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Here’s your link for the movie. It’s from a Strange Site, but most internet security experts consider it pretty safe (when it comes to collecting your data, IMDb is worse). It has no commercials, so no sync
issues! Sync issues are a pain on Movie Nights! (Plus this time I made sure the link included the whole film… two weeks ago, uh, it did not.) Start the show at 7:30!
I wasn’t able to find a ton about the making of this movie; it’s directed by one Ray Enright, who (per Ray Neuhaus at TCM) worked fast and worked cheap. He had made a bunch of movies with Rin Tin Tin, and later made a bunch with Western star Randolph Scott. And he’d worked a lot with Joan Blondell, one of my favorite light-hearted, snappy-talking dames of the Pre-Code era:
Joe E. Brown, tonight’s star, was born in Toledo in 1891 to a loving but terribly poor family; he left home at the age of nine to join the circus. Where he learned to be a proficient acrobat. Later, he would perform in vaudeville theater, sometimes working baseball routines into his comedy act.
Because Brown was a HUGE baseball fan; his son, Joe L., would be the Pirates’ general manager from 1956 to 1976; they won two World Series during that stretch. Joe E. could actually play ball pretty well (and apparently did all his own baseball scenes in this movie). In fact, Joe E. once played for the Saint Paul Saints, albeit briefly; his one season with the team was cut short by injury. (That’s from this enjoyable SABR article by Rob Edelman.)
He’d keep playing with semi-pro teams around Toledo, and in 1911 was offered a contract by the Boston Red Sox! But he knew that he’d be, at best, a replacement-level player (he was an infielder), and by that time (age 19) already had a successful stage career. So Brown figured he had a better chance to earn a consistent living in comedy than in baseball.
In 1928, Brown started appearing in silent films; by 1929, he had a seven-year contract with Warner Bros. By 1931 he was getting “top billing” in his movies; that meant your name was listed on the top of the poster. It meant you were a star. By WWII his star had faded somewhat, yet he never stopped acting in stage roles, and he was one of the only two civilians to receive a Bronze Star for his efforts in entertaining the troops during the war.
And, of course, in 1959 he was in Some Like it Hot.
The story “Alibi Ike” appeared in The Saturday Evening Post in 1915; it was by Ring Lardner, who would be played by John Sayles in the movie Eight Men Out (they actually look a lot alike). Lardner was a sardonic, satirical writer (I haven’t read him) who was thought of highly by contemporaries like Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Woolf. He specialized in columns about sports, marriage, and the theater, per Wiki.
The screenplay’s by one William Wister Haines, who seems to have 14 films to his credit; most appear to be of the action genre. Although there is one curiosity, 1937’s Black Legion, starring Humphrey Bogart as a machinist who gets passed over for promotion by a immigrant from Poland. So he joins a secret society that attacks immigrants, and in photos from the movie they look very KKKish. Now they have different initials.
The romantic interest here is Olivia de Haviland, in her first screen appearance; she had already acted in a filmed version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and also with Joe E. Brown. But this movie came out first. de Haviland would become a huge star in movies she made with Errol Flynn, and they fell very much in love. Yet Flynn had a reputation for being the biggest horndog in Hollywood (which is saying something), and de Haviland knew she couldn’t trust him to be faithful, so she kept it platonic. However, she claimed that when they kissed for a scene in Robin Hood, it definitely stretched Flynn’s tights a little.
Here’s tonight’s link again! Fire it up at 7:30!
Here’s the upcoming schedule:
January 23: Major League (1989)
I wanted to do this right after A League of Their Own (two titles with the word “league”) but then it disappeared from the mainstream streamers. Well, it is also free on the Strange Site.
January 30: Benched (2018)
John C. McGinley and Garret Dillahunt star as two youth baseball coaches with very different approaches to coaching. Free on the Strange Site.
February 6: The Rookie (2002)
Not-yet-weird Dennis Quaid is a small-town schoolteacher who’s always dreamed of playing baseball. Maybe, just maybe, he might have a chance. Free on the Strange Site.
February 13: Back to the Future III (1990)
By request, and because I haven’t seen it since 1990 (when I enjoyed it a lot). Why haven’t I seen it since then? Well, there’s a sad tale… Free on the Strange Site.
I’ve got some ideas for future ones if we do this more, and all movie suggestions are absolutely welcome & wanted!
