Lee Lowenfish

Time for a bit of a curveball to open this blog. It's short notice I know, but must tell you about TCM (Turner Classic Movies cable channel) hosting a day of baseball films on Thursday June 13.  So instead of putting the list at end of blog,here is the lineup with an * for something esp. worthy of watching, not necessarily for excellence but for its contribution to the era in which it was made. 

 

6A "The Great American Pastime" (1956)  David Wayne leaves his job to take over a Little League team to come closer to his son (he hopes).

 

730A "Ladies' Day" (1943)  The marriage of Eddie Albert will supposedly help his team win.  With Lupe Velez and Ann Miller.

 

*845A "Death on the Diamond" (1934)  I don't recall TCM ever airing this one. Robert Young plays a handsome young St. Louis Cardinals pitcher with the hots for team secretary Madge Evans. But there is a killer on the loose.  Who can it be? With fine character actors Nat Pendleton and Ted Healy (of producing "Three Stooges" fame).  Uncredited Gashouse Gang outfielder Ernie Orsatti has a cameo role getting killed between third and home.  I'm not saying it is a great film, but it is different and this was the era when many Americans were fascinated by gangsters.

 

*1000A "Fireman Save My Child" (1932)  The first of Joe E Brown's baseball trilogy.  Brown's character is more interested in selling his fire-preventing invention than playing but you get a good sample of both. Brown was a great athlete, a circus acrobat at an early age and almost a major league quality second baseman but he chose the right profession. 

 

*1130A  "Alibi Ike" (1935)  The third of Brown's baseball trilogy (the second and his personal favorite "Elmer The Great" - 1933 - is somehow not included today.)  Based loosely on Ring Lardner's story written before WW I, Brown's manager is William Frawley in his pre-Fred Mertz stage. (Both Brown and Frawley had clauses written into their Hollywood contracts that forbade them from working on movies during the World Series which they usually attended. So did George Raft.)  Brown's love interest is Olivia DeHavilland in her debut film.  Actually she completed "A Midsummer Night's Dream" also with Brown earlier in 1935 but this film was released first. 

 

*1P "Speedy" (1928) A Harold Lloyd classic with a memorable scene of awed taxi driver Harold driving Babe Ruth to a game at Yankee Stadium. Lou Gehrig can be briefly spotted as they scoot up Amsterdam Ave.

 

*230P "The Babe Ruth Story" (1948).  Hastily finished so Babe could see it before he passed away in August 1948.  William Bendix isn't very good as Babe - Jack Carson would have been better but was unavailable.  Claire Trevor could have played Claire Ruth as a noir character but she doesn't.  Charles Bickford doesn't age one bit as Brother Matthias at the beginning of film and near the end, but what I would give to have a voice and presence like Bickford whose Hollywood career started in the silent movies in 1924.  His fate has been to be forgotten like Vern Bickford who was a competent third banana to Spahn and Sain on Boston Braves.  If you want to see newscaster H. V. Kaltenborn playing himself, this is for you.  And as a document looking backward during increasingly nervous Cold War times, I think you should see it.  I plan to see it again because I have a weakness for corn about baseball. 

 

*430P "The Jackie Robinson Story" (1950) with JR playing himself, Ruby Dee as Rachel Robinson, and competent character actor Minor Watson as Branch Rickey.  Minor may not have been a major actor but he isn't bad though Harrison Ford in 2013's "42" was better.

 

*6p "The Stratton Story" (1949) the film that cemented Jimmy Stewart's ascent to stardom.  June Allyson plays the loving wife who encourages husband Monty Stratton back to the minor league game after a hunting accident ends his major league career.  Jimmie Dykes plays himself and in what I believe is his last role Frank Morgan, the Wizard in "The Wizard of Oz,"  plays the scout the originally signs him.  Screenplay by Guy Trosper who was nominated for an Oscar.  Trosper later wrote such notable films as "The Birdman of Alcatraz" and adapted "The Spy Who Came In From The Cold".

 

 

One more TCM sports note - 

Sa Jun 15 345P "The Winning Team" (1952) Ronald Reagan portrays Grover Cleveland Alexander with Doris Day as his wife. "The Stratton Story" serves as the template for this film - the loving helpmate-wife who helps a baseball-playing husband through his crises.  I've only seen this film once and want to look at it again. 

 

 AND NOW SOME NOTES ON BASEBALL ON MANY LEVELS AS THE SUMMER SOLSTICE LOOMS:

Congrats to the three winners of the NYC PSAL high school championships.

At the Triple A level, Grand Street Campus beat John Jay, 2-0, at Yankee Stadium on Monday afternoon June 10.  The two Brooklyn schools put on a memorable pitcher's battle. 

 

The prior weekend, the Double A title went to East Side Com. over Lafayette, 6-5.

The Single A title went to Brandeis over top-seeded American Studies, 15-0.  (The designations refer to the enrollment of the schools.)

 

Matchups for the College World Series in Omaha, Nebraska, are set. They will consist of 4 ACC teams and 4 SEC teams. With one exception, all games will be on the main ESPN channel. 

On Fri June 14 North Carolina meets Virginia at 2P

Top-seeded Tennessee meets Florida State, trying for first CWS title after many tries, at 7P 

 

On Sat June 15 second-seeded Kentucky, first time ever reaching this level, vs. NC State at 2P

Texas A & M vs. Florida, perennial contender but finished regular season only 1 game over .500, at 7P

 

The finals will be a best of three:

Sat June 22 730P

Sun June 23 2P - the one game on ABC

Mon June 24 7P (if necessary). 

  

As for MLB with under 100 games to play, the disparity between good teams and bad teams seems to be growing.  2022 was the

first season in MLB history when 4 teams won more than an hundred games and 4 teams lost more than a hundred.  It looks like we are headed that way in 2024 again. 

 

Too many ownerships don't really care about winning for a variety of reasons.  Among them are revenue-sharing that losing teams get anyway and also, probably the most important reason in my opinion, building a winning culture is very hard.  

 

As an Oriole fan that lived through a lot of dark years, I am enjoying this season and the last two actually as they emerged from darkness into contention.  How long they can stay up there with pitchers seemingly being injured every day is a concern.  But there is no doubt

that they have built a team of good players who really want to win and are increasingly showing that they know how to do it. 

 

There is one telltale sign that remains true - watch the teams that respond quickly to opponents scoring runs by putting up their own

runs on the scoreboard and you'll find strong evidence of that elusive winning culture.  The Yankees have that feeling this year too and the three game series in NYC June 18-19-20 will  be a good test for both teams.

 

That's all for this time.  Next time more details on the 35th Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture that I attended last month.  I was glad to give a case that player-manager-scout Birdie Tebbetts needs to be remembered as Baseball's Last Idealist.

 

In my next blogs, I will also look forward to my class in mid-July at the blessed Chautauqua Institution in southwest NY State near

Jamestown and the home of the National Comedy Center.  My theme this year is Fandom in American Culture: From Early 20th Century Kranks to Modern BIRGers and CORFers (BIRG means Basking In Reflected Glory; CORF means Cancelling Over Repeated Failure.)

 

Always remember - take it easy but take it, and Stay Positive, Test Negative!   

 

 

 

 

The turning of the calendar to March is always a great sign that winter is edging into spring. This coming early Sunday morning March 8 at 2A also marks the return of Daylight Saving Time.   

 

Our winter in NYC has been virtually snow-free and I don't believe we will escape Old Man Winter entirely.  I'm sorry for the people in the ski and winter sports industry who are having hard times economically, but as someone in his upper 70s I don't miss one bit the hazards of slipping on ice. 

 
I'm happy to report that my favorite basketball teams, the Columbia women and the Wisconsin men, continued their winning ways this past weekend and start March each with six game winning streaks. The Lions have made for the first time the four-team Ivy League Tournament that will be play at Harvard Fri and Sat March 13-14.

 
Columbia will have to deal with the absence of star sophomore Sienna Durr who broke her foot in action at Harvard on Friday.  But winning is a fever that is not easily abated. Congrats again to coach Megan Griffith and her staff and players that have been a delight to watch in 2019-20.

 
Wisconsin was picked for no better than sixth in pre-season polls and has never been nationally ranked at all this year. They now have a chance to win the regular season Big Ten title.  They are still vulnerable to quicker teams but their will to win has been wonderful to watch. 

 

KUDOS TO TCM!
Here's a shout-out to one of my favorite cable stations, Turner Classic Movies (TCM), for saluting the great comedian-actor-baseball lover Joe E. Brown with an array of his films every Wednesday in March.   All times below are Eastern.

 
The series starts on WED MAR 4 with a 8p showing of "Circus Clown" (1934), a semi-autobiographical film because Brown started his career as a circus acrobat before he was even a teenager. Part of a family that worked hard without earning much money, he liked to say he's the only person who ever ran away from home to join the circus with his parents' permission.

 
For night owls later that night, check out one of his first Hollywood films, "On With The Show" (1929 at 130A) followed by "Sally" (1930) at 330A. Originally a Broadway musical, "Sally" features one of Jerome Kern's great ballads, "Look For The Silver Lining". 

 
In many ways that song summed up Joe E Brown's outlook on life.  As did the title of his autobiography, "Laughter Is A Wonderful Thing" (1956 as told to Ralph Hancock).  

 

"Laughter" was published by the then-prominent sports publisher A. S. Barnes in NYC.  It's not surprising that Brown chose Barnes as his publisher because he was an excellent all-around athlete who performed all his movie stunts and was a huge fan of all sports. 

 

He genuinely believed that the rise of his son Joe L. Brown to the general managership of the Pittsburgh Pirates - replacing Branch Rickey after the 1955 season -  to be the greatest achievement of anyone in his family. 

 
Joe E. accumulated one of the most comprehensive collections of sports memorabilia. He called it "His Room of Love" in his LA mansion, but unfortunately much of it was lost in two southern California forest fires. 

 
TCM's tribute to Joe E. Brown on WED MAR 11 will be of special interest to baseball fans.  Starting at 8PM, Brown's baseball trilogy will be shown back-to-back-to-back. 

 
It begins with "Fireman Save My Child" (1932), inspired in part by one of Brown's favorite players the eccentric brilliant southpaw Edward "Rube" Waddell.  (Brown always wanted to devote a whole film to Waddell's story but never could get the funding.) 

 
At 915, Joe E's favorite of all his films, "Elmer the Great" (1933), will air.  Warner Brothers execs doubted Ring Lardner's story could work on the screen, but when Brown made such a success of it in Los Angeles-area dinner theatre, the film was made. 

 

At 945, "Alibi Ike" based loosely on another Lardner story will air.  It features 19-year-old Olivia DeHavilland as Joe E.'s girl friend in one of her debut performances that year.  Fans of "I Love Lucy" will recognize William Frawley as Brown's manager.

 

If you want to binge on March 11 into early Thursday morning March 12, there is at 130, "Six-Day Bike Ride" (1934) with Brown's frequent second/third banana Frank McHugh. 

 
The swimming film "You Said A Mouthful" (1932) follows at 245. Ginger Rogers has a prominent role before she rocketed to fame in the "Gold Diggers" movies of Busby Berkeley and then as Fred Astaire's dancing partner. 

 
And if you want to stay up all night - or get up early - at 515A there is "Eleven Men and A Girl" (1930), a football movie that to me is a lineal descendant of the Marx Brothers' "Horse Feathers" of a couple of years later. 

 
There will be lesser Brown films on Wed March 18 but I'm curious to see "The Daring Young Man" (1942) where Brown is a Nazi hunter.  It will be on sometime after 11PM. "Earthworm Tractors" (1936), one of Brown's last popular hits, is listed at 930, but the current TCM listing has two films listed at 8PM and that can't be right.  I hope the website at tcm.com makes a correction soon.

 

Wed March 25 will be the final night of the Brown extravaganza, opening with the never-grows-old "Some Like It Hot" (1959) at 8PM.  

 

At 1015, the rarely seen "Midsummer Night's Dream" (1935), directed by Max Reinhardt with the assistance of William Dieterle, will be shown.  It features Olivia DeHavilland in her second of her two films in her debut year. 

 

Brown as Flute the bellows worker basically steals the film from such stars as James Cagney and young Mickey Rooney, even ad-libbing on Shakespeare at one point. (Wes Gehring's Joe E. Brown book has been an invaluable source for me.)  

 
While I'm giving TCM listings, might as well tell you that on March 29 at 1015PM the classic "Pride of the Yankees" (1942) will air with Gary Cooper as Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth as himself, and the wonderful Teresa Wright as Eleanor Twitchell Gehrig.

 

Wright was not a baseball fan until late in her life when she befriended Gehrig's splendid biographer Ray Robinson and she was became a regular visitor to the Yankees during their last dynasty starting in the late 90s.

 
On Tues March 31 TCM will devote its daytime hours entirely to baseball films.  One is so rare that I've never heard of it: "They Learned About Women" (1930) airs at 9A.  It's about baseball vaudevillians who are doing very well "until love gets in the way," according to the TCM guide.

 

More familar films follow including at 1030A "The Stratton Story" (1949) with Jimmy Stewart as the big league pitcher who injures his leg in a hunting accident.

 

Then at 1230 "The Winning Team" (1952) with Ronald Reagan as Grover Cleveland Alexander with Doris Day as his wife - not as bad as you might think.

 

At 230 "The Babe Ruth Story" (1948) with William Bendix miscast as the Babe and so bad that it is memorable. Charles Bickford as Brother Matthias, Babe's mentor at the reformatory, never changes costume though 40 years have elapsed.

 

At 445p Jackie Robinson plays himself in "The Jackie Robinson Story" (1950)

And the tribune to the Grand Old Game ends with "Take Me Out To the Ball Game"

(1949) a Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra romp.

 

Which reminds me that Richard Greenberg's "Take Me Out" is being revived this month off Broadway.  The story of a gay baseball player is uneven and too melodramatic,  but it has some beautiful writing.  One character's speech on how baseball is better than democracy is exceptionally pertinent. 

   

Well, that's all for now.  I'm off to the NINE baseball magazine conference in Phoenix this week.  Will be back soon with word of that enjoyable and usually penetrating delving into the culture of my favorite sport (still favorite despite the current mismanagement). 

 

Always remember:  Take it easy but take it!