It Happens Every Spring **** (1949, Ray Milland, Jean Peters, Paul Douglas) – Classic Movie Review 11,947

Director Lloyd Bacon’s 1949 American baseball comedy film It Happens Every Spring stars Ray Milland as a college chemistry professor who accidentally develops a wonder chemical that is repelled by wood, after a baseball comes through his window, destroying all his glasses and spilling the fluids that combine to form the chemical methylethylpropylbutyl. This fluid, along with any object with which it makes contact, is repelled by wood.

He takes leave to go to St Louis to pitch in the big leagues, where he becomes a top baseball pitcher, King Kelly, and his pitching turns everybody batty, propelling his team to the World Series.

The engaging premise is inventively developed into an exceptionally clever and amusing fantasy comedy that scores a home run, and Milland strikes out in an on-form performance.

Original story authors Shirley W Smith and Valentine Davies were Oscar nominated. Their baseball pitcher story is fictitious, and the King Kelly character is not based on the actual player. The screenplay is by Valentine Davies.

The exteriors are filmed in Los Angeles’ Wrigley Field, made to resemble Wrigley Field in Chicago.

The cast are Ray Milland as Professor Vernon K Simpson / King Kelly, Jean Peters as Deborah Greenleaf, Paul Douglas as Monk Lanigan, Ed Begley as Edgar Stone, Ted de Corsia as Jimmy Dolan, Ray Collins as Professor Alfred Greenleaf, Jessie Royce Landis as Mrs Greenleaf, Alan Hale Jr as Schmidt, William Murphy as Tommy Isbell, William E Green, Gene Evans and Debra Paget.

Paul Douglas is best remembered for two baseball comedy movies, It Happens Every Spring (1949) and Angels in the Outfield (1951), as well as Panic in the Streets, A Letter to Three Wives (1949), The Big Lift (1950), The Guy Who Came Back (1951), When in Rome (1952), The Maggie (1954), and Executive Suite (1954).

© Derek Winnert 2022 Classic Movie Review 11,947

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com