Death on the Diamond (1934)

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.

Just watched this for the first time, after recording it a few days ago off TCM. I figured a murder mystery involving baseball was something I had to watch since I have enjoyed both murder mysteries and baseball almost all my life.Expecting a straight drama, I was surprised how much of the film was devoted to humor, particularly between the catcher and the umpire. Robert Young was Jim Anderson and Marcus Welby to me as I grew up--having seen him in many roles in old films, I think he is one of the most underrated actors of the 20th Century. He handled a wide variety of roles and the did them all quite well.It is certainly true that some of the ways the murders were committed were rather far-fetched. I'll say it's also true that they handled most of the baseball action scenes better than many other films did. Young, in his closeups, looked believable as a pitcher to me. They mixed in real baseball footage to make the baseball scenes realistic enough.Because they had much focus on the baseball scenes, and the romantic angle, they didn't have enough time for the typical detective movie where we see clues point to different suspects. Instead, we basically were pointed toward numerous people, mostly because they were in the vicinity of the activity. But since this was a light-hearted murder mystery, I don't think this ruined the film.I think it equates with a Matlock or Diagnosis Murder where we follow the star around as everything happens around, and we can guess at who committed the murders, but we never have any real clues until the very end. Frequently on those two TV series, we didn't really have clues to the killer, just a group of suspects to makes guesses about.The big difference here is, after the killer is caught, there's still the mystery of whether or not the Cardinals can clinch the pennant.It was a fun movie to see. It would be a mistake to get bogged down in details of how this or that seems unbelievable. While I caught Mickey Rooney and Ward Bond, Walter Brennan's short role slipped past me.

(there are Spoilers) Unusual murder mystery involving the National League St Louis Cardinels baseball team who's star player seem to be targeted by an unseen assassin in order to keep the team from winning the league pennant.It's when Cardinel owner manager Pop Clark, David Landau, bought Texas League pitching ace Larry Kelly, Robert Young, for a cool $25,000 that the team started to move up the ladder from the cellar to first place. With the St.Louis mobsters headed by big boss Joe Karnes, Henry C. Gordon, betting heavily against the Cardinels to win he pennant they try to get Kelly to throw an important game against the Cincinnati Reds by leaving an envelope of $10,000.00 in his hotel room. To prove that he's not involved with the Karnes Mob Kelly not only beats the Reds but pitches a no-hitter against them!With Kelly not going alone with the mob he's later injured when the taxi he's in has it's tire blown out, with a high-powered rifle, causing it to overturn and Kelly put out action for two weeks. With the Cardinals still holding on to first place despite their star pitcher Larry Kelly being on the disabled list three of the top Cardinels players end up dead, with their deaths taking place in the ballpark, under the most suspicious circumstances: Gunshot strangulation and poisoning.***SPOILERS*** With the pennant now just a game away the Cardinals bring in Kelly to pitch the final game of the season also against the Reds more to get the killer out in the open, with Kelly as bait, then to win the game! In fact it's Kelly himself who catches the killer, while on the mound, by bopping him on the head with a fastball as he tried to sneak a time-bomb into his warm-up jacket! It's then that the real deal or truth comes out to who this assassin is and even more important whom he's working for! ***MAJOR SPOILER*** The person who's been trying to get the team off Joe Clarks hands since spring training by keeping it in last place in order for Joe to be forced to hand it over to him.P.S Over the top and hysterical final sequence by the killer when he's finally exposed and captured by the police and Cardinel players. This guy gave the performance of his life that should have easily earned him hands down the Academy Award for best actor in 1934 over Cark Gable's performance in the movie "It Happened One Night"! Even though he was in the film "Death on the Diamond" in a supporting role!

Seeing that this film was released in September of 1934 when in real life the St. Louis Cardinals were in a tight pennant race with the New York Giants, it's a wonder that this film didn't give some miscreant the idea of doing in the Dean brothers who were to lead the famous Gashouse Gang to the National League pennant and World Series that year.The Cardinals are in desperate financial straights this year as owner/manager David Landau and daughter Madge Evans put the team in hock to get star pitcher Robert Young. Madge has a thing for Bob, but other players have a thing for Madge.In the meantime the rejuvenated Cardinals are screwing up all kinds of gambling interests who don't want to see the long-shot Cardinals win the pennant. They'll stop at nothing including murder to see the Redbirds of St. Louis don't triumph. Murders of three players do occur before the culprit is found.Nat Pendleton and Ted Healy provide the comic relief as a perpetually quarreling catcher and umpire. Someone did some research for this film or was a fan because legendary umpire Bill Klem who was still active in 1934 had an unbelievable aversion to the name of 'Catfish'. In Healy's case Pendleton calls him 'Crawfish' to get his goat.Some establishing shots will give you a look at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis which is long gone now. Otherwise the cast MGM put together for this film shot it in and around Wrigley Field in Los Angeles, the minor league park of the Los Angeles Angels of the Pacific Coast League which also now history.The ending of the film is the very least bizarre. Nearly the entire cast is suspect at one point, but the guilty party in this baseball mystery comes right out of left field. No, the left fielder didn't do it.Paul Kelly has a very good role as a sportswriter with a nose for news that serves him well, the scoops he does get in this film.I might have liked the film better had the ending which I can't reveal been so bizarre. It did give one player an opportunity for a grand piece of scenery chewing.