DanMargarita.com

FEAR STRIKES OUT: Anthony Perkins stars as the troubled former Red Sox outfielder, Jimmy Piersall. Until Robert Redford starred in The Natural, most actors starring as ballplayers seemed to have about as much athletic ability as Liberace, and that's the main source of humor in this movie. Perkins was far more convincing as a sociopathic killer in Psycho, than as a ballplayer here. Today, studios go to great lengths to make settings, costumes and atmosphere as realistic as possible. That didn't seem to have been a major concern in this biopic.

Since Piersall was a member of the Red Sox, much of the film is set at Fenway Park, or is supposed to be. During one game scene, two main shots are used. The first is a wide shot of an actual game at Fenway, and the other is a close-up of Piersall playing shortstop. The close-up is not overly convincing though, when you notice that what should be Fenway's 37-foot high "Green Monster" left field wall, appears to be a ten foot high fence with palm trees behind it. I wasn't around to see Lansdowne Street in the fifties, but I'm willing to bet that there were no palm trees there.

OK, so they couldn't make their stadium look like Fenway. It might have been more convincing if, while in the dugout, he was wearing the same uniform as his teammates. As Perkins paces back and forth, it's hard not to notice that he's wearing what looks like a child's uniform bought at Kmart, while his teammates wear the real thing.

THE BABE RUTH STORY: William Bendix stars as the game's greatest slugger from his adolescence until his death. In most movies, which cover that length of time, a child actor will be used to play the subject as a youngster. Common sense, you would think. Here, forty-two year old Bendix plays Ruth as a teenager at St. Mary's Industrial School for Boys. In an effort to make him appear young, he is dressed in a pair of knickers.

Later, while starring with the Yankees, Ruth, in the middle of batting practice, hits a line drive which strikes a dog that is inexplicably sitting on the field at Yankee Stadium. He rushes the dog to a hospital, a human hospital mind you, not an animal hospital, where he convinces a doctor to operate on the mutt. He misses the game, and is suspended by his manager. As the evening wears on, a steaming mad Ruth is shown in a nightclub with a glass of milk in front of him. Babe Ruth symbolized the Roaring Twenties and I doubt he ever drank a glass of milk in his life, much less in a nightclub or speakeasy in New York City during prohibition.

At the end of the film, as Ruth lay dying in a hospital bed, he is introduced to a doctor who will try an experimental new serum on him. It may not work, he is told, but they may learn from it and thus help others. Lo and behold, the doctor administrating the serum turns out to be the one who operated on the dog and saved him.

The Babe wasn't saved, and neither was the movie. That's why it's funny.