FORGOTTEN FILM: IT HAPPENS EVERY SPRING (1949)

Forgotten Films: It Happens Every Spring (1949)

This is the 8th in my series of Forgotten Obscure or Neglected Films

With baseball season beginning on Thursday this week, I had thought to do a baseball film of some sort. And since Missions Unknown deals with fantasy, horror, and science fiction that cut my list of potential films down to just a few, notably DAMN YANKEES, ANGELS IN THE OUTFIELD (which I do not like in either version), and this little gem. And since the FOX FILM CHANNEL happened to show this a week or so ago early on a Saturday morning when I happened to be awake and flipping channels, serendipity led me to this film.

The film is based on a novel by Valentine Davies, who also did the screenplay (and received an Academy award nomination for his work). I had a copy of the book once, but it went away on the great book sale. Davies also had several other Academy Award nominations and one win (for MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET from his novel written while serving in the Coast Guard in 1944.

The story is highly improbable but fun. Chemistry Professor Vernon Simpson (Ray Milland) is working at an unnamed college in Illinois. He is working on his PhD. He has a girlfriend Debbie (Jean Peters) who is taking one of his classes and whose father is the president of the college. All is going well, until April rolls around. Vernon is obsessed with baseball. No one knows about this obsession, just that from April until October he is not quite the same person as the rest of the year. He is close to finishing his research for the degree when a baseball crashes into his lab, destroying his equipment and lands in a tray of chemical stew. He is distraught. It will take years to recreate what he has done.

In cleaning up the mess, he discovers the baseball acts oddly when placed in the presence of wood. Rolling down a counter, it swerves to avoid a wooden object or leaps over it. Vernon has an idea. He enlists the aid of two college ball players who are having difficulty in his class. Early one morning he meets them and pitches to the star hitter. The batter smashes the ball out of the area. Then Vernon places some of the chemical on the ball. And pitches it. The ball moves out of the way of the bat and the young man looks sick swinging at it.

Now Vernon has an idea. He will pitch for the St. Louis baseball team. But since respectable chemistry professors do not play organized sports and since the college would not recognize his leave of absence for such a request, he lies to the president of the college, leading him to believe he is going to look at a research job. He then goes to St. Louis and presents himself to the club. They want nothing to do with him but he bullies his way to the point that Edgar Stone (Ed Begley) the general manager wants to show him a lesson. He puts on a uniform and gets warmed up. The catcher, Monk Lanigan (Paul Douglas) sees him as hopeless. The batters will hit it into the next country. But, using the old chemical spitball, Simpson makes the hitters look stupid.

And before you can say Shoeless Joe from Hannibal, Mo, Vernon is the best pitcher in the league. He is playing under an assumed name “King Kelly” in order to protect his professional reputation and he shies away from photographs. Debbie’s mother accidentally sees him with the team at the train station one day and assumes he has turned to a life of crime since she sees a rough unschooled group of hooligans talking about steals and murdering someone (another pitcher). Hijinks ensue. Vernon confronts her and tells her the truth but she does not believe. Vernon is embarrassed at playing ball and abruptly leaves a game when Debbie’s father shows up.

It’s all quite fun as the team heads to the World Series. And, as all fantasy ball players know, one pitcher cannot do it all for you. In the end, it all works out. Vernon gets his girl, a great job and has the best single pitching season I baseball history.

Now, this is not a perfect film. Ray Milland is 20 years older than his college age girl friend. This is quickly glossed over early in the film with an explanation involving WWII. But still, 20 years! Now Jean Peters is nice to look at. At this point in life she had not yet married Howard Hughes. But the biggest problem to me about the film is that Simpson was cheating. He was using a substance to prevent the fair battle between pitcher and batter. If he was winning because of skill at throwing the ball, that is one thing. But to use chemical means where the batter cannot hit the ball, that is cheating. Had the league known, they would have banned him and had the team forfeit the games.

Still, it is enjoyable. It is certainly a product of it time, before professional sports became a respectable job for a grown man. Paul Douglas as Monk gives a nice performance as Vernon’s catcher and roommate, particularly when dealing with his wife on the daily phone calls. He also has a wonderful slapstick scene where he uses some of Kelly’s “hair tonic” (the chemical cheat) on his unruly hair and then tries to comb it with a wooden handled brush.

So, I like the film. I also like DAMN YANKEES and nothing in this film can compare to Gwen Verdon singing “Whatever Lola Wants, Lola Gets” but I think this is the more forgotten of the two. And I would be remiss if I did not mention Milland’s other baseball film, RHUBARB, based on H. Allen Smith’s novel about a cat that owns a baseball team. It’s not a fantasy or SF film so it did not qualify here, but it us a lot of fun also.

Series organizer Todd Mason hosts more Tuesday Forgotten Film reviews at his own blog and posts a complete list of participating blogs.