Batter up, it’s Burl, with a picture about
baseball! Ha ha, yes, in these pestilential times perhaps a lighthearted tale of
the horsehide is just the picker-upper we all need! I know it did the trick for
me! Ha ha, the picture I’m talking about, the movie that upped my spirits and
might do the same for yours, is a little puffballer called It Happens Every Spring!
I happen to love movies from the 30s, 40s
and 50s set on college campuses! (Okay, I’ll add the 20s too, so College and The Freshman get in there!) The first
act of this picture really hits that sweet spot, as we are introduced to a
bookish, baseball-loving chemistry professor
called Vernon, who might have been written for Gary Cooper but Coop had other
things to do, so Ray Milland from Premature Burial played the part instead! Vernon’s pretty ladyfriend Miss Greanleaf,
very cheerily played by Jean Peters from Niagara,
wishes him to express some commitment, but the poorly-paid Vernon wants to make
some marryin’ money first! When an errant baseball obliterates Vernon’s prize
experiment, along with, he believes, his career and his love life, Vernon is
despondent, before noticing the curious behavior of a nearby baseball!
The upshot is this: Vernon has accidentally
invented a substance that repels
baseballs from wood! Ha ha, I italicize this to emphasize the specificity
of the chemical’s properties! Naturally, Vernon’s first instinct is to drop out completely from his previous life and run off to join the St. Louis Cardinals
under the nom de bal “King Kelly!”
There’s a lot of baseball after this, and plenty of animated baseballs hopping
in little loops to avoid the batsmens’ timbers!
The Cards’ dog-faced catcher Monk, played
by Paul Douglas, is ordered by the front office to keep a close eye on Vernon
because he’s so weird, but just becomes his pal instead! Ha ha, Douglas looks
about twenty years older than Milland here (an impression heightened by Monk’s regular
use of “kid” to describe or address his new buddy), but was in fact a few months
younger! Ha ha, at any rate I suppose it makes sense on those lonely away games
for the pitcher to room with the catcher!
It all comes down to baseball, of course,
and, with our modern sensibilities encumbered by too many ethics, we expect it
to come down to some heartfelt scene in which Vernon realizes it’s wrong to
cheat, or he is found out and shamed, or some such thing! But no, it all wraps
up in a perfectly happy, non-judgmental ending with a very pleasant mob scene
on a train platform!
There’s a pretty classic cast, ha ha! Team
owner Edgar Stone is played by Ed Begley from Billion Dollar Brain, and his manager of course is Ted de Corsia! The
dean, and father of Vernon’s ladyfriend, is played by Ray Collins from Francis, and from a bunch of other
baseball movies, and a bunch of Orson Welles pictures too, ha ha! Jesse Royce
Landis, whom we love so well from To
Catch A Thief and North By Northwest,
is his lady wife! Everybody’s here - even Alan Hale Jr., so well known from The Giant Spider Invasion!
It’s probably got too much baseball for the
romantic comedy fans, but maybe they will be more forgiving because Vernon is
doing it all for love! But everybody will enjoy the scenes in which other ball
players, believing Vernon’s formula to be a hair tonic, comb it into their lush
locks, and then find their hair flapping around anytime they bring a wooden
hairbrush near it! Ha ha, they end up looking like Moe from the Three Stooges,
which is a fairly short trip since most of these mugs look a lot like Moe already!
Anyway, these scenes made me laugh out loud! Ha ha!
It’s no classic, but it’s charming and
funny at times, and ridiculous at other times, and a little confounding! Does
Vernon run out of his solution and find himself at the World Series trying to win
without the help of his miracle pitches? Ha ha, that would be telling! I’m
going to give It Happens Every Spring three
broken hands!
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