VEB Film Club: Angels in the Outfield – Which Version Hits a Home Run for Your Heart?
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This movie, especially because I vaguely remembered the remake, has an extremely strange structure. We start by following a reporter, who is of course a beautiful woman played by Janet Leigh. Because 1951 audiences would be very confused about a woman reporter covering baseball, it is of course not her regular beat – I forgot the exact name because this isn’t really a feature of the newspaper anymore, but her normal beat was clearly tailored towards housewives – and she covers the foul-mouthed manager and she has a popular piece lambasting the manager and they have her keep covering the Pirates because of it.
So right off the bat, there’s no reporter equivalent in the remake. I thought we were going to follow the reporter, but the perspective then shifts to the foul-mouthed manager. And I’ll give the movie credit here – them substituting his foul language for indecipherable yelling was a clever way around the Hays Code. Then after another loss, he walks out to the field in the dark, and an angel just starts talking to him, telling him to stop swearing and fighting, and they’ll help him win.
So this is extremely random. The remake has a way better hook, no matter what you think of it. Why are the Angels interested in helping this miserable dude? I guess the ending provides the reason, but there’s kind of still a why this guy quality to the movie. So he listens, they help, a little girl goes to the game one time and claims to see an angel. The press gets involved, and the story blows up. If you have only seen the remake, it will seriously blow your mind how much of a role the press plays in this story. A reporter is one of the three main characters.
Anyway, the manager is kind of mad that the reporter helped blow up the story, but he ends up accidentally confirming he hears angels too after he gets hit in the head by a line drive, clearly concussed. For some odd reason, the hometown announcer with a grudge against the manager for some reason has enough pull to get the manager investigated for his ability to lead the team. This guy got hit in the head by a line drive, and an off-hand comment directly after that happened turns into a full-blown 10-minute hearing (in movie time! I’m sure it was much longer) on basically his sanity. The structure of this movie is really, really bizarre.
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