Death on the Diamond

David Landau is the owner-manager of the St. Louis Cardinals -- for the moment. The franchise's finances have been underwater for a while. Everything he has is mortgaged, and he's spent his last moment buying pitcher Robert Young. If the team can't take the World Series this year, he's finished. But the team performs and it looks like they may go to the World Series, until key players are murdered.

It's a pretty good effort from MGM, with Madge Evans as Landau's daughter and Young's love interest, Nat Pendleton, Ted Healy, Henry Gordon, and the usual assortment of MGM players to add gloss. The mystery is ok, although Young does not do the real investigating. That's up to Paul Kelly. It's the sort of enjoyable programmer that MGM could turn out when they weren't trying for greatness.

Death on the Diamond (1934)

** (out of 4)

I love a good murder-mystery but I think there are probably lines that shouldn't be crossed. This film passes that line and just keeps going and going and going. The Manager/Owner of the St. Louis Cardinals pays good money to bring in star pitcher Larry Kelly (Robert Young) so that they can win a championship and save the team. Someone else doesn't want them to win and soon players are being killed one by one. It's up to Kelly and the owner's daughter (Madge Evans) to try and strike up a relationship as well as catch the madman. I think having a murder-mystery set on a baseball field is pretty far-fetched but I guess with the right screenplay something entertaining could have been done with it. Sadly, this isn't the screenplay and in the end one can't help be rather bored by the actual story but nevertheless the film manages to be entertaining simply because you haven't seen anything like it before (or since). I think the biggest problem is that the story, in its "B" picture form, just doesn't have enough to make it interesting. Can you imagine if baseball players were really getting picked out what type of stuff would be happening? Terror from the players, the opposite team, the fans coming to the game and I'm pretty sure the media would be all over a player being shot and killed while rounding third base. The story here pretty much looks at the players, the owner and a few cops so there's nothing big or believable that happens. The film offers up everyone as a red herring and I must admit that I laughed out loud when the killer was finally shown. How we learn who it is and what follows almost makes this movie an instant classic. Young and Evans both turn in decent performances and the two seem to be having a good time with all the flirting. Nat Pendleton and Ted Healy are on board and the supporting cast includes Joe Sawyer in a small role and we even have a very young Mickey Rooney playing the ball boy. Ward Bond and Walter Brennan also have small, uncredited roles. Fans of the genre will probably want to check this out if they're like me and just want to see every film of its kind. Others will probably hit the stop button well before the ending but the strangeness of this film and the weird story keeps its mildly entertaining.

This is an OK film. If you have 70 minutes to kill, this isn't something you'll regret killing them with, but it won't stick with you years later.

The film centers on a series of bizarre murders of top players on a losing St. Louis baseball team. The owner (David Landau as Pop Clark) has mortgaged everything to recruit pitcher Larry (Robert Young). If the season is bad he loses everything to his creditors. There is "the obvious suspect" in one particular gangster and gambler who seems unhappy about the improving stats of the St. Louis team with Larry on the mound, but that's the point. He seems just a little too obvious.

The first criminal thing to happen is that a tire on the car that Larry is riding in being shot out. The car rolls over and Larry could have been killed, but he's not, and that doesn't seem to have been the intention. There are clearly at least two people involved in this first shooting, but they are anonymous. All of the crimes that follow are actually murders or attempted murders and very un-gangland like - poison being substituted for mustard, a player being strangled with the murderer's bare hands, etc. So, Larry, now recovered, is the team's only hope of winning the pennant. Will he play or will he stay safe? Watch and find out.

This film is noteworthy for several reasons. For one, it really is a mystery as to who is doing all of this, as the gangland gambler is the only obvious suspect, and keeps the film interesting. It also gives David Landau, who played so many villains, a chance to play a good but crusty fellow for a change. Paul Kelly as a newspaperman who is investigating the murders as much as he is covering the team by the time the film is over is always a welcome sight with his likable wise-guy persona. The police are certainly messing up this investigation, so it is good to have Kelly on the case.

And now the not so good stuff. The romance between Pop's daughter (Madge Evans) and Larry falls flat as a pancake. There is zero chemistry there - Gable and Harlow these two are not. They were both good supporting players, but until Robert Young took on his TV roles when he was older, I just never thought much of him as a leading man, particularly over at MGM. Then there is Ted Healy. He is just not funny. When he cut the Three Stooges loose it was the best thing that could have happened to them.

I'd still recommend it for the murder mystery.

"You can't tell the American people they can't have baseball."

Combining baseball with a murder mystery, weaving in a love triangle, and sprinkling in some gangster spice, this film is as wacky as Dizzy Dean or the rest of the eccentric real-life St. Louis Cardinals Gashouse Gang that won the 1934 World Series. Is it a good film? No, it is not a good film. But as interested as I am in the Cardinals, it was intriguing to see a story where the team makes a run for the championship but which begins having its players killed to prevent that from happening. And I have to say, with gambling on the rise in sports and gun violence in America ever a threat, the concept of an athlete being shot during a game takes on terrifying, real dimensions today, when in 1934 it must have seemed just dark fantasy.

The premise is that an owner/manager ala Connie Mack must win this year, because as he explains early on, he's in debt, including having borrowed to pay for a hot new pitcher (Robert Young). If they don't win, and thus fail to receive the money for getting to the World Series, he has to sell the team, so that's the first possible angle for a motive. Added to that is a gambler (C. Henry Gordon) who is also going to lose a million dollars if they win, after having taken $50,000 in bets at 20-1, and a couple of players who've been kicked off the team for having been caught gambling. The film also makes the love triangle a possible motive as two teammates are both interested in the owner's daughter (a plucky Madge Evans), and there's a joker in the deck as well.

Many of the elements of the whodunit are clumsily executed to say the least, and there are gags that are overdone, like the repeated ribbing of an umpire by calling him Crawford. (It also has him secretly in need of eye medicine, good grief). The cops are dimwitted in pursuing leads, including smudging the prints on a murder weapon by handling it with their bare hands, but worse, the film doesn't follow up on any of the obvious suspects, losing quite a bit of dramatic tension in the process. Don't come here expecting a good murder mystery or you'll be disappointed.

Offsetting that were some of the unintentionally campy elements, like a player found dead standing up in his locker, falling face forward when it's opened, and the "death by hot dog mustard." There are elements of authenticity, like the Cardinals uniforms and simple caps from the era, and the use of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for the fake newspaper stories. Robert Young looks reasonably smooth on the diamond, Madge Evans is a plucky love interest, and you'll see a young Mickey Rooney appearing briefly as well.

I also enjoyed seeing some of the old ballparks, as footage from real games is regularly inserted to make the film seem more realistic (something it's not very successful at, but I didn't mind). We see quite a bit of Sportsman's Park in St. Louis, including its ad on the left-field wall for the now defunct newspaper the Globe-Democrat, and exactly halfway through its lifetime (1902-66), the park is noticeably very simple. The rightfield pavilion which is often seen was where my dad saw his first game, and it's also notable for having a 33-foot screen which extended to the roof, so that home run balls had to go over it. As Sportsman's Park was the last stadium to desegregate it's seating in 1944, it was also the only place black fans could see a game during these years. During an away game in the film, we also see Crosley Field, home of the Cincinnati Reds, with the distinctive slanted line of right field bleacher seats and the Paper Boxes advertisement on the building behind it. There are a hodgepodge of others shown, apparently including a minor league park in Los Angeles, but they were harder for me to discern.

If you like baseball, this is probably worth seeing, but obviously don't expect a masterpiece. Rebooting the concept in today's world would also make for a chilling drama, and I'd lay odds that someday we'll see such a film.

Death on the Diamond (1934)

The title and plot sound serious but this is a corny, lighthearted spin on murder and racketeering in America's pastime. And leading man Robert Young plays it so breezy you can't quite take his pitching, or his romancing, seriously.

Which is all intentional, no doubt. This is purely entertainment, and in the style of a B-movie at the time, along the lines of many of the murder mystery series that were so popular. The acting and the plots are functional, and fun enough to work, and there is one main hook to keep you interested. Or at least me interested in this one. I knew after ten minutes the movie had no real merit, but I watched it anyway, just to see how they handled the idea.

The idea is sensational: a famously bad baseball team (the St. Louis Cardinals) is surprisingly good thanks to their new sensational pitcher. So a notorious gambler is going to lose big money, and an aggressive businessman is going to fail to buy the team at the end of the season. But only if, in fact, the Cardinals continue to win. So key players start to die. Yes, they are murdered in all kinds of ways. It's a terrifying idea, and I suppose feasible even if preposterous, and you do wonder what the league, and the players, and the fans, and the cops would do.

Well, it is all handled rather lightly. The show must go on, and baseball must be played. Even as bodies are found in the middle of a game, there is no sense that murder trumps nine innings of play, and you really do have to roll your eyes. And then the characters go along with it, too, showing no real fear that they might be next. The actual killers are never really seen—just a shadow, or the barrel of a gun—and so the suspense is deliberately kept low key.

Baseball fans, and baseball movie fans, will no doubt find something to like here. There is a bit of actual footage at the St. Louis baseball stadium, and quite a few actual ballplayers are used in background roles. Young isn't a completely awful pitcher, but you can see when he's pitching in front of a projected backdrop at the studio. There is one little baseball gaffe, it seems—in the bottom of the 9th, St. Louis needs one run to win, but they post two runs, allowing an extra baserunner to score (it wasn't a home run), which isn't how the rules work today, at least.

See this? Not unless you really love baseball.