Damn Yankees

The superb Gwen Verdon sings and dances and mugs through this very good adaptation of the smash Broadway musical. Verdon is a cross between Shirley MacLaine and Carol Burnett with a dash of Carol Haney (another Bob Fosse protégé) tossed in. She's a total delight and one of the best dancers EVER! Here she plays Lola, the temptress used by the devil (Ray Walston) to lure Joe Hardy (Tab Hunter) from going back to his wife and breaking his satanic deal in which middle-aged Joe becomes a 22-year-old baseball star and catapults the Washington Senators to 1st place.

Tab Hunter replaces Stephen Douglass from the Broadway show. The rest of the cast recreates their parts for the movie. Verdon, Walston, and Russ Brown (the manager) all won Tony awards. Hunter seems rather stiff and uncomfortable through much of the film (though he looks great) but that's the part of Joe.... Hunter is, however, just terrific in the "Two Lost Souls" number with Verdon. He sings, dances (not too bad) and seems to be having a ball. Verdon is just astounding in this number and laughs all the way thru it. Great song.

Verdon is also a showstopper in "Whatever Lola Wants" and "A Little Brains, a Little Talent." It seems these songs were written for her and no one else can do them the way she does. Verdon, like Ethel Merman or Carold Channing, was a total original. The voice is slightly nasal; the inflection is odd. But it works. And her dancing is totally awesome.

Ray Walston seems to have been typecast in weirdo roles after Damn Yankees and My Favorite Martian. He was a better actor than these roles allowed him to show. Russ Brown is solid as the manager, Jean Stapleton plays the friend (and sings), Rae Allen is Gloria (the reporter), Shannon Bolin is the wife, Jimmie Komack is the goofy ballplayer, Nathaniel Frey is Smokey, Bob Fosse has a cameo in "Who's Got the Pain," and Robert Shafer plays old Joe.

Good songs by the same team that did The Pajama Game. Many of the songs were hits of the later 50s. My only beef is that most of the songs are truncated (I had the Broadway soundtrack) and at least one "I Thought About the Game" is used only as background music. Verdon's "A Little Brains, a Little Talent" is cut in half as is Bolin's "Six Months Out of Every Year." Certainly worth a look to see Broadway superstar Gwen Verdon in her prime and Tab Hunter at his hunkiest.

Damn Yankees was one of two Broadway shows written by the team of Richard Adler and Jerry Ross, the other being The Pajama Game which got made into films almost immediately upon the cessation of the Broadway run. Damn Yankees ran in the 1955-1957 season for 1019 performances and both Gwen Verdon and Ray Walston continued their roles from Broadway.

However the protagonist Joe Boyd/Joe Hardy part, the middle aged real estate salesman who is a fanatic baseball fan of the lowly Washington Senators, was played by Tab Hunter in the Joe Hardy persona. As in that other Broadway film My Fair Lady it was felt that one of the leads should go to a bona fide movie name in that case Audrey Hepburn in this one Tab Hunter.

In his memoirs Hunter said that he was apprehensive about taking over a musical lead because he admitted he was no singer. But the arrangements were certainly done to accommodate his limited range and he acquits himself well. He certainly does look well in the baseball scenes and even keeps up with Gwen Verdon.

Gwen Verdon like Mitzi Gaynor came along in the Fifties just when Hollywood was slowing down with the making of musicals due to the decline of the studio system. Gwen did such other leads on Broadway as Sweet Charity, New Girl in Town, and Redhead, but only with Damn Yankees was she allowed to go to Hollywood and repeat her stage performance. Gwen like Mitzi was a fabulous dancer and in the Thirties and Forties she would have become acclaimed film name.

Ray Walston got his career break in the part of Mr. Applegate the devil's identity for this film. Back when I was a lad and first saw Damn Yankees in the theater, I was enthralled by Walston's performance and became a fan until the day he died. Walston plays the devil like a spoiled child and there might just be some theological justification for that.

The big hit songs from Damn Yankees was Gwen Verdon's seduction number and dance, Whatever Lola Wants. Few people ever on stage and screen could move like her.

The second and even bigger hit was Heart, sung her by Russ Brown and some of the other actors playing hapless Washington Senator players under their eternally optimistic manager Brown. The song was a big million seller for Eddie Fisher who was at the height of his vocal career then.

Damn Yankees the film was released in 1958. In 1960 the original Washington Senators played their last year in Washington, DC. For the poor fans of the Senators it was a double blow. The team was just beginning to jell as a contender and in 1965 they did in fact in their new home in Minneapolis/St.Paul as the Minnesota Twins did win the American League pennant as the Yankee dynasty crumbled at last.

In their place came another new Washington Senator franchise which continued in the second division ways that Washington knew so well and that fans like Joe Boyd were used to. They played their last season in the capital in 1971 and the capital was without Major League baseball until 2005 when the Montreal Expos moved and became the Washington Nationals. I'm afraid we may never see the name Senators attached to a Washington team again. The Texas Rangers have the name copyrighted.

Still the Nationals in the other league are doing their best to hold up the Washington tradition of first in war, first in peace and last in now the National League East. Washington saw three pennants in 1924, 1925, and 1933 and one World Series winner in 1924.

They might just need another Joe Hardy to move the team. Let's hope someone doesn't have to make an arrangement with Mr. Applegate to make it possible to beat those Damn Yankees.

"Damn Yankees" is old-fashioned entertainment, a bit too talky and literal-minded, but great songs and great dancing never get old. It's worth plodding through the more mundane aspects of this film to relish the classic numbers. "Who's Got The Pain?" has nothing whatsoever to do with the plot, but it proves beyond question that Gwen Verdon is the prime interpreter of the Fosse dance style. "Whatever Lola Wants" is actually rather tame in comparison. The highlight is the smoky, seductive duet "Two Lost Souls," where Verdon lets loose with the greatest of ease. The surprise here is Tab Hunter, who holds his own and handles all the Fosse moves just fine. Jean Stapleton's Sister Miller is an early rehearsal for Edith Bunker. I personally prefer the other George Abbott/Stanley Donen collaboration "The Pajama Game," which is livelier. See them both.

All I'm going to do here is rave about a Broadway Legend. We have to be grateful for film, because otherwise some of the theater's greatest performers would exist only in memory. The film version of the 1955 Broadway smash is definitely Gwen Verdon's most memorable screen appearance - as the movie of CALL ME MADAM is probably the closest film approximation we have to what Ethel Merman was like on-stage, so DAMN YANKEES is for Gwen Verdon. No other film performance captures her presence and sparkle, the incredible movements her body was capable of - she's at her best here, and viewers familiar only with the comic roles she played later in her career will be amazed at this consummate musical comedy performer. She's completely infectious and delightful, even when she's not singing or dancing - the lady had PRESENCE, and she displays enough vulnerability to make us like a character who doesn't always do very likable things. She's elegant as she matter-of-factly explains her work methods in "A Little Brains, A Little Talent" and has a whopper of a dance duet with Bob Fosse called "Who's Got the Pain?" (they weren't married yet, but she was already becoming his favorite instrument of dance; his was a cameo appearance added to the film - on stage Verdon's partner was another of the show's characters - if you listen closely you'll hear Tab Hunter say "That was wonderful, Fosse!" at the number's conclusion). And she looks gorgeous in a series of colorful costumes, although in her signature number, "Whatever Lola Wants..." the costume grows skimpier and skimpier as she increases her efforts to seduce Tab Hunter. In THE BLUE ANGEL Marlene Dietrich's "Naughty Little Lola" used a chair as a prop to sing about "Falling in Love Again," (which would resonate decades later as Liza Minnelli sang about "Mein Herr")- in DAMN YANKEES Verdon uses a locker-room bench, and this "other Naughty Lola" ends up almost as scantily dressed! A word about Ray Walston's Mr. Applegate: He is NOT a nice guy!

Gwen Verdon was a Broadway legend with long gorgeous legs and an undeniable stage and screen charisma. Her legendary stage career earned her four Tony Awards, thanks in no small part to her long time Svengali and ex-husband Bob Fosse. Sadly, the only time Verdon was allowed to bring a role she created on Broadway to the big screen was in DAMN YANKEES, a sparkling film adaptation of the Richard Ross-Jerry Adler musical about a middle-aged baseball fan named Joe Boyd (Robert Shafer)who sells his soul to the devil for his favorite team, the Washington Senators, to win the pennant. The devil, apparently in desperate need of converts, appears in Joe's living room in the form of a Mr. Applegate (Ray Walston)and changes Joe Boyd into Joe Hardy (Tab Hunter), a young and unbeatable baseball player who helps lead the Senators to the pennant until he starts to get homesick and Applegate sends in his # 1 agent/witch named Lola (Verdon) to distract Joe. The film is well-mounted by Broadway legend George Abbott and Verdon and Ralston effectively reprise their Tony-Award winning stage roles and Fosse is even showcased, dancing in a rare duet with wife Verdon on "Who's Got the Pain?" and trust and believe, seeing Fosse and Verdon dance together is worth the price of admission alone. Other great songs in the score include "Whatever Lola Wants", "Heart","Those Were the Good Old Days", and "Shoeless Joe From Hannibal Mo". Not the greatest musical ever made, but Verdon, Ralston, and Fosse's brilliant choreography make it worth watching and re-watching.