Reviews


It Happened in Flatbush (Fox Cinema Archives)

Go Out to the Ball Game With It Happened in Flatbush

I'm a pushover for old movies that romanticize baseball, and It Happened to Flatbush certainly does that. However, this 1942 Fox film is not as much a love letter to the national pastime as much as it is one to Brooklyn. After credits roll over a shot of the Brooklyn Bridge, the whimsical opening titles inform us that the following fictional story occurs 'on a strange island just off the eastern coast of the United States.'

As we see Coney Island, the subway, and other landmarks, we read that '...its people are friendly...could even be taken for Americans...but they have a language, customs, and a tradition all their own...the name of this island is -- BROOKLYN!' By now, we're hearing the triumphant strains of 'Take Me Out to the Ballgame' as the picture transitions from youths playing ball to the Brooklyn Dodgers doing the same. Clearly Flatbush wants to celebrate the borough as much it does the sport, portraying the two as inextricably linked.

Lloyd Nolan heads a talented cast as ex-Dodger Frank Maguire, driven out of the major leagues seven years ago after a costly error. With the big league club faltering, matronly owner 'Mac' McAvoy stuns everyone, including front office man Sam Sloan (William Frawley) by hiring Maguire, now managing in the minors, to be the Dodgers' new skipper. As soon as Frank returns to his parents' apartment in Brooklyn, Mac passes away, leaving the club in the hands of niece Kathryn Baker (Carole Landis).

Can Frank find redemption in his hometown in a new role? Can he convince Kathryn to open the purse strings and purchase the players he needs to make the team contenders? Can the Dodgers give its loyal, fiercely provincial fan base another pennant? Can Frawley walk away with every scene in which he appears? You can guess the answers to these questions. I will say Robert Armstrong and Sara Allgood are great at holding the screen with Frawley.

Nolan gives an earthy, credible performance as Maguire, and his courting of Kathryn is less credible, but it works because of the chemistry he shares with Landis. Her patrician background and his Brooklyn-ness provide an amusing contrast. His agenda is to sweet-talk her into spending dough on new players - Maguire's contract must give him the kind of power over personnel that would be the envy of even the highest-paid managers in the game today - but it soon changes into something else. For her part, Baker knows what he's up to right away, but gives him her time -- first, seemingly out of amusement, but soon for other reasons. Landis gives the character an instant likability despite being positioned as an obstacle for Frank to overcome.

As always, Nolan is adept at delivering comic lines, but he also conveys both bitterness at how his career ended and a desire to make good. Maguire's identity is Brooklyn first, Dodger second, and anything else third. When Mac (Allgood, effective enough to make you wish her character lasted longer) asks Frank to return to town years after he was driven out by fans stirred up by provocative columnist Danny Mitchell (a suitably menacing Armstrong); he remarks, 'Dear old Brooklyn -- born in it, raised in it, knifed in it.' 'But you love the place,' Mac responds. When he agrees to become the new manager, she tells him, 'See you in New York,' and he corrects, 'Not New York--Brooklyn.'

As Frank tries to persuade Kathryn to do right by the team, he asks, 'Where's your pride in Brooklyn? You were born here!' She smiles and says, 'Shh! I'm living in Manhattan.' The feeling of 'otherness' works both ways; as we see when Frank's mother (Jane Darwell) expresses concern that her son is dating a foreigner. The owner of the drug store with the best dime sodas in town, Mr. Schlumbom, refers to Kathryn as 'this New Yorker, this foreigner.'


In one key sequence, one of the loyal 'Bums,' or Dodger fans, ends up in court after assaulting an umpire over a disputed call. Instead of banning the crazed fanatic from Major League Baseball stadiums for life and throwing the guy in jail, everyone ends up having a decent laugh over it thanks to Maguire, who steps in as the guy's de facto attorney, giving the judge an impassioned plea as to why the action was wrong but the punishment should not be harsh. His spirited speech before the judge summarizes the community's passion. 'If Brooklyn was to be invaded by an alien enemy tomorrow,' Maguire says, the crazed umpire beater would be the first one to volunteer for the defense forces.

The Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce couldn't have asked for a better Hollywood portrayal of the borough as fun, quirky, and ultimately charming. And just in case you miss the point, in his climactic locker room speech (you know a baseball movie focusing on a manager has to have a climactic locker room speech), Maguire tells his team, 'There ain't a better, more loyal baseball town in the whole country.'

The movie has a romanticized view of baseball, too. Even the darker side of the sport, represented by the venomous Mitchell's printed attacks on the hometown club, is played for fun. When the columnist goes after one of his players, Maguire can't take it anymore, and, more than 30 years before Billy Martin made headlines doing something similar, he slugs Mitchell in the jaw. Rather than file charges or a lawsuit, either of which could lead to a suspension for the skipper, the writer gets back at him the old-fashioned way: he rips him in his column.

The movie takes us back to a time when a manager could bring a kid named Squint everywhere he goes as not only a clubhouse attendant/batboy, but his bench coach and main adviser. Scotty Beckett does well as the brassy but appealing lad. He lets Frank know he's suspicious of Kathryn by saying, 'That Baker dame -- she ain't human, I tell you. She runs on electricity.' It's also an era when a mature woman walks into a minor league locker room and the players scatter in fear like the stereotypical housewife who hops onto a chair when she sees a mouse.

And in Flatbush, a young pitcher can come from totally off the grid and try to lead a major league team to the pennant. We see this play out in the film's third act, when a hitch in the Frank/Kathryn relationship is resolved, the special status of Brooklyn is established, and the story finally concentrates on the field as the team tries to clinch the National League championship. In typical baseball movie fashion, a lot of the action takes place off camera while an excitable radio announcer describes it on camera. Yet director Ray McCarey does a solid job of mixing in game footage, shots of Nolan in the dugout, and separately filmed shots of the pitcher. It's all a convincing enough spectacle, livened up with cuts to enthusiastic 'Bums' hooting and hollering in the stands.

It Happened in Flatbush is a fine look at two great tastes that make a fantastic combination: pre-expansion baseball and pre-hipster Brooklyn. Nolan, Landis, and the strong supporting cast all deliver, and the combination of humor, sports drama, and light romance create a fun 80-minutes that make you look forward to the spring while simultaneously taking you on a nostalgic trip into the past.

Rick Brooks is the proprietor of Cultureshark, a blog in which he uses an often irreverent approach to express his reverence for the classics and the un-classics.