Death on the Diamond

This is an OK film. If you have 70 minutes to kill, this isn't something you'll regret killing them with, but it won't stick with you years later.

The film centers on a series of bizarre murders of top players on a losing St. Louis baseball team. The owner (David Landau as Pop Clark) has mortgaged everything to recruit pitcher Larry (Robert Young). If the season is bad he loses everything to his creditors. There is "the obvious suspect" in one particular gangster and gambler who seems unhappy about the improving stats of the St. Louis team with Larry on the mound, but that's the point. He seems just a little too obvious.

The first criminal thing to happen is that a tire on the car that Larry is riding in being shot out. The car rolls over and Larry could have been killed, but he's not, and that doesn't seem to have been the intention. There are clearly at least two people involved in this first shooting, but they are anonymous. All of the crimes that follow are actually murders or attempted murders and very un-gangland like - poison being substituted for mustard, a player being strangled with the murderer's bare hands, etc. So, Larry, now recovered, is the team's only hope of winning the pennant. Will he play or will he stay safe? Watch and find out.

This film is noteworthy for several reasons. For one, it really is a mystery as to who is doing all of this, as the gangland gambler is the only obvious suspect, and keeps the film interesting. It also gives David Landau, who played so many villains, a chance to play a good but crusty fellow for a change. Paul Kelly as a newspaperman who is investigating the murders as much as he is covering the team by the time the film is over is always a welcome sight with his likable wise-guy persona. The police are certainly messing up this investigation, so it is good to have Kelly on the case.

And now the not so good stuff. The romance between Pop's daughter (Madge Evans) and Larry falls flat as a pancake. There is zero chemistry there - Gable and Harlow these two are not. They were both good supporting players, but until Robert Young took on his TV roles when he was older, I just never thought much of him as a leading man, particularly over at MGM. Then there is Ted Healy. He is just not funny. When he cut the Three Stooges loose it was the best thing that could have happened to them.

I'd still recommend it for the murder mystery.

There's an inherent danger in any movie director taking on a sports movie, and it's this: Very few directors know anything at all about the sport they're depicting, while the viewers they're courting know EVERYTHING about it.

That being a given, I am very impressed that this movie --- remember, it was made only a few years after talkies appeared --- has actual locations shots at L. A.'s Wrigley Field, Cincinnati's Crosley Field, and many actual MLB scenes at St. Louis's Sportsmans Park (Busch Stadium #1). That baseball shrine in north St. Louis was my Holy Grail as a boy.

Like a cop watching a crime movie and slapping his forehead going "That would never happen in real life", any true baseball fan will have his face-plant moments watching this --- like very early on when the put-upon umpire keeps pronouncing his title as "empire" --- but give it a chance. It's surprisingly authentic, and topical, with today's sports gambling clearly out of control, and MLB hanging its integrity from a Sword of Damocles human hair, making this 1934 movie a prescient parable of where pro sports' Faustian deal with gambling is certain to lead.

There's one gaffe so huge you could steer Elon Musk's ego through it: What should be the movie's most suspenseful scene, the denouement, instead is laugh-out-loud funny, in part due to a very poor choice of sound effect.

It was made not to be an Oscar nominee or Ebert's Great Movies entry, but just to be the final in a triplex at the corner movie theater, keeping summertime moviegoers buying popcorn and soda back when baseball was the national sport.

Set your expectations accordingly and you might enjoy it, especially when a baserunner is gunned down trying to score.

A very youthful looking ROBERT YOUNG plays a star pitcher hired to help the St. Louis Cardinals win the '34 pennant race. He falls in love with the manager's daughter, pretty MADGE EVANS.

The team is soon involved in a series of murders that take place on the baseball field or in the locker room. Since most of the action takes place in broad daylight, there's no chance to build up the suspense to turn this into a crime melodrama. Instead, the heavier touch is on comedy, supplied by NAT PENDLETON and TED HEALEY. Unfortunately, their humorous material is a bit strained for laughs.

Real footage of the Cardinals is integrated with the studio footage shot at Wrigley Field, with mixed results that are more distracting than anything else. Revelation of the murderer comes in the last reel and is far from satisfying, leading to a scene of ham acting at its worst.

Nothing special about this one, even with a cast that includes PAUL KELLY, WILLARD ROBERTSON and pint-sized MICKEY ROONEY in supporting roles.

Some uncredited bits by GARY OWEN, WARD BOND and DENNIS O'KEEFE for those who stay awake during the proceedings.

The only reason to see this picture is for its historical value. You can trace the beginnings of some Hollywood careers as the film contains some famous movie names. It is also an interesting commentary on how sophisticated Major League baseball has become in the ensuing years; major league rules, regulations and business structure - how innocent and unstructured life and baseball were years ago.

It's a nice vehicle for Robert Young and the lovely Madge Evans but the story is trite and predictable. There are numerous plot holes to navigate but if you can just overlook them you can make your way through a harmless 69 minutes.

"You can't tell the American people they can't have baseball."

Combining baseball with a murder mystery, weaving in a love triangle, and sprinkling in some gangster spice, this film is as wacky as Dizzy Dean or the rest of the eccentric real-life St. Louis Cardinals Gashouse Gang that won the 1934 World Series. Is it a good film? No, it is not a good film. But as interested as I am in the Cardinals, it was intriguing to see a story where the team makes a run for the championship but which begins having its players killed to prevent that from happening. And I have to say, with gambling on the rise in sports and gun violence in America ever a threat, the concept of an athlete being shot during a game takes on terrifying, real dimensions today, when in 1934 it must have seemed just dark fantasy.

The premise is that an owner/manager ala Connie Mack must win this year, because as he explains early on, he's in debt, including having borrowed to pay for a hot new pitcher (Robert Young). If they don't win, and thus fail to receive the money for getting to the World Series, he has to sell the team, so that's the first possible angle for a motive. Added to that is a gambler (C. Henry Gordon) who is also going to lose a million dollars if they win, after having taken $50,000 in bets at 20-1, and a couple of players who've been kicked off the team for having been caught gambling. The film also makes the love triangle a possible motive as two teammates are both interested in the owner's daughter (a plucky Madge Evans), and there's a joker in the deck as well.

Many of the elements of the whodunit are clumsily executed to say the least, and there are gags that are overdone, like the repeated ribbing of an umpire by calling him Crawford. (It also has him secretly in need of eye medicine, good grief). The cops are dimwitted in pursuing leads, including smudging the prints on a murder weapon by handling it with their bare hands, but worse, the film doesn't follow up on any of the obvious suspects, losing quite a bit of dramatic tension in the process. Don't come here expecting a good murder mystery or you'll be disappointed.

Offsetting that were some of the unintentionally campy elements, like a player found dead standing up in his locker, falling face forward when it's opened, and the "death by hot dog mustard." There are elements of authenticity, like the Cardinals uniforms and simple caps from the era, and the use of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for the fake newspaper stories. Robert Young looks reasonably smooth on the diamond, Madge Evans is a plucky love interest, and you'll see a young Mickey Rooney appearing briefly as well.

I also enjoyed seeing some of the old ballparks, as footage from real games is regularly inserted to make the film seem more realistic (something it's not very successful at, but I didn't mind). We see quite a bit of Sportsman's Park in St. Louis, including its ad on the left-field wall for the now defunct newspaper the Globe-Democrat, and exactly halfway through its lifetime (1902-66), the park is noticeably very simple. The rightfield pavilion which is often seen was where my dad saw his first game, and it's also notable for having a 33-foot screen which extended to the roof, so that home run balls had to go over it. As Sportsman's Park was the last stadium to desegregate it's seating in 1944, it was also the only place black fans could see a game during these years. During an away game in the film, we also see Crosley Field, home of the Cincinnati Reds, with the distinctive slanted line of right field bleacher seats and the Paper Boxes advertisement on the building behind it. There are a hodgepodge of others shown, apparently including a minor league park in Los Angeles, but they were harder for me to discern.

If you like baseball, this is probably worth seeing, but obviously don't expect a masterpiece. Rebooting the concept in today's world would also make for a chilling drama, and I'd lay odds that someday we'll see such a film.