It Happened in Flatbush

It Happened In Flatbush is a very fun and very entertaining baseball comedy from 1942. The beautiful Carole Landis stars as Kathryn Baker, a socialite who inherits a baseball team but knows nothing about sports. Lloyd Nolan, a washed up baseball player, returns to Brooklyn to manage the team. At first he clashes with Landis but eventually (of course ;-) he falls in love with her. Can they work together to save the team and win the big game? Although this is a movie about baseball I thought the personal scenes between Carole and Lloyd were the best. Miss Landis gives an excellent performance and gets to wear some really beautiful gowns. She was one of Fox's most promised starlets but sadly she took her own life in 1948. She appeared in more than forty films during her career and It Happened In Flatbush is one of her better roles. The movie got very good reviews and was a modest hit when it came out in 1942. The talented cast also includes William Frawley, Scotty Beckett, and Sara Allgood. It was directed by Ray McCarey who also worked with Carole on 1941s Cadet Girl. If you're a fan of fun baseball movies or just want to see the lovely Carole Landis you'll enjoy this film.

In 2015 Fox finally released It Happened In Flatbush on DVD.

Nolan is perfectly cast as the struggling ball club manager. What a fine effortless actor he was, always making dialog sound both natural and spontaneous. The movie had more substance than I expected. It's not a straight Cinderella story of a manager taking a last place team (Brooklyn) to the top. Instead, Maguire (Nolan) has plenty of downs to go with the occasional up, and in the romantic department, as well. And what a dish Carole Landis (Kathryn) is, all outfitted here in upper-class finery, and before she became the more familiar blonde.

The most notable thing about this sports story is how the fans of Brooklyn are portrayed. Note that the movie was made at the beginning of WWII. The preceding decade of the 1930's was the decade of the "common man" when everyday ordinariness was honored by Hollywood's dream factory.

Here, that ordinariness is on display with an emphasis on fighting spirit from both the rowdy fans and the Brooklyn team. On a larger scale, it would take that sort of popular effort and team spirit to win the big war, which amounts to a topical sub-text even in this modest programmer.

Note too how the upper class is portrayed as slightly effete, especially lounge lizard Walter (Allen), Maguire's rival for Kathryn's affections. In the screenplay, Brooklyn stands for the borough of the common man and his combative spirit, while Manhattan receives a rather dismissive upper-class reference. It's Hollywood gearing up for the big war, and, on the whole, a better movie than I expected, but nothing special.

(In passing—I can't help noticing that the Brooklyn team is never referred to as the Dodgers, just as the generic "Brooklyn". Similarly, for St. Louis minus the Cardinals. I expect these generic references allowed the producers to avoid legal problems.)

Very enjoyable "B" movie from 1942. Nolan as skipper of Brooklyn Dodgers is good. For once they did not use old Wrigley Field in Los Angeles for the long shot scenes. Instead they used films of the three games played at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn in the 1941 World Series. You can tell from the bunting hanging from the stands. Also some events are very close to actual happenings of the old Dodgers. A most for all us old Brooklyn Dodger fans.

Those of us who grew up with, and loved, the Brooklyn Dodgers had gotten a smile and a kick out of this film. Does anyone know if it is available anywhere? Would love to turn back the clock and enjoy this one over again. Great film - hell no! But so much of the Brooklyn spirit....and great dialogue poking fun at non-Brooklynites.Lloyd Nolan, of course, was fine in his role as manager of the team, and the much maligned but beautiful and actually quite talented Carole Landis is a wonderful woman to have around. Then there is the wonderful Sara Allgood...... No, Ray McCarey didn't have the chance to reach the career status of his brother, Leo, but Ray's films are devoid of the sentimental mash that his brother offered. Has anyone actually been able to watch Going My Way anymore? Impossible (even with the joy of seeing Rise Stevens).

Although in 1942 Brooklyn was only one of the five boroughs of Greater New York when it was a city by itself it had a ballclub in the National League that eventually became known as the Dodgers. That club helped Brooklyn keep its individuality and was what made Brooklyn as Lloyd Nolan put it, "the greatest baseball town in the world".

Although you can see a lot more of old Ebbetts Field in the Red Skelton film Whistling In Brooklyn, you get enough of it here in a film about the Dodgers and their run for the pennant. In fact It Happened In Flatbush celebrated what happened in real life, the Dodgers winning their first pennant in 21 years in 1941.

But they lost the World Series in five games to the Yankees, a pattern that would repeat itself until 1955. That series is best remembered for passed ball by Dodger catcher Mickey Owen in game four on what would have been the last out of the game and the Dodgers winning and evening the series up at two games to two. But the Yankee right fielder Tommy Henrich ran to first safely and then the Yankees opened up and won the game. The heart was cut out of the Dodgers with that play.

Something similar has happened to Lloyd Nolan in It Happened In Flatbush. He was a promising shortstop who made an error and cost the Dodgers the pennant back in the day. In fact he was tagged "Butterfingers" and literally run out of the Big Leagues. More modern fans would call this the Bill Buckner syndrome.

Anyway Dodger owner Sara Allgood hires Nolan as manager and then she promptly dies leaving the biggest share to her niece Carole Landis who is a Park Avenue débutante with not much interest in the game. General Manager William Frawley is in Nolan's corner however and to keep his job he puts the moves on Landis.

Let's say she develops an interest in her Brooklyn roots and in baseball and Nolan with the inevitable results.

Watching that I couldn't help thinking of the real Dodger manager at the time, one Leo Durocher who had an eye for the ladies and would soon take as a third wife, movie star Laraine Day. If Durocher had a pretty owner like Carole Landis to deal with instead of the mercurial Larry MacPhail at the time, he would have been in their pitching with Carole.

Baseball players all over organized baseball would have voted Lloyd Nolan an Oscar if they had a vote for punching out the character that Robert Armstrong plays. Armstrong is one of those grudge bearing sportswriters who will pick on a target of some athlete and just always tear him down for whatever the reason. Ted Williams had one such individual in Boston, a guy named Dave Egan and if the Splendid Splinter ever saw It Happened In Flatbush he would have stood and applauded Nolan for doing what he would like to have done. In real life that would probably get you banned, fortunately Armstrong and Nolan had no witnesses.

The misanthropic William Frawley who was in real life a very lonely alcoholic has an unusual number of baseball films in his film credits. That's because he was a huge fan and probably would have paid 20th Century Fox to be in It Happened In Flatbush.

It Happened In Flatbush celebrates the place of my birth and the unique place in American culture it has. Its fans made it the greatest baseball town in the world.