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It Happens Every Spring (1949)
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 07, 2019 11:28 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

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What this All American baseball thread needs is a trailer with Gwen Verdon struttin' her stuff!
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_________________ Damn Yankees - Trailer 1


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


Last edited by Bud Brewster on Sun May 01, 2022 10:22 am; edited 2 times in total
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Pow
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 02, 2019 6:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

And then there's good ole Flubber being used to give one team a decided advantage over another.

In Disney's "The Absent Minded Professor" Flubber is ironed onto the soles of a basketball team's sneakers. This allows that team to be able to do super bounces resulting in the players to reach inhuman heights.

In the sequel "The Son Of Flubber" we see Flubber in another state of matter: gas. The gas is put into a football as well as one player's inflatable suit that he wears underneath his football uniform.

Again,both are rigging the all-American game in favor of one team over another.


Last edited by Pow on Sun Apr 11, 2021 11:48 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 03, 2019 9:20 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

I supposed a case could be made for the idea that the players on the opposing team in The Absent Minded Professor were much taller than all the poor little guys playing for Medfield College. That, at least, is some justification for evening the playing field. Very Happy

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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


Last edited by Bud Brewster on Sun May 01, 2022 10:23 am; edited 3 times in total
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Pow
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PostPosted: Sun Apr 11, 2021 11:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Someone once wrote that "Sports don't build character, they reveal it."
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Fri Apr 29, 2022 11:55 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

Just what would it take for one substance, such as a wooden baseball bat, to physically repel another — such as the leather cover of a baseball? Confused

The only attractive/repulsive force in the universe known to science which resembles the events shown in this movie is . . . magnetism.

Obviously, neither wood nor leather have the properties of iron — the element which can be magnetized.

However, apparently Prof. Vernon K. Simpson developed a solution which created a magnetic field around the spherical baseball. The magnet field was created by the solution, not the leather.

This magnetic field interacted with the Earth's magnetic field, which then influenced the way the ball traveled while in motion. But when the ball encountered a fast-moving mass, like a baseball bat, the magnetic field was momentarily reversed from positive to negative— causing it to travel around the moving mass which reversed its polarity. Shocked

For this reason, the baseballs which were thrown by Prof. Simpson curved around the baseball bats and then resumed their original trajectory, landing in the catcher's glove!

This was a very complex interaction between the magnetically charged solution, the baseball which it coated, the Earth's magnetic field, and the fast-moving mass of the bat that entered the baseball's magnetic field and briefly flipped it's polarity! Very Happy

I suspect that this amazing magnetically charged solution could have many applications. For example, cars could be coated with it, and collisions with other automobiles would be avoided when both cars repelled each other!

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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


Last edited by Bud Brewster on Sun May 01, 2022 10:26 am; edited 1 time in total
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PostPosted: Fri Apr 29, 2022 8:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Fun Facts from Wikipedia & IMDB:

The movie was released on June 1, 1949 by 20th Century Fox.

Screenplay: Valentine Davies (1905~1961) and based upon a story by Davies and Shirley W. Smith.

Valentine Davies wrote the classic Christmas story Miracle on 34th Street. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for the movie The Glenn Miller Story (1954.)

Davies wrote the novelization for the film.

Exterior baseball game scenes were filmed at L. A.'s Wrigley Field.

Leonard Maltin wrote about the film: "A most enjoyable, unpretentious picture."

All the baseball teams in the movie are identified by their city but never by their nicknames. Even the home team uniforms, which should have their nicknames on them, list only the city.

The reason for all this was that baseball commissioner, Happy Chandler, would not sanction this film because of the cheating aspect due to Vernon's chemical formula that he wiped on the baseball.

The studio had hoped to have some cameos by noted baseball players in the movie but Chandler prohibited it.

When Dolan asks Vernon his name, Vernon briefly scans the outfield fence and spots an advertisement for Kelly Tires and uses that as his name. This scene was in the film but cut when it came to television in the 60s.

Vernon K. Simpson/King Kelly (Ray Milland) coats a majority of the baseballs that he pitches with his special chemical concoction from a pad hidden in his glove.

No indication in the film tells us exactly how long his coating is effective.

An umpire replaces a baseball after each foul play and approximately after six-pitches. So there was little chance that Kelly's coated baseballs might accidentally end up in the hands of an opposing team's pitcher.

Kelly asks for $1,000 per each game that he wins. $1,000 in 1949 was equivalent to $11,920 as of 2022. If Kelly won all thirty games, as promised, he would have earned more than $350,000.

In 2022, a Major League Baseball rookie salary is $700,000 per year.

Sidebar: While this is a entertaining and fun movie, I doubt we'll ever see a reboot of it. That's because I don't think an audience today would really warm up to the Vernon character using his anti-wood chemical formula to win against opposing teams. Not in America's Greatest Pastime.

In fact, I wonder if the audience of 1949 relished the film's plotline due to the cheating element? Makes me wonder if the studio had any objections to it, or did they fell okay producing it since it was a science-fiction movie and a comedy to boot?
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Pow
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PostPosted: Fri Apr 29, 2022 11:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm now watching It Happens Every Spring on Youtube and the picture is of an excellent quality.

Wikipedia: Director Lloyd Bacon (1889~1955) also directed Knute Rockne, All American (1940), and The Fighting Sullivans (1944), and both are dramatic and moving films.

Sidebar: I caught actor Ray Teal in the small role of a cop who tries to escort Ray Milland out of the office of the manager of the baseball team that Ray wants to join.

Ray would go on to play another law enforcement officer, Sheriff Roy Coffee on Bonanza from 1960 to 1972.

And how do you like the fact that Professor Simpson (Ray Milland) is dating one of his college students (Jean Peters) who is also the daughter of the president of the college?

Yikes! That wouldn't float now.
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 30, 2022 10:16 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Pow wrote:
And how do you like the fact that Professor Simpson (Ray Milland) is dating one of his college students (Jean Peters) who is also the daughter of the president of the college?

Yikes! That wouldn't float now.

I wondered if that attitude towards teacher/student dating had changed, so I Googled the question. Here's what I got.
______________________________________________

Most schools have policies against professors dating students, and they are strictest when it comes to students they are actually teaching.
______________________________________________

So, it's still a no-no.

However, Professor Simpson was actually engaged to the young lady (after indulging in a period of clandestine dating), after which her father approved of the relationship.

And he was the president of the college.

All in all, I'd say Ray dodged the ethical bullet on that one.
Very Happy
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~ The Space Children (1958)
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 30, 2022 2:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

More IMDB Trivia:

"This is getting monotonous boys, me and the kid is playing catch and you guys are fanning the air." Monk Lanigan playing catcher for Vernon.

Sidebar: This was a good line. It takes place as Vernon is trying out for the team. He's pitching the baseball to the top hitters of the team and striking 'em all out courtesy of his miraculous anti-wood chemical.

Monk was played by the terrific actor Paul Douglas (1907~1959).

Douglas was well known for playing bombastic, blue-collar tough guys. His real background was quite different from those kinds of roles he played.

Douglas was born to an upper-class section of Philadelphia to a well-to-do doctor. He got into Yale University but never attended.

He played pro-football with Philly's Frankford Yellow Jackets.

In 1928, he parlayed his passion for athletics into a highly successful sportscasting and commentating career and grew to be greatly respected as one of the top sports announcers and masters of ceremonies.

Throughout the film we see Monk receive phone calls from his wife Mabel and hear her voice on the phone even though we never do see her.

The voice belonged to the wonderful character actress Sandra Gould (1916~1999). Sandra is best remembered as playing nosy neighbor Gladys Kravitz on the sitcom Bewitched (1964~1972). Sandra took over the part from another fine actress, Alice Pearce (1917~1966), who passed away during the production of the series.

Douglas Spencer (1910~1960) pops up as a train conductor in the film. Doug is well remembered as the comedic reported Ned "Scotty" Scott in the classic 1951 SF movie The Thing From Another World. He also appeared as an alien Monitor in 1955's This Island Earth.

Sidebar: Vernon's anti-wood discovery is referred to as a "biophobic" chemical.

I always recalled the scene of the kids baseball that comes crashing through the lab window and into Vernon's lab set-up as just that. Broken window and then broken beakers and flasks, and so forth.

Watching the movie today I see that it actually resulted in quite an explosion! Had Vernon or his fiancee been standing right next to it when the baseball first crashed through the window and into his chemical processing set-up they might have been killed. At the very least they could've been seriously injured.

When Monk and Vernon are in their hotel room, Monk sees Vernon's bottle that holds his wonder chemical on top of the dresser and asks him "What's this?"

Vernon replies that it's hair tonic, and that leads to some very funny scenes when Monk uses it as hair tonic for himself.

I couldn't help wondering a couple of things though? Why did Vernon leave his precious discovery just sitting on the dresser in the first place? And why not tell Monk that it's special medicine for him (Vernon)?

That way Monk, or anyone else, wouldn't be interested in it or even touch it.
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 30, 2022 3:55 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Pow wrote:
Why did Vernon leave his precious discovery just sitting on the dresser in the first place? And why not tell Monk that it's special medicine for him (Vernon)?

That way Monk, or anyone else, wouldn't be interested in it or even touch it.

Great observation, Pow! Very Happy

Of course, what Vernon really should have done was hide the bottle in a safe place to prevent it from being found — like under his mattress. But that would have robbed the movie of the comedic moments we love so much.

And Vernon makes enough mistake to show us that, in some ways, he's not quite a genius in every way
. . . Rolling Eyes
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 30, 2022 8:38 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

How true, Bud. There's nothing more boring to watch than a perfect hero or heroine.
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Captain Starlight
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PostPosted: Fri May 06, 2022 5:05 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The idea that such a remarkable discovery would not make its inventor rich is ridiculous! His original formala was intended to cause wood to repel termites. This would be a remarkable achievement. Milland should have become one of the richest men in the world!
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PostPosted: Fri May 06, 2022 5:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

But remember, the anti-wood concoction came about due to an accident when the kids baseball smashed into the lab setup that Vernon had.

So Vernon was not entirely sure how that impacted his scientific experiment resulting in it being a success.

It might have taken him time to recreate the complex chemical processes required for his chemical, plus figuring out exactly how the accident and resulting explosion contributed to the anti-wood chemical working.

I like to think in time he was able to put it all together and become wealthy and marry Jean Peters.
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sat May 07, 2022 12:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Pow wrote:
But remember, the anti-wood concoction came about due to an accident when the kids baseball smashed into the lab setup that Vernon had.

Milland explained to Jean that his solution was something which would work as a biophobic — "a substance that would keep insects and any living matter away from wood".

That's a quote from the movie at the 8:15 mark in the YouTube video.


______________ It Happens Every Spring 1949


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But the mixture that ended up in the sink after the baseball smashed the equipment was described by Milland as "just a hodgepodge of compounds and ice and everything else". It was the solution in a highly diluted and contaminated form.

Unfortunately, just as a small sample of the pure liquid had collected in a beaker prior the accident, and he said it would take him months to create a new batch.

And yet that alleged "hodgepodge" did in fact cause the baseball coated in it to repel baseball bats, and it repelled Paul Douglas' hair when his head was close to headboard on this bed. Plus, the team manager's hair was repelled by his wooden hairbrush!

(Both men had mistakenly assumed the bottle of fluid was a hair restoring solution!)

The point, of course, is that it would seem Milland's solution did repel organic material, such as cowhide and human hair, even though the "pure solution" was greatly diluted by the other liquids that went into the sink.

I think we can logically assume from this that if Ray applied the solution evenly over the external surface of an oblong wooden object such as baseball bat, a similar repulsive force would be exerted on the approaching leather sphere!

(In plain Enlish, that crazy shit would work just as well both ways! Very Happy)

Unfortunately, that doesn't mean the movie would end any differently, because Ray would still have to spend months recreating his final solution so he could prove that it was indeed a "biophobic".

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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


Last edited by Bud Brewster on Wed Jul 20, 2022 2:03 pm; edited 1 time in total
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PostPosted: Tue May 10, 2022 12:53 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Ya know, Vernon still had to be one hell of a pitcher and batter to be on that baseball team and keep up with his teammates even with his anti-wood chemical giving him a significant edge.
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