Damn!

I just saw _Damn Yankees_ (1958) again and thought I’d make a few smartass remarks about it. I find any photographic evidence that there used to be an even less successful ball club in Washington than the Nationals to be worth pursuing, and the two hours I invested in this film were no disappointment.

My appetite was whetted by mention in the opening credits of choreographer Bob “Don’t Call Me ‘Ray’ “ Fosse and Jean “Stifle” Stapleton. (Predictably, the dancing was tremendous but the singing sort of meatheaded.) Tab “Cat/Fish” Hunter looked like Mike Nelson from “Mystery Science Theater 3000,” after whom Hunter was no doubt styling himself in this role. “Fred” Gwen Verdon reprised her role from the Broadway production, and I had no idea how in the hell someone who looked as ordinary as she did and couldn’t sing that well had gotten the Broadway part in the first place until she started dancing, which sort of settled it. Ray Walston manages to be funny and reprehensible at the same time playing “Applegate,” who is some sort of unpleasant character from Norse mythology, I believe. (Funniest line in film was one of Walston’s: “You’ll find out who’s got the pain in the mambo jambo!” Well, it was funny in context.)

I did check the imdb.com site after viewing the film, e.g. for any mention of a working title such as _The Natural Goes to Hell_. All I discovered of interest there was that the ballpark they used for the exteriors was Wrigley West, in LA (I thought those hedges looked out of place for Griffith Stadium) and that Bob Fosse was married to Gwen Verdon (it figures he’d marry a good dancer, and with her, you can tell it wasn’t for her looks).

All in all, a nice afternoon at the movies, and it turns out that the ism about baseball building character is true: there were plenty of role models for growing boys like me. In fact, I think I have selected my favorite already.

Carl “And the Hopes That Were Dashed the Day the Stock Market Crashed / Those Were the Good Old Days” Wilkerson