The Baseball Film in Postwar America ALSO by RON BRILEY and from MCFARLAND
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The Baseball Film in Postwar America ALSO BY RON BRILEY AND FROM MCFARLAND The Politics of Baseball: Essays on the Pastime and Power at Home and Abroad (2010) Class at Bat, Gender on Deck and Race in the Hole: A Line-up of Essays on Twentieth Century Culture and America’s Game (2003) The Baseball Film in Postwar America A Critical Study, 1948–1962 RON BRILEY McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Jefferson, North Carolina, and London All photographs provided by Photofest. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Briley, Ron, 1949– The baseball film in postwar America : a critical study, 1948– 1962 / Ron Briley. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7864-6123-3 softcover : 50# alkaline paper 1. Baseball films—United States—History and criticism. I. Title. PN1995.9.B28B75 2011 791.43'6579—dc22 2011004853 BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE © 2011 Ron Briley. All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. On the cover: center Jackie Robinson in The Jackie Robinson Story, 1950 (Photofest) Manufactured in the United States of America McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640 www.mcfarlandpub.com Table of Contents Preface 1 Introduction: The Post-World War II Consensus and the Baseball Film Genre 9 1. The Babe Ruth Story (1948) and the Myth of American Innocence 17 2. Taming Rosie the Riveter: Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949) 33 3. Getting a Leg Up in Postwar America: The Stratton Story (1949) 46 4. The American Dream in Service of the Cold War and Civil Rights Movement: The Jackie Robinson Story (1950) 57 5. Hollywood and Assimilating the American Indian Through Sport: Jim Thorpe: All-American (1951)75 6. The Retreat to Nostalgia: Grover Cleveland Alexander, Ronald Reagan, and The Winning Team (1952) 87 7. Education Ain’t No Stumbling Block to Mobility: Dizzy Dean and The Pride of St. Louis (1952) 103 8. Baseball and Supernatural Intervention: It Happens Every Spring (1949), Angels in the Outfield (1951), and Rhubarb (1951) 117 9. Baseball Enlists in the Cold War: Strategic Air Command (1955) 131 10. Jimmy Piersall and Freedom from Want: Fear Strikes Out (1957) 142 v vi Table of Contents 11. The Devil Made Me Do It: Damn Yankees (1958) 157 12. Back to the Future: Safe at Home! (1962) Within the American Consensus 171 Chapter Notes 187 Bibliography 199 Index 209 Preface For me, as a member of the post–World War II baby boom, the years from 1949 to 1962 were formative in my youth. Yet, my family never seemed to quite fit the model of middle-class bliss presented by the white picket fences of such television shows as Leave It to Beaver, Father Knows Best, and The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriett. Rather than reflecting the affluent society of postwar suburbia, my father, who was semi-literate after dropping out of school during the Great Depression, was constantly worried that he might suffer a lay-off from his railroad job. To supplement the family income, my mother, unlike tele vision’s June Cleaver, was forced to seek employment out- side of the home. During the summer and fall, I joined my parents and grand- parents in the cot ton fields of West Texas. We did not yearn for a comfortable suburban home, which was beyond the reach of our meager resources; rather, my father dreamed of a nice mobile home in a fancy trailer park. He never attained that new mobile home, but we did finally purchase a small house with indoor plumbing. Even though I enjoyed white privilege in my racially segregated small town, it was certainly apparent to me that my family was not living up to the expectations of the 1950s consensus as defined by advertising and the media. Feeling somewhat economically and socially alienated, I found solace and a sense of meaning in the game of baseball. I craved all things baseball—col- lecting baseball cards (many from the 1950s which I keep in my office), invent- ing numerous dice baseball card games, and playing sandlot games in which I impersonated my heroes such as Nellie Fox of the Chicago White Sox. In the evenings there was Little League where my baseball aspirations were shat- tered by the label “good field, no hit.” Recognizing at a young age that my playing abilities were rather limited, I devoured baseball literature, and my father, for whom reading was difficult, introduced me to the movies. It was there that I discovered the baseball film genre. The early post–World War II years were a great time for baseball fans at 1 2 Preface the movies. Although many of the films were juvenile and plagued by low production values, between 1948 and 1962 Hollywood produced over 20 films focusing on the national pastime. They ranged from biographical pictures to musicals and fantasies to patriotic films in which baseball played a supporting role for the American military. On the surface, these baseball films appeared to support what some scholars would later term the post–World War II liberal consensus: a celebration of American exceptionalism in which it was assumed that the nation’s social problems would be solved through an expanding cap- italist economy. Thus, there was no reason to protest or rebel. James Dean’s rebellion in Rebel Without a Cause (1955) was really pointless and without a cause, according to the consensus. However, there was one threat to the prom- ise of American life and expanding markets. The serpent in the postwar Amer- ican Garden of Eden was the international communist conspiracy centered in Moscow. Thus, the consensus required that one adhere to the tenets of cap- italism, consumerism, and anticommunism. But these principles did not necessarily make me feel more secure. We didn’t really have much money to buy things, and those duck-and-cover drills failed to convince me that Cold War strategies of deterrence were going to keep me safe. The postwar baseball film was supposed to reassure me that all was well with America and the national pastime. There might be challenges, but all problems would be resolved in the final reel. Of course, life was not quite this simple. And these seemingly simplistic baseball films suggested contradictions and insecurities which would plague America throughout the 1950s and explode in the social upheaval of the 1960s. The dislocations brought about by the Second World War are evident in closer read ings of the postwar baseball film genre, exposing fears of changing gender, class, and race relations as the hegemonic order of the white patriarchy seemed under assault from working women and restive minorities. Concerns about another depression or war contributed to the fragility of the postwar consensus, and reform movements which might have ameliorated these discon tents were discredited by the extreme rhetoric of anticommunism. The baseball films tried to suggest that these societal ills could be addressed through personal readjustments in which supportive girlfriends and wives would help threatened males adjust to the postwar demands of a corporate economy, empha sizing the values of consensus and cooperation rather than the individ ual ism of an earlier era. To succeed in the postwar consumer society, one needed to be outer- rather than inner-directed and conform to the demands of suburbia and the organizational man. The contradictions contained within this society were apparent in the baseball films which failed to resolve these dilemmas, culminating in the feminist and civil rights movements, campus unrest, social upheaval, gay liberation, antiwar activities, and the birth of a counterculture. Preface 3 Rather than a period of conformity and consensus, the postwar era may be more accurately described as a period of ambiguity and paradox in which women’s participation in the workforce grew as female domesticity was cele- brated in the popular media; poverty existed in rural areas and the inner city amidst the prosperity of suburbia; conformity was challenged by the Beats, a grassroots civil roots movement in the South, and cultural rebels such as James Dean and Marlon Brando; and America’s anticommunist foreign policy overthrew democratically established governments in Iran and Guatemala. These ambiguities were apparent in the postwar baseball film genre which mirrored the insecurities of American society, just as baseball itself reflects the larger culture. While offering a certain amount of nostalgia, these baseball films could not actually provide a shelter from the storm gathering in postwar America which was challenging conventional notions of race, gender, and class. By 1962, it was evident that the baseball genre film could no longer even attempt to paper over the inequities of American society. It was time for the nation to directly address the economic, social, racial, and gender issues alluded to in these films. Accordingly, the baseball film genre of the postwar era was more than a nostalgic enterprise in which young people (similar to my West Texas experience) could seek to escape reality. Instead, these films deserve our serious attention as we seek to understand the role played by post- war concerns and insecurities in creating the contemporary society in which we live. Coming to grips with the ambiguities, paradoxes, and contradictions of the so-called postwar liberal consensus may help us better cope with our modern world. As American flocked to ballparks after the Second World War, Holly- wood sought to tap this market by releasing The Babe Ruth Story in 1948.