Angels in the Outfield

A wonderful baseball movie with more depth than the Disney rendition. Paul Douglas and Janet Leigh are wonderfully cast as the gruff team manager and female reporter out for a story. It was a treat to see Barbara Billingsley as the hat check girl in the resteraunt. Some very famous ball players make guest appearances, which is a real treat.

This is a touching movie that the whole family can enjoy. It has similarities and some serious differences with the modern Disney rendition of this film.

This was a nice film, nothing special, but certainly better than the terrible Disney re-make in 1994.

The baseball scenes were pretty good and they should have stayed more with that. They had footage from real-life Pittsburgh Pirates games and that helped make it look more genuine than most sports films that Hollywood made back in the 1940s. Paul Douglas was pretty funny, especially when he started "swearing," mixing his sentences together so you couldn't understand anything he said.

Once again, as was the case in a number of classic films, the story was going along pretty well and then a sappy romance ruins things. I'm all for romance but they are done so stupidly in most films, it's an insult to your intelligence.

The little girl in the movie, "Bridget White," (Donna Corcoran) was a cute, sweet little thing. She lives in an orphanage run by nuns (Spring Byington and Ellen Corby are featured). It's interesting to note that all the pro-religious scenes in here were deleted in the 1994 Disney version.

The villain of this movie turns out to be the baseball announcer, of all things. Keenan Wynn plays the role so effectively you want to reach through the television and punch this guy out!

A real classic and one of my all time favorite movies. So many wonderful moments throughout the film. Paul Douglas is great as Guffy McGovern, a rough, tough hard-nosed baseball manager. His guardian angel changes his ways as the Pirates go from worst to first. Keenan Wynn - don't you think he's the role model for today's outspoken writers and sports radio guys? I cheer every time Guffy punches his lights out.

Yeah, the movie's syrupy and has a few clichés, but man, it sure resonated with me when I was younger and still does today. Whenever something goofy happens in a real baseball game I wonder if there's an angel out there wreaking some havoc on a hapless player.

I caught this movie on AMC late one Saturday night. The difference from this movie classic and the Disney effort was like night and day. This movie had more feeling and better acting. Don't Get me wrong, Danny Glover and Joseph Gordan-Levett, and Tony Danza did well, but not as good as the original cast.

Baseball and fantasy combine to make exceptionally comfortable movie partners here, as the hot-headed, foul-mouthed (for 1951) manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball team learns to clean up his act after he and his losing team receive Divine Intervention on the playing field. Potentially sticky premise gets some heavenly assistance of its own, with Paul Douglas just about perfect in the lead. He's supported by a fine cast, including Keenan Wynn, Janet Leigh (looking lovely), as well as Ty Cobb, Joe DiMaggio, and Bing Crosby in smart cameos. The whimsical script is surprisingly witty, and the direction is straightforward and never too mawkish. Remade by the Disney people in 1994, with one major difference: in this one, you don't see the angels. *** from ****