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Wednesday, August 22, 2018

BIG LEAGUER (1953)

After a spot of episodic tv work, Robert Aldrich made the jump from asst. to feature director in this low-stakes, sweet-natured nothing-burger of a baseball pic. Edward G. Robinson, ‘grey-listed’ into B-pics for ‘Pre-Mature Anti-Fascism’ between HOUSE OF STRANGERS/’49 and THE TEN COMMANDMENTS/’56, seems to be having a perfectly swell time running a training camp for minor league prospects. And the film works just fine as long as it sticks to the quotidian ins-and-outs of progress on-and-off the field. Everyone gets their own character tic (just one, mind you), as they try to move up to the 'minorest' of minor league contracts. Best of the lot, young Richard Jaeckel, a standout as a pitcher with promise (and some nice movement on the ball from the mound). Too bad the big romance between front office gal Vera Ellen (Robinson’s cute niece and general baseball doyen) and handsome third-base lug Jeff Richards doesn’t connect.* But with modest screen time, they hardly deflate the basic Who’s Getting Cut/Who’ll Win the Big Game storyline. Fun, at a tidy 81 minutes.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Richards, getting the star-making treatment @ M-G-M, didn’t catch on. But if he looks familiar, it’s probably because you remember him as one of the Seven Brothers who stole those Seven Brides in the great Stanley Donen musical. As the sole non-dancer/non-singer in the bunch, he’s the guy shunted to the side in favor of his ballet backwoodsmen brothers whenever the music starts.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Scroll down one MAKSQUIBS Write-Up for Robert Aldrich as asst. director in Jean Renoir’s THE SOUTHERNER. Renoir had quite the knack for hiring assistant directors who went on to great things: Jacques Becker, Satyajit Ray & Luchino Visconti among them.

DOUBLE-BILL: In THE KID FROM LEFT FIELD, an ever so slightly more substantial baseball pic from the same year, Anne Bancroft gets the same front office gal part Vera Ellen has here.

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