Bookshelf review: It Happened in Flatbush

It Happened in Flatbush Poster I was looking for a baseball movie to watch the other day and came across It Happened in Flatbush, (1942) which I confused with one of my favorites, It Happens Every Spring (1947). Amazingly, I had never seen Flatbush before so I gave it a shot, especially since it featured Lloyd Nolan, one of my favorite actors from that era (my old softball team played at a field at the intersection of Lloyd and Nolan Roads in Marlboro, NJ) and William Frawley, a staple of baseball flics perhaps best known as Fred Mertz on I Love Lucy.*

IHiF is a redemption story: it is a fairly standard tale of the era, heavy on the lessons of teamwork and preaching baseball as a sport that represents the best in the good old US of A. Nolan plays Frank “Butterfingers” Maguire, an ex-player who made a Merkle-like boner that cost the Brooklyn Dodgers a pennant seven years earlier. The team’s female owner, looking for a new manager, knows that Maguire, despite that embarrassing setback, has the heart of a champion and is just the shot in the arm the ball club needs. Frawley plays, I guess, the team’s general manager (it’s not stated specifically).

IHiF is a love story: Nolan falls for the team’s new female chief executive after the original owner conveniently dies, setting the obligatory confrontation/love story in motion.

IHiF is a redemption story, redux: Nolan’s Dodgers begin to win, but as soon as they hit a rough patch late in the season to endanger their chance for the pennant, they turn on him, going so far as to draw up a petition to have him fired. This all stems from his decision to stay with a struggling rookie pitcher who loses a crucial game, calling into question his judgment. This point is driven home by another stock character of baseball movies, the snarky/adversarial sportswriter (Max Mercy in The Natural; Fred Bayles in the original Angels in the Outfield; Hank Hanneman in The Pride of the Yankees, to name a few).

IHiF is a patriotic story. The movie was released in May of 1942 with America fighting in WWII. Maguire comes to the defense of a Dodgers fan who winds up in court for hitting an umpire who made a call against his team. The manager passionately speechifies about the fan is exercising his rights as a proud regular-Joe American. So instead of going to jail, the judge reduces the punishment to a $25 dollar fine, knocked down to $5, which the fan asks to borrow from Maguire.

IHiF is a redemption story, part three. In the game that will decide the pennant, with everything on the line, Maguire brings in that rookie pitcher to save the day (see below) because he has “a hunch.” And since this is the 1940s, there has to be a happy ending, so figure it out. (What’s more, Maguire brings him in without the hurler warming up!)

It Happened in Flatbush (1942)

There are a few issues I have with the movie.

Who is the little kid, Squint, Maguire’s apparent ward? What’s the story there?
Why do the Dodgers wear away uniforms when they’re playing at home? Guessing it was a licensing/permissions thing. And I won’t even get into what ballpark(s) they used to emulate Ebbets Field and oher locations.
How is the female owner/love interest allowed to sit in the Dodgers dugout?
Did not understand the situation in the top of the ninth with the bases loaded, two outs, and a full count when the announcer says “[T]he next pitch will decide the pennant…. If it’s a strike, it’s Brooklyn. If it’s a ball, it’s St. Louis.” First of all, a walk would simply drive in the go-ahead run, not necessarily the winning run since the Dodgers would still come to bat in the bottom of the frame. Poor editing by the script writers.
On the other hand, Nolan looks pretty good in flannel, unlike some other actors in baseball films.