Damn Yankees! ***** (1958, Tab Hunter, Gwen Verdon, Ray Walston) – Classic Movie Review 1150

The original stage director and co-author George Abbott brings Broadway’s neon-bright 1955 Faust fantasy musical to the screen with great zest, flair and style. Happily, he keeps the stage show virtually intact and retains most of the cast too, including its stars Gwen Verdon and Ray Walston. Set during the Fifties in Washington DC, at a time when the New York Yankees dominated Major League Baseball, the musical is based on Douglass Wallop’s novel The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant.

Robert Shafer plays a middle-aged, middle-America estate agent baseball fan who makes a pact with the Devil (Walston) to become the young athletic ace hitter (Tab Hunter) of his pet team, the Washington Senators, in order to beat their hated opponents, those damn New York Yankees. Adding welcome allure, glamour and star appeal, Hunter replaces the stage show’s star Stephen Douglass as Joe Hardy. You have to feel sorry for Douglass who lost out on the movie and also lost to his co-star Walston for the 1956 Tony Award as Best Actor (Musical). He died on 20 December 2011, aged 90.

Walston is stupendous as the teasing tempter Mr Applegate and a perfectly cast Hunter is excellent as the trusty, homespun hero. But the sensational Verdon is the true show-stopper as the Devil’s sexy assistant Lola who gets what she wants after her own pact with the Devil transforms her into an 18th-century New England witch.

There are still loads of fun and charm to be found in this effortlessly charismatic Eisenhower-era musical, even with its cosy celebration of Fifties American values (‘it’s fine to be a genius, of course, but keep the old horse before the cart’).

The show’s nimble, eye-catching choreography is directed, as on stage, by the great Bob Fosse, who also appears here un-credited, dancing a mambo with Verdon. The standout hits are ‘You Gotta Have Heart’, ‘A Little Brains’ and ‘What Lola Wants, Lola Gets’.

Verdon’s performance of A Little Brains is censored for the film. Her suggestive Fosse-choreographed hip movements as performed on stage were considered too risqué for a mainstream American film in 1958, and so, in the film, she simply pauses at these points. And there was more Fifties censorship: the film was released in the UK as What Lola Wants, to avoid use of the word ‘Damn’ on posters, hoardings and cinema marquees.

A remake starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Jim Carrey has been announced.

Damn Yankees ran for 1,019 performances on its original 1955 Broadway production and won the Tony for Best Musical. Abbott wrote the book with Douglass Wallop, and the music and lyrics are by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross, who had scored a huge success with The Pajama Game. Tragically Ross suddenly died of chronic bronchiectasis, aged only 29, a few months after Damn Yankees opened.

Richard Adler.

Richard Adler, who organised President John F. Kennedy’s birthday with Marilyn Monroe, died on June 21 2012, aged 90.

Jean Stapleton.

Jean Stapleton, who plays Sister Miller, died on May 31 2013, aged 90.

Tab Hunter (aka Arthur Andrew Kelm) came out of the closet in a tell-all memoir on his Hollywood years in 2005. The book entitled Tab Hunter Confidential: The Making of a Movie Star outlines his relationship with actor Anthony Perkins that lasted several years in the late Fifties. Other flings he mentions include dancer Rudolf Nureyev, actor Scott Marlowe and ice-skater Ronnie Robertson.

Hunter and his lifelong companion Allan Glaser met in 1983. The couple co-produced Lust in the Dust (1985) and Dark Horse (1992).

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1150

Link to Derek Winnert’s home page for more film reviews: http://derekwinnert.com/