A notable difference between the film and stage versions was Gwen Verdon's performance of the song "A Little Brains". Verdon's suggestive hip movements (as choreographed by Bob Fosse and performed on stage) were considered too risqué for a mainstream 1958 American audience, and so she simply pauses at these points in the film. The title was changed in the United Kingdom to avoid use of the word "Damn" on film posters, hoardings, and cinema marquees.
Plot
Joe Boyd (Robert Shafer) is a middle-aged fan of the unsuccessful Washington Senators baseball team. His obsession with baseball is driving a wedge between him and his wife, Meg—a problem shared by many other wives of Senators supporters. Meg leads them in lamenting their husbands' fixation with the sport ("Six Months Out of Every Year").
After seeing his team lose yet again, Joe rashly declares that he would sell his soul to the devil to see his team beat the Yankees. No sooner has he spoken than the devil appears before him in the guise of a suave conman, Applegate. Applegate claims he can go one better—he can restore Joe's youth, making him the player who wins them the pennant. Joe agrees, but persuades Applegate to give him an escape clause. Applegate declares that Joe can back out, but only the day before the last game of the season—afterwards, his soul belongs to the devil.
Joe bids an emotional farewell to a sleeping Meg ("Goodbye Old Girl"), after which Applegate transforms him into a dashing young man, now called Joe Hardy.
The next day, the Senators' practice is a fiasco. Their manager, Ben Van Buren, gives the team a rousing pep talk ("Heart"). Applegate arrives and, introducing himself as a scout, presents his new discovery—Joe Hardy from Hannibal, Missouri. Joe promptly hits baseball after baseball out of the park in an impromptu batting practice. As he is signed to a Senators contract, female sportswriter Gloria Thorpe plans to quickly get Joe into the public eye ("Shoeless Joe from Hannibal, Mo.").
With tremendous home runs and game-saving catches, Joe leads the Senators on a long winning streak into pennant contention and becomes a national hero. Joe misses Meg dreadfully, however, and keeps sneaking back to his old neighborhood for a glimpse of her. Realising this could ruin his plans, Applegate summons his demonic right-hand girl, Lola, a seductress who was once known as the ugliest woman in her territory, but sold her soul to Applegate in exchange for eternal youth and beauty. She is ordered to make Joe forget his wife, a task Lola is confident she can carry out ("A Little Brains, A Little Talent").
Joe succeeds in getting close to Meg by renting a room in his old house; Meg is unaware of his baseball stardom. Applegate and Lola corner Joe in the baseball team's locker room, where Lola confidently tries to seduce Joe ("Whatever Lola Wants"). But she has her first failure—Joe dearly loves Meg, and does not fall for Lola's tempting ways. Applegate angrily banishes Lola.
By the end of the season, the Senators are on the verge of overtaking the Yankees, so the Washington fans hold a lavish tribute ("Who's Got the Pain?"). Gloria, having returned from Hannibal, Missouri, where no residents remember a Joe Hardy, confronts Applegate about the player's true identity. Applegate implies that Joe is actually Shifty McCoy, a corrupt minor leaguer playing under a pseudonym. By the end of the tribute, newspapers arrive accusing Joe of being Shifty. He must meet with the baseball commissioner for a hearing or else be thrown out of baseball—on the day he plans to switch back to being Joe Boyd.
At the hearing, Meg and her female neighbors arrive as material witnesses, attesting to Joe's honesty and falsely claiming he grew up with them in Hannibal. The commissioner acquits Joe, but as everyone celebrates, midnight strikes and Joe realizes he is doomed.
Applegate has planned for the Senators to lose the pennant on the last day of the season, resulting in thousands of heart attacks, nervous breakdowns and suicides of Yankee-haters across the country. He is reminded of his other evil misdeeds throughout history ("Those Were the Good Old Days").
Following the hearing, Lola lets Joe know she's drugged Applegate so that he will sleep through the last game. They commiserate over their condemned situation at a nightclub ("Two Lost Souls").
Late the next afternoon, Applegate awakens to find the Senators/Yankees game well underway. Realizing Lola has tricked him—and worse, that Lola has actually fallen in love with Joe—he turns her back into an ugly hag.
They arrive at the ballpark by the ninth inning, the Senators up by a run. With two outs, one of the Yankee sluggers hits a long drive to the outfield. As he backs up to make the catch, Applegate impulsively switches Joe Hardy back into Joe Boyd in full view of the stadium. Now paunchy and middle-aged, Joe makes a final lunge at the ball and catches it, winning the pennant for Washington. As his teammates celebrate and fans storm the field, an unrecognized Joe escapes from the ballpark.
Late that night, as the public wonders why Joe Hardy has disappeared, Joe Boyd meekly returns to his house. A tearful Meg hugs him and they sing to each other ("There's Something about an Empty Chair"). Applegate materializes once again and offers Joe the chance to resume being Joe Hardy in time for the World Series; he also makes Lola young and beautiful again to tempt Joe. Joe ignores him, and a tantrum-throwing Applegate vanishes for good.
Cast
Hunter as Joe Hardy
Tab Hunter as Joe Hardy, a younger version of Joe Boyd
The film followed the same template as The Pajama Game in that basically the whole Broadway cast was imported apart from one role given to an established star. In Pajama Game it had been Doris Day, in Damn Yankees it was Tab Hunter, who had become a pop star in addition to being an actor.[4]
Hunter said George Abbott insisted on specific line readings, which the actor found difficult.[5] Also, according to Hunter's memoir, when he suggested a creative change in a particular scene, Abbott refused to consider it. When Hunter asked why, Abbott said "Because that's not how we did it in the stage version." Hunter then wondered why Abbott was considered such a highly revered visionary.
"Who's Got the Pain" — Lola and Mambo dancer (Bob Fosse)
"Two Lost Souls" — Lola and Joe Hardy
"There's Something About an Empty Chair (reprise)" — Joe Boyd and Meg Boyd
The "Overture" and "Two Lost Souls" are noticeably different from the Broadway production in orchestration, and many of the lines in "Six Months Out of Every Year" were cut from the film. "A Little Brains, a Little Talent" has a few lyrical differences.
Some songs appear in different order than the original Broadway and subsequent versions, and some songs ("Near to You", "The Game", "A Man Doesn't Know", and "Heart (Reprise)") were cut entirely, which left Tab Hunter with very few songs. "There's Something About an Empty Chair" was not in the original stage version or in any stage versions since. While Bob Fosse is not credited for the Mambo number, Tab Hunter thanks him by name as they come off the stage.
Reception
Gwen Verdon later said "I don’t think it looks like a movie... I think it looks like a stage show, which is not good. And I’m sure Stanley, who had done great movies, did not want to shoot it that way, but he did it out of deference to George."[7]
Reviews from critics were generally positive. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times wrote that Verdon's performance was "one of the hottest and heartiest we've seen years ... Miss Verdon has the sort of fine, fresh talent that the screen badly needs these days. But lest she seem to be the whole show, let us hasten to proclaim that there's a great deal more to 'Damn Yankees' than this wonderful red-headed dame. Like the George Abbott stage show before it, it has class, imagination, verve and a good many of the same performers who did so charmingly by it on Broadway".[8]
Variety wrote: "That 10 of the top 11 players, plus creators from writer to costume designer, have been transferred en masse from Broadway just about insures a film that is as least as good as its stage counterpart. What stands out like an inside-the-park home run is the skill and inventiveness with which the film is coated, thus making 'Damn Yankees' a funny picture",[9]
Harrison's Reports called the film "a generally entertaining show even though it does not rate a rave notice. In treatment and presentation it is, for the most part, very much like a photographed stage play, in spite of the fact that the camera allowed for a wider range of activity".[10]
Richard L. Coe of The Washington Post wrote of the play's transition to the screen, "It could be argued that perhaps it follows too closely, that this is too clearly a photographed stage musical. That I didn't mind in the least, because 'Damn Yankees' is a swell musical comedy and I'm a sucker for musical comedy".[11]
John McCarten of The New Yorker found Walston and Verdon "just as delightful" on the screen as they were in the stage version, adding, "Although expository dialogue occasionally hobbles the proceedings, 'Damn Yankees' is for the most part commendably brisk, and the music and lyrics, by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross, are uniformly lively".[12]
A somewhat mixed review in The Monthly Film Bulletin praised Verdon as bringing "great presence and a neatly sardonic humour" to the film while describing the score as "pleasant but unmemorable", and summarized the picture as "a musical made with a great deal of verve and some wit, but without much natural gaiety".[13]
Most of the baseball action was filmed at Los Angeles' Wrigley Field, a site often used in the 1950s for Hollywood films about baseball. The film contains footage of the famous left field wall of Griffith Stadium in Washington (home of the Senators)—and the house that protruded into the center field area—which gave author Douglas Wallop the plot device that allowed Joe Hardy to escape from the ballpark.
^"Top Grossers of 1958". Variety. 7 January 1959. p. 48. Please note figures are for US and Canada only and are domestic rentals accruing to distributors as opposed to theatre gross
^"AFI's 10 Top 10 Nominees"(PDF). Archived from the original on 2011-07-16. Retrieved 2016-08-19.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
