got his work cut out for him with this clan.
Nolan’s job will not be confined to just getting the team in shape to win the pennant (something the real-life Dodgers did the year before), but in getting Landis to see the value in holding on to the team. During their interactions, they learn more about each other as well as the different parts of society they inhabit. We know Landis will become a real fan of baseball, and that she will end up with Nolan, but half the fun is in seeing them navigate the divide that exists between them during the early portions of the story.
Director Ray McCarey really seems to get a lot of spirited performances from the cast, more than is probably owed such a simple yet modestly budgeted item. The men cast as the ballplayers are not as in shape as we might expect them to be, but it’s evident they play the game well.
There are some likable character actors who bolster the scenes…besides Allgood whose role is all too brief at the beginning, we have William Frawley as an old crony of hers plus Mary Gordon as the mother of a rookie player; and Jane Darwell as Nolan’s ma.
We also have young Scotty Beckett as a wise beyond his years batboy who steals almost every scene in which he appears. Sadly, Beckett would die of a drug overdose in 1968.
This is not the most spectacular baseball flick ever made, but it’s fun to watch. Carole Landis seems very relaxed and at ease on screen. She didn’t have the most peaceful life, and died in 1948 from a drug overdose. Ray Carey also died in 1948 from a drug overdose. Though unhappy times were ahead for some, IT HAPPENED IN FLATBUSH is a cheerful motion picture in which they all hit a home run.
|
|
|
|
Post by sagebrush on Apr 18, 2024 14:45:44 GMT
This scene from IT HAPPENED IN FLATBUSH had me in stitches the first time I watched it. For anyone who has ever tried to explain baseball to someone who is not interested in the sport, it definitely resonates!
|
|
|
|
Post by Fading Fast on Apr 18, 2024 14:52:11 GMT
I can only echo Topbilled's spot-on comments on "It Happened in Flatbush." It's not a "major" picture, but a fun family/sports movie that you can enjoy even if baseball isn't your thing (ditto "Angels in the Outfield," "The Kid from Left Field" and a few others).
Lloyd Nolan is one of the biggest actors from the era who is all but forgotten today. He is different from a character actor, but he's not a leading man (other than in some Bs, like here). He could play the good guy, the bad guy, the buddy, the informer, and on and on - he quite often played a wise and calming authority figure - and he brought an integrity and believability to all his roles.
Ms. Landis, as you noted, did not have an easy life. But she did sport one heck of a rockin' body as seen in 1940's "One Million B.C." It was remade in 1966 as "One Million Years B.C." with Rachael Welch sporting her rockin' body wearing even less cavewoman clothing.
 
|
|
|
|
Post by Fading Fast on Apr 18, 2024 14:56:48 GMT
This scene from IT HAPPENED IN FLATBUSH had me in stitches the first time I watched it. For anyone who has ever tried to explain baseball to someone who is not interested in the sport, it definitely resonates!
|
|
|
|
Post by topbilled on May 2, 2024 14:11:35 GMT
This neglected film is from 1939.
Women’s hotel
This is a glorified B film from the folks at 20th Century Fox. It contains elements of romance and comedy, but is more known for its ensemble cast of Fox starlets, several of them going on to long and distinguished Hollywood careers. Among the women who check into the titular dwelling are Ann Sothern. Jean Rogers, Lynn Bari and Linda Darnell in her motion picture debut.
Darnell has the most screen time though she is billed after Sothern. Behind-the-scenes drama played out when Sothern, who’d just finished a contract at RKO, decided not to sign a long-term deal with Fox. She instead chose to sign with MGM, where a few scripts meant for the late Jean Harlow would be given to her. As a result of bailing on Fox, Sothern still retained top billing but her part was drastically cut in the editing room.
In lieu of Sothern’s decreased prominence, Darnell’s part was beefed up. Sothern & Darnell would reunite on screen ten years later as two of the wronged wives in A LETTER TO THREE WIVES, also for Fox. Apparently Sothern was able to mend fences with studio execs, and she had remained friendly with Darnell. The later film is more well-known, while HOTEL FOR WOMEN has slipped into obscurity.
Darnell was only 15 years old when she stepped before the cameras to shoot her first scenes in HOTEL FOR WOMEN. Publicists lied about her age and initially made her seem older than she actually was. After all, she was supposed to be playing a woman, not a teen girl in this film. The basic scenario was embellished by society maven Elsa Maxwell who was hired to add ‘realistic’ touches about young gals staying at a posh New York hotel.
Maxwell was a closeted lesbian who had a long-time female partner but never acknowledged their relationship in public. Despite being from a poor midwestern background, she had become a cosmopolitan sensation. She wielded great influence because of her powerful connections, often hobnobbing with prominent politicians and royalty. She was known for throwing lavish parties and writing a gossip column. In the 1940s she had her own radio show.
In order to give this picture increased value with contemporary audiences, Fox developed a supporting role for the doyenne and renamed it ELSA MAXWELL’S HOTEL FOR WOMEN. This was also a ploy to prevent a New York-based actress and part-time playwright known as Louise Howard from winning a suit against the studio for plagiarism. Miss Howard, who’d worked in burlesque as Halo Meadows, had authored a play called Women’s Hotel which the court ruled had been pilfered for this production. What ended up on screen wasn’t half as interesting as what went on behind the scenes.
|
|
|
|
Post by topbilled on May 4, 2024 15:05:07 GMT
This neglected film is from 1957.
Intriguing western from flamboyant storyteller
This is a 1957 entry that teams actress Barbara Stanwyck with writer-director Sam Fuller and leading man Barry Sullivan with whom Stanwyck had previously worked in two other films. A lot of thoughts crossed my mind as I watched FORTY GUNS. First, I want to point out that Leonard Maltin seems to think the story is a bit too over-the-top. Actually, it’s one of the things I like about the movie, that it is camp and it is over-the-top, as this makes the story much more entertaining than it probably has a right to be.Still it’s a competently made product. It starts with an exciting on-location sequence featuring Stanwyck and her men on horseback.
A few things prevent FORTY GUNS from achieving its full potential. I think the biggest fault with the movie is that it’s too ambitious a story for a modestly budgeted production. This is where 20th Century Fox should have stepped in to increase the cash flow. You can tell it does not have an adequate budget when an actor accidentally stumbles going up some steps, as Gene Barry does in one scene; and when Dean Jagger fumbles a line but quickly recovers the rest of his character’s speech in a dramatic confrontation with Stanwyck; and these flubs remain in the movie. Obviously, Fuller couldn’t afford to do many retakes, if any at all; and didn’t have the time or money to fix goofs in post-production by editing them out with cutaways to other shots.
The lack of retakes also causes Fuller to rely too much on long tracking shots. After that exciting sequence at the beginning, we quickly grow weary of Fuller’s repeated use of tracking shots. Also, we get too many long scenes where the characters move around and recite all their dialogue without any cutting to their faces for close-up reactions. As a result of the sloppiness of some of the staging, we have a somewhat uneven film. However, the maverick direction lends itself to Fuller’s “vision,” and does work to the story’s advantage. But it still seems amateurish in spots when it shouldn’t. And I think that if more money had been allocated for retakes and a chance to record more reaction shots, we would have had a more compelling narrative.
Don’t get me wrong it is still compelling. But I think its dynamism comes from the performances and from Fuller’s script, which is certainly high concept. However, Fuller’s dialogue is downright silly in places which gives it those campy vibes, especially when we have Sullivan ask Stanwyck if she wants to spank one of her men. Like that would really be said by an investigator to a powerful woman he just barely met.
Aside from Stanwyck and Sullivan, the performance that really stood out for me was Dean Jagger’s work as the corrupt sheriff. Jagger imbues him with slimy but still “heroic” traits. The sheriff knows that Stanwyck’s character has been corrupt and could be brought down by a former ranch hand, so he takes matters into his own hands and kills the dude in a prison holding area, so she doesn’t have to worry.
Of course, she insists she didn’t want the guy murdered. But the sheriff seems to believe it was necessary, and he certainly enjoys doing the dirty work. Particularly if it endears him to her for a favor or two. Jagger’s sheriff has sort of his own code when it comes to protecting people, and to his way of thinking, this is what a man does for the woman he loves.
Jagger has an interesting death scene a bit later, when all his efforts to hold on to the woman he loves have failed. He hangs himself in her home. This is an unexpected development, but in retrospect it’s certainly something we should expect from Fuller the flamboyant storyteller. It’s a totally over-the-top death.
Also worth mentioning is John Ericson’s performance, playing kid brother to Stanwyck. In fact, he’s probably young enough to be her son. She has always bailed out her little bro, but he goes too far at the end and pays for his transgressions with his life.
Supposedly Fuller wanted Stanwyck’s character to die in the climactic scene where Sullivan shoots her so that she will fall and he can get a clean shot at Ericson. But the studio insisted Fuller make her character live so she could have a happy ending. I think the movie probably would have been more powerful if she had died. Sullivan’s real love is the law, and his career certainly would have come ahead of sparing her and making her his wife. It’s sort of like expecting Marshall Dillon on Gunsmoke to put the sister of one of targets ahead of everything else, including the law, which of course he would never do.
As for the title, the forty men or forty guns that Stanwyck keeps employed, is mostly just a gimmick. Not many of them are fleshed out and we don’t know them as individual characters.
Fuller’s thesis is that life and death exist side by side. In the blink of an eye, roles can reverse so that the living are now suddenly dead, and the seemingly dead might spring back to life. In many ways, this would be a great companion piece to Peckinpah’s RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY. Especially since both films have violent wedding scenes in them. I would suspect Peckinpah was influenced by Fuller even if that has never been corroborated anywhere. I would additionally suspect that many makers of spaghetti westerns ten to fifteen years afterward, were inspired by what Fuller accomplishes here. Again it’s a picture I enjoyed very much. Though I don’t think it’s exactly the masterpiece it could have been or should have been.
|
|
|
|
Post by NoShear on May 6, 2024 16:32:52 GMT
Following T CM's 'double bill' of CARNIVAL STORY on Friday, I searched diving and Anne Baxter, running across the following in the process:  Don't know if Crash Dive qualifies as neglected, and if it does you've probably already reviewed the 1943 movie, TopBilled, but thought of you with it.
|
|
|
|
Post by topbilled on May 6, 2024 17:08:38 GMT
Thanks NoShear. CRASH DIVE is certainly a neglected film, and I do plan to cover it at some point. If you see it before I do, please share your thoughts here in the thread...
|
|
|
|
Post by topbilled on May 15, 2024 12:17:00 GMT
This neglected film is from 1948.
One way street
At one point Lloyd Nolan’s character, a top investigator with the FBI, looks at a map on the wall. It’s a map that details an area of skid row in fictional Center City where undercover agents Mark Stevens and John McIntire will temporarily take up residence. The map has street names on it, and Nolan mentions a few of those streets. They’re not anonymous thoroughfares, as the title would suggest.
The title comes from a memorandum on the rise of gangsterism after the war, which was written by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover’s note not only provides the allegorical title but serves as an introduction to the main narrative. Nolan is reprising the role he played three years earlier in Fox’s THE HOUSE ON 92ND STREET…yes, another titular street. But unlike the first film which details wartime espionage, the focus of this story switches to modern urban America and the war on gangland crime.
In a way this story is not much different than the types of stories that were produced by the truckload in Hollywood during the early to mid-1930s. You know the set-up: there’s a big time thug…here, played by Richard Widmark, continuing the villainy he established in KISS OF DEATH.
Widmark has a group of eager beaver hoods who let him do the thinking and give all the orders, something he tells Stevens when Stevens infiltrates the gang and becomes the newest member.
McIntire’s character stays largely out of sight and is just nearby for Stevens to pass information to, and this occurs in a few different ways. Stevens may flash a match light signal to McIntire across an alley through the windows of their respective flophouse rooms. Or Stevens may discretely meet McIntire near a trash can on a corner, then leave a matchbook with info about the gang’s latest planned stickup printed on it.
But when Stevens’ cover is compromised by a crooked city commissioner (Howard Smith), he’s in trouble and McIntire must spring into action with help from Nolan and the rest of the feds. The commissioner hangs around the local police department then helps Widmark and his pals stay one step ahead of the law. There’s a good scene where Widmark cons Smith into murdering Stevens, to solve their problem. They’ve gotten in too deep to turn back.
Most of the gangland activity depicted on screen is filmed on location in the greater Los Angeles area at night. Very little of what we see is done in a studio soundstage, so this increases the realism and atmosphere of the story. Most scenes are populated with men, and very few women are glimpsed during the proceedings. In fact there are no female sex workers or innocent female bystanders in any of the street scenes.
The only female character that gets any real attention is the wife of Widmark’s character, played by Barbara Lawrence. She is just there to screech in the domestic scenes and end up beaten to a pulp by Widmark. The beating occurs during a moment of rage when Widmark thinks she’s been tipping off the feds. This is before he learns Stevens is a mole.
I didn’t think this scene of Widmark going ape on Lawrence added much to the film, especially since we never really see Lawrence again after that. There is no real lasting impact, and she is not fully developed as a character in her own right, needing or seeking justice.
Most of this is just a by-the-numbers G-men versus the hoods tale, the type we’ve seen countless times before. What gives the film its edge is all the authentic outdoor filming and Stevens’ earnest performance. The main idea, of course, is that crime ultimately doesn’t pay, even during an elaborately staged showdown inside a warehouse.
|
|
|
|
Post by Fading Fast on May 15, 2024 16:19:50 GMT
The Street with No Name from 1948 with Mark Stevens, Richard Widmark, Lloyd Nolan and Ed Begley
More crime drama/gangster picture than film noir, The Street with No Name is something post-war Hollywood did very well: open a movie with a law-enforcement service announcement, show a lot of cool police criminology and, then, let the crime story rip.
After several murders, the FBI, headed up by an inspector, played by Lloyd Nolan (reprising his role from The House on 92nd Street), working with "Center City's" police, attempts to plant an agent, played by Mark Stevens, in the gang suspected of the murders.
Early on, we see how the FBI and police use, for the day, cutting edge technology - punch cards (early digital) for data storage, spectrographs for fingerprints and comparison microscopes for ballistics - to investigate crimes.
Introduced with a memo signed by "Hoover" (J. Edgar Hoover, Head of the FBI) about the rise of "gangsterism," this is all rah-rah FBI stuff, but still, it had to be cool for the public to get an insider's look at law enforcement. Today, it's a neat time-capsule look at that era's FBI.
The story really takes off when Stevens begins hanging around a dive boxing gym to get noticed by the gang. He does and, after the gang leader, played by Richard Widmark, checks him out with his on-the-take police contact, Stevens is brought into the gang.
We go along with Stevens as he sees the inside workings of Widmark's gang. Widmark runs a tight ship keeping "his boys" close, while using his police contact to stay ahead of the police and FBI.
This is also an early movie look at a cop working undercover as Stevens uses dead drops and window signals to stay in touch with his handler, played by John McIntire.
Director William Keighley captures the tension Stevens has living a "double" life as he has to convince the gang that he's one of them, while all the time looking for clues and ways to expose the gang without exposing himself. It's no easy way to live.
The rest of the movie is Stevens learning how the gang works - a basement arsenal, detailed planning for heists, a weird brotherhood with Widmark as cult leader - as he tries to get evidence to the police/FBI.
The climax, no spoilers coming, is a good "three way" pitched battle as Widmark's gang squares off against Stevens and the police/FBI, with Widmark's police contact creating a third front as he tries to use "his" police officers to let Widmark escape.
Nolan is excellent, as always, playing the FBI inspector, as is Ed Begley, who plays the police chief who slowly learns he has a trader in his force. These are two acting pros who bring credibility to any movie they are in.
Stevens, in one of his best roles, is very good as the undercover FBI agent. He convincingly switches back and forth from playing a hood as part of his cover to being a well-trained agent on the job.
It is Widmark, though, bringing his personal brand of cool menace to the role of gang leader that makes the movie scary dark. The scene where he beats up his wife because he thinks she's informing on him is short, but very frightening.
With wonderful LA location shots - nighttime honky tonk streets lit by neon, dark alleys, foggy waterfronts and a large empty factory - plus some close calls for Stevens, the movie has its noir elements, but it is truly a heck-of-a-good crime drama first.
The Street with No Name uses a popular post-war movie style to say everything isn't right in America, but if we support our law enforcement agencies, it will be. Meanwhile, these movies also gave the public a cool insider's look at both sides of that battle. |
|
|
|
Post by topbilled on May 22, 2024 15:45:08 GMT
This neglected film is from 1953.
Knowledge of the sport
It had been awhile since I’d seen this one, and I’d forgotten what a nice story it is. I think the mild humor on display is actually very good, since it doesn’t hit us over the head with frantic situations to generate laughs. Instead, the overall premise, about a nine-year-old boy (Billy Chapin) who becomes a major league baseball manager, is silly enough to create interest and make us chuckle at the absurdity of it.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s a farce, but the chances of this happening in real life are, of course, quite unlikely. At one point, media reporters in the story call the kid wonder a manager in diapers, or some such thing. It’s exaggerated, yes, because he is still in the throes of boyhood and some might argue that it takes a real man to whip ball players into shape and win the pennant.
Of course the kid, who came out of nowhere (metaphorically, left field) knows his stuff. And he’s helped by his dad. The dad is played by 20th Century Fox contract player Dan Dailey. Mr. Dailey had starred in another baseball flick a year earlier, THE PRIDE OF ST. LOUIS, a true life biopic in which he played Hall of Fame pitcher Dizzy Dean.
This time around Dailey’s role is much more light-hearted. He’s a washed-up player who has fallen on hard economic times and spends his days peddling peanuts in the stands, where the fictional Bisons play. Early on, we see that his son, whom he sneaks into the games, leads a local baseball team comprised of neighborhood youth. The boy doesn’t know everything about baseball just yet, but he’s been learning a lot from his father.
Balancing the stadium scenes are domestic scenes filmed on a Fox soundstage where father and son eat, do the dishes and talk about their favorite sport. When Dailey gets fired from his job, the kid sneaks back into the stadium and enlists the help of the owner’s niece (Anne Bancroft). This results in dear old dad’s reinstatement, as well as a batboy position for the lad.
From here the story accelerates. With Dailey’s help, Chapin gives advice to the star players (Lloyd Bridges and Fess Parker) about how to improve their performance. The team gradually comes out of its slump, and the Bisons start winning games. As part of a publicity move, upper management decides to make the kid a full-time manager of the team…though he is still consulting with his father about the decisions he makes.
There are some truly fun moments…such as Chapin losing his temper with an ump and getting hauled off the field by the seat of his pants, like he’s an unruly child. And the short sequence where a truant officer shows up and Chapin must appear before a lady judge to explain why he misses so much school. He quickly schools her honor on baseball matters.
One thing I really like about the film is that Bancroft’s character is involved with Bridges. In most of these types of films, Bridges would be a cad to facilitate a breakup so Bancroft could end up with Dailey. But this story is not so predictable.
Bancroft remains with Bridges, who ages out of the sport and finds another career. Meanwhile Dailey is just shown as becoming a better father, and eventually the full-time manager of the team (presumably so his son can return to school). Dailey is not given a love interest, which is to the film’s credit.
Overall this is a valentine to lovers of America’s most well-known pastime. It’s about how knowledge of the sport is passed from fathers to sons. It also plays into the fantasy that probably a lot of men and boys had in 1953, about what it would be like if they could manage their favorite team and turn its fortunes around.
As a piece of film entertainment, THE KID FROM LEFT FIELD hits it out of the park.
|
|
|
|
Post by Fading Fast on May 22, 2024 16:49:00 GMT
The Kid from Left Field from 1953 with Dan Dailey, Billy Chapin, Anne Bancroft, Lloyd Bridges, Ray Collins and Richard Egan
There is a subgenre of baseball movies that combines kids with some magic or whimsy to turn a losing baseball team around. These films use baseball as a metaphor for life in an era when the game truly was the national pastime.
Angels in the Outfield, with grumpy Paul Douglas learning to control his temper from a little orphan girl and a spirited reporter, played by Janet Leigh, is the best of the lot, but The Kid from Left Field is a worthy, fun, low-budget and obscure entry in the genre.
Dan Dailey plays a widowed dad and former big leaguer who, just to remain close to the game, sells peanuts at "his" old stadium. His nine-year-old son loves the game, too, and idolizes his dad, whose uncontrollable on-field temper sabotaged his career.
The team, the Bison, is doing terribly, which has the team's owner, played by Ray Collins, frustrated with the team's manager, played by Richard Egan. Dailey's son, played by Billy Chapin, is then hired to be a bat boy.
Chapin blends his own baseball knowledge with that of his father's to casually start giving the players advice along the lines of, "Since you always take the first pitch, they throw it down the middle and you're always behind in the count. Swing at the first pitch."
Slowly the players come to respect their nine-year-old batboy's advice and the team starts winning. Manager Egan takes credit even though he has no idea why the team is playing better. When it starts to come out that it's because of the batboy, Egan fires the kid.
Bad move, as the team starts losing and then the truth really comes out (somewhat, as no one yet knows the father is helping the kid), Egan gets fired. Now comes the movie's real magic moment: Collins hires nine-year-old Chapin to manage the team.
Chapin the actor is outstanding in the role. He somehow manages to be both a nine-year-old boy and a serious manager. He is neither too cute nor too grown-up. He doesn't yell at the players, but wins their respect with his astute management of the team.
His character's approach to managing is decades ahead, as he has a Moneyball attitude where he studies the stats to plan his strategies. His dad, a student of the game as well, continues to give his son smart insights and plays from behind the scenes.
There is also a somewhat integrated side story about an aging ballplayer on the team, played by Lloyd Bridges, whose girlfriend, played by a ridiculously young and cute Anne Bancroft, wants him to retire from playing and take the good job offer he just received.
You will have figured the movie out way ahead of time, but you'll get no spoilers here. But movies like this don't exist to build suspense, they are fun family pictures that are here to make you feel good while delivering some simple life lessons.
The dad learns to control his temper and to have patience with those who don't always agree with him. The "bad" manager learns that taking credit for someone else's work will cost you your job and the respect of others. And, yes, Chapin learns about growing up.
The aging ballplayer learns that his girlfriend is right and he needs to find a new path now that his career is winding down. It's odd that this story was shuffled off to the side as, with a little tweaking, it could have been wonderfully integrated into the picture.
Instead of having Bancroft date Bridges, a minor character, she should have been dating Dailey and trying to get him to understand that he needed to show the team he was no longer a hothead, but was now mature enough to be a level-headed manager.
Bancroft had already bonded with Chapin, so the entire movie could have climaxed not only with Dailey having a chance to get back into the game he loves, but with Bancroft, Dailey and Chapin forming a new loving family. That's the way a family movie should end.
Dailey, Collins, Bridges and Egan are all pros who know how to carry even light material like this. Chapin, as noted, is impressive in a role that required a lot of balance from a ten-year-old actor (playing a nine-year-old). But it is Bancroft who stands out.
In only fourteen years, Ms. Bancroft would play the scariest cougar ever in The Graduate, where amidst a swirl of cigarette smoke, alcohol and leathery skin, she'd seduce and then try to destroy a boy half her age. Yet here, she's young, pretty and sweet.
The Kid from Left Field is what a modern Hallmark movie would be if Hallmark had the budget, acting talent and professional writers that Twentieth Century Fox had in the 1950s. It's surprising that, today, this enjoyable entry in the genre is all but unknown.
With Baseball being the country's most-popular sport back then, Hollywood naturally created a quirky subgenre of fantasy family-themed baseball movies. They are silly, but they work because, like The Kid from Left Field, they put a smile on your face. |
|
