The 1967 TV production of the Broadway musical "Damn Yankees!" is not as well-known as the 1958 Warner Brothers film version. But the TV version has some merits which the movie version lacks: it's an excellent alternative version of the same story, told on a much smaller budget.
One of the best songs in the Broadway show "Damn Yankees" was "The Game", a slam-bang up-tempo number for male trio, with hilarious lyrics. For some reason, this song was left out of the film version (except as background music during the opening credits and montages). The TV version of "Damn Yankees!" restores this hilarious song "The Game", and it's a highlight of the show.
Lacking the glitz of the movie version, the TV version of "Damn Yankees!" makes a virtue of its low budget. Only three members of the Washington Senators baseball team are played by live actors: the rest of the team are "played" by plywood cut-outs painted to look like baseball players. This sounds like a dumb idea, but it's actually handled well ... especially during the victory scene in the locker room, when one of the flesh-and-blood athletes shares a handshake and some shaving cream with one of his plywood team-mates.
Throughout this TV show, there are clever ways of distracting us from the low budget. During the famous song "Heart", when the three ballplayers sing the line "It's nice to be a genius, of course", we see cut-outs of their heads moving back and forth in front of crude animation of some meshing gears. When they sing "Keep that old horse before the cart", we see some silent-film stock footage of a horse rearing up in front of a cart.
The lead role of Mr. Applegate (alias the Devil) is played here by Phil Silvers, and he's at the top of his form in a performance that owes nothing to Ray Walston's portrayal of this role in the film version. Phil Silvers gives his own unique interpretation of the Devil. Try to imagine Sergeant Bilko as Lucifer, and that's what you'll see here. Hilarious! Fran Allison (of "Kukla, Fran and Ollie") gives an excellent performance as Meg Boyd, and it's a pleasure to see her interacting with humans instead of puppets. During the scene in the baseball commissioner's office, there's supposed to be a crowd of reporters ... but the production budget can't afford a crowd of actors, so Fran Allison speaks directly to the camera and she reacts as if she's speaking to a hostile crowd of reporters. She handles an awkward role extremely well. Linda Lavin (making her TV debut) is superb in her role as Gloria the sportswriter. She does splendid work in her big number ("Shoeless Joe from Hannibal, Mo.") and her "Shifty McCoy" scene with Phil Silvers is the funniest in the whole show.
There are some minuses here, notably Lee Remick's limp performance as Lola the temptress. Lola is supposed to start out unsympathetic, then become heroic as she risks the Devil's wrath in order to save Joe Hardy's soul. This is how Gwen Verdon played the role (on Broadway and in the film), but Remick wants to have our sympathy from the beginning. She's awful. Ray Middleton is badly cast as Joe Boyd, the ageing man who sells his soul for one last chance to recapture his youth. Even when this role is played well, it's hard for us to sympathise with Boyd: he abandons his wife for selfish reasons, and gives her no explanation. Middleton spent most of his career playing villains, and his basic coldness makes Joe Boyd even more unsympathetic than usual.
Jerry Lanning plays Joe Hardy, the younger "improved" version of Joe Boyd. Lanning sings very well, but he lacks the physique for this role. Joe Hardy is meant to be a physical paragon, literally superhuman. Lanning can't compare to Tab Hunter, who played Joe Hardy in the movie version. Tab Hunter (with his gimmicky name) always looked just too good to be true, which turned out to be an asset when he played super-athlete Joe Hardy in the movie "Damn Yankees!". Lanning is too "normal" for this superman role.
The TV version of "Damn Yankees!", with its plodding camera-work, can't match Bob Fosse's brilliant staging of the dance numbers in the film version, but it tries to come up with imaginative visual substitutes. During the song "Two Lost Souls", while Lanning and Lee Remick do an uninteresting dance, weird splotches of multi-coloured ink are superimposed on the screen in slow motion. This isn't as interesting as a Bob Fosse dance number, but it's an honest attempt to do something original and different.
The 1958 "Damn Yankees!" was the first movie musical with a racially integrated chorus line; unfortunately, this great idea wasn't repeated in the TV remake. But the movie version also suffers from the presence of Jean Stapleton doing her annoying "dingbat" routine. Stapleton is completely absent from this TV remake, which is one of the reasons why you'll enjoy it. The TV version of "Damn Yankees!" tries very hard, and much of it succeeds. Some of it is even better than the 1958 film version. I strongly recommend this TV special as an alternative to the enjoyable film version; each has its own flaws, and each has its merits. And I enjoyed hearing "The Game", with its hilarious lyrics. Why was this song left out of the movie?
