Ever since Hollywood invented itself as a universal dream factory, movies about baseball were viewed as the perfect landscape in which to explore themes of loyalty, ambition, competition, and of course, love.
More than any other sports genre, baseball movies have dominated the silver screen.
And of course, Hollywood publicity departments frequently used baseball to promote and sell their stars.
I think “Bull Durham” is the best one I’ve seen. The writer or director, can’t recall which, had played minor league baseball. “The Natural” was pure fantasy on the level of the other Costner baseball movie. Forgot it’s name.
Michael – I think Bull Durham transcended movies – by that I mean that I felt that we were looking at the season of a minor league team and player – not a movie of the same.
Now that I think of it there was a great Clint Eastwood movie on baseball – he played a scout towards the end of his career
Trouble With The Curve
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2083383/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_1
“It Happens Every Spring” and the original “Angels in the Outfield” are two of my favorite small baseball films. Both have Paul Douglas, one of the great character actors. You can’t go wrong with any of his movies.
Marilyn Monroe shows nice form as a potential slugger.
She may not have the right baseball moves, sennacherib, but she always had the right moves 🙂 Even 52 years after her death.
I don’t remember a lot of baseball movies but 2 that I remembered – and enjoyed were Damn Yankees with Tab Hunter and Bull Durham with Kevin Costner. This movie really depicted the minor leagues – and the players’ hope that they could get to ‘The Show”.
Yeah, I know about Field of Dreams.
There was a funny one from the 1940s – sort of a baseball version of Faustus – you know – selling your soul to the Devil – wasn’t Damn Yankees – trying to remember the title.
Bill,
Could be It Happens Every Spring, not exactly as you have described it, but a fantasy.
Yeah I know, but for once I was trying not to talk about the obvious. As my favorite ex-player would say, “Juuuust a bit outside”.
Can’t think of any movie in the 1940s about selling a soul for baseball. You have to be thinking of “Damn Yankees” from 1958, which you already mentioned, with the great Ray Walston playing Applegate and the incomparable Gwen Verdon.
The only baseball movies I can think of from the 40s, although there might be more, are “Pride of the Yankees,” “It Happens Every Spring,” and “The Babe Ruth Story” with William Bendix playing Ruth. But, of course, none of these have anything to do with soul selling. Ruth, BTW, got to see his movie bio premiere before he died, and, of course, played himself in “Pride.”
Add It Happened In Flatbush (1942) to that list. One of the most charming films, with Lloyd Nolan as a Leo Durocher like figure, Carole Landis, Bill Frawley, many more.
I think my all-time favorite is THE NATURAL. I think the screen version is a better story than its origin, the novel by Bernard Malamud.
Of all the above photos, Carol Lombard is the only one with a real “baseball move”. I’m an old pitcher and her motion is good, better than Wayne’s stance by far.