Angels in the Outfield
                        
Director: Clarence Brown
Year:  1951
Rating: 7.0

Opening Day yesterday in baseball and my team blew a 4-0 lead in the 8th inning. I was pissed. I woke up at 3.a.m. in Bangkok to watch it. Real pissed. So I watched a classic baseball film to heal my wounds. Angels in the Outfield is a great sappy film when sappy films could be made without mockery or giggles. I guess you can still make films like this but they play on the Hallmark Card Network. We are all so jaded now. I guess I have a little of the sap still in me because I quite liked this film though if I were to narrate it to a friend he would look at me like I was a marshmallow left in the sun too long.




It is 1951 and the Pittsburgh Pirates are stinking up the league and their manager Guffy McGovern (Paul Douglas) is a stinker of a man. Full mode anger all the time at his players, at the writers, at the fans. He hates everyone and doesn't hesitate to tell them. A lonely man inside his shell of anger. But then an Angel comes to visit him and tells him that someone has been praying real hard for him and they (the Angels) are going to help him as long as he mends his ways. Turns out the one praying for him is a little girl. An orphan. Yes, it is that kind of film. And a news reporter of Household Hints is told to cover him. And she is lovely (Janet Leigh). Yes, it is that kind of film. The orphan comes to a baseball game and can see the angels. Perfectly sappy I tell you.




There are a few cameos - Joe DiMaggio, Ty the Nastiest Man in Baseball Cobb, Bing Crosby who had an ownership stake in the Pirates and a few small roles for the likes of Judge Hardy who plays the Commissioner of Baseball very much like he does his court in the Andy Hardy series, look for Barbara Billingsley (Leave it to Beaver) as the hat check girl (I am just happy that I can still recognize people like her in my dotage), Keenan Wynn as the obnoxious baseball announcer who seems to root against his team (fans would hang him today in effigy) and Bruce Bennett as the old pitcher on his last legs.




Bennett is an interesting character. He was a shot putter in the 1928 Olympics when he was still known as Herman Brix. He tried out for the Tarzan role but hurt his soldier and lost out to Johnny Weissmuller. He went on to a number of films (including a Tarzan serial) still using Herman Brix but changed his name to Bruce Bennett in the early 1940's and his career improved. He needs to work on his windup though.




The 1951 Pirates unlike the St. Louis Cardinals in Death on the Diamond were in fact a lousy team, They went 64-90 that year. But they still had for me some recognizable names - Vernon Law, Dale Long, Joe Garagiola, Danny Murtaugh who would manage them to the World Series in 1960, Pete Reiser and of course one of my favorites Ralph Kiner who announced for the Mets for years.

It is generally accepted that the manager was modeled on Leo Durocher, who was famous or infamous for his temper, insulting the umpires, getting in fights with the fans and his issues with anger management (though I don't think they had that term back them. Then he married actress Lorraine Day and he became a nice guy who studied pottery and other arts that she led him too. At its time it was a very famous marriage and there is a big back story to it that I won't get into it. But when Durocher managed the New York Giants - he was manager when Thompson hit the famous home run heard around the world - Lorraine did a pre-game show interviewing players on the radio.

Also perhaps of interest is that this was President Eisenhower's favorite film and he used to screen it all the time in the White House.