Wow! Such a good movie.

Admirable film.

A Disappointing Continuation

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

The Platonic ideal of a 1950s biographical movie. Hardly a word or a scene is believable. It's so stilted and unimaginative that I rooted for it to win.When I was a kid the theaters were filled with nonsense like this, colorful life stories of extremely famous celebrities nobody ever heard of, and gaudy musicals with songs from the Old Stone Age, all from the teens and 1920s. It wasn't until some years had passed that I realized that, for most of the audience, these people, events, and songs were still alive in their memories, no farther behind them than the Beatles are behind us.Grover Cleveland Alexander, a Nebraska farm boy (Reagan), is a natural pitcher who is discovered by a minor league team and plays ball for them during the summer. The problem is that his girl friend (Day) doesn't want him to be a baseball player. She wants to settle down with him on a nice farm with a picket fence and a rose garden and build a stable home. Already the movie has left originality behind on a distant horizon, hidden in a cloud of stirred-up Nebraska loess, and it's only fifteen minutes into the story.But never mind. Day moons over the conundrum for a while longer and then decides to marry him anyway, after he's offered a contract with a major league team in Philadelphia.Alexander is a success in 1911. He's a great pitcher. We know this because there is a montage of Ronald Reagan winding up, throwing a ball past the camera, and leaning into it with a big grin. There is also a montage of a proud and smiling Doris Day pasting newspaper clippings, bespeaking triumph, into a huge scrap book labeled in gilt "Grover Cleveland Alexander".Little did they know that tragedy lay just around the corner. Somewhere along this time line -- I forget exactly where in Alex's dazzling rise to fame -- he gets clipped by a bean ball and is knocked out. He wakes up with diplopia -- seeing two of everything. Now, this is unwelcome news for a famous baseball pitcher, and Alex retires to the farm for a year, unreconciled to his disorder -- partly because he's convinced he can still PITCH if only it weren't for his eyes, and partly because he can't spell diplopia.Then -- a miracle! He wakes up at night, goes to shut the window, and he sees only ONE MOON! And before you know it he's back in the game. However, tragedy lies just around the corner. No, no, the diplopia is gone for good. This is a different tragedy.It's 1918 and World War I is upon us. Alex is drafted and is an artillery sergeant. The constant booming of the cannons makes him a little hard of hearing but, worse than that, he begins to get dizzy spells. After a triumphant return from the war, a dizzy spell causes him to pass out on the mound. The spells return. Alex sees a doctor in secret who tells him gravely that "science doesn't know much about these things." He is SO right, because doctors are not screenwriters. Writers know all the details of mysterious illnesses -- what the symptoms are, when they should appear and when they should go away. Based on Alex's description of the symptoms, my Dx is temporal lobe epilepsy. That will be ten cents.The mysterious dizzy spells cause him to start drinking and he winds up a bum in some shabby carnival as so many heroes of these biopics must -- Joel McRae in "Buffalo Bill", Tyrone Power in "Nightmare Alley." He's rescued by an offer to return to the majors by an old friend, with the complicity of Doris Day, and a gigantic hole appears in whatever logic the plot holds. His dizzy spells disappear on the pitcher's mound, as long as he can look into the stands and catch the refulgent splendor of Doris Day's big white grin. At the very end, at the most critical moment, with the Yankees at bat and the bases loaded and the count three and two, Day is delayed in reaching Yankee Stadium, and Alex looks worried and sweaty, and the shapes begin to waver and shift, and -- and -- I had to close my eyes because I couldn't stand the tension so I can't tell you what happened.I applaud this movie because instead of just one tragedy -- either the double vision or the dizzy spells -- you get two. This ratchets up the suspense to the Red Alert level. Also, Doris Day is mighty saucy.Don't miss this if you want to see a typical biographical flick from the 1950s. Definitely see it if you want to know why "they don't make 'em like this anymore" and feel happy that they don't.

Winning Team, The (1952) *** (out of 4) Pretty good, if watered down, drama about the career of Hall of Fame pitcher Grover Cleveland Alexander (Ronald Reagan) who started life on the farm but quickly made a name for himself as a pitcher. When his career was apparently over he started to suffer from alcoholism but his wife (Doris Day) gets him back into shape so that he can make a comeback. Once again we have a bio-pic that has been fictionalized but even with this the movie manages to be very entertaining from start to finish thanks to some very good performances. I think there are a few minor issues with one of them being the fact that the studio forced the producer's to cut down on some of the more darker moments. The alcoholism issue is only touched for a few seconds and Alexander's battle with epilepsy is pretty much overlooked. Another minor problem is that this is a movie about Alexander yet a lot of the attention goes to the wife. Day got top-billing but this is certainly Reagan's movie but at the same time there are many scenes that are obviously here just to give Day more scenes and this includes a really bad singing sequence around Christmas time. With all of that said, the rest of the movie is pretty much a winner. Baseball fans are really going to eat up seeing how they were playing back in the day plus we get to view the old-time uniforms and even better is that we get to see some of the old baseball stadiums. There's also quite a bit of stock footage used to try and re-create some moments of the 1926 World Series, which was against the New York Yankees and their Murderers Row. This was Reagan's final film at Warner after fifteen-years worth of service and they certainly let him go out on a high note. I thought Reagan was very believable in the role and manages to look quite natural as a pitcher and he also managed to be very believable in the part of the farm boy. The early scenes with him struggling with his disease were extremely well-done and this ranks as one of the actors better performances. Day is also in top-form even though I think we could have used a little less of her character. Frank Lovejoy gets a good bit as Rogers Hornsby and we get some real-life players including Jerry Priddy, Bob Lemon, Peanuts Lowery and Irving Noren. Frank Ferguson, who most will remember from ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN, plays Day's father here. Again, if you're wanting to truth on Alexander then it's best you go read a book but if you're just looking for some quick entertainment then this film does the job.

Nebraska farmer Ronald Reagan (as Grover Cleveland Alexander) wants to be a baseball player so bad he drops the ball on dating pretty Doris Day (as Aimee Arrants), for the big games. This makes father Frank Ferguson (as Sam) reluctant to approve the wedding, but Reagan and Ms. Day are quickly married, anyway. The big event occurs after Mr. Reagan gets hit in the head by a ball; he recovers, but with what the doctor calls "double vision." This on-again, off-again setback eventually drives Reagan to drink, threatening both his career and marriage. Can "The Winning Team" (their marriage) survive? In "Her Own Story", Day confirmed she and "Ronnie" had a brief, real-life romantic relationship, while they were both between marriages. Interestingly, Day states the future President had a lovely apartment, was a great dancer, and spoke enough to give her the impression he was "a very aggressive liberal Democrat." Their best scenes are with (later in the picture) each other, and with (earlier in the picture) movie family members Mr. Ferguson and young Russ "Rusty" Tamblyn (later residents of "Peyton Place")."This Is the True Story of Grover Cleveland Alexander," is the film's opening proclamation. It looks more like the studio shoved the early 1900s baseball player's life story into the typical formula film. As usual, the early scenes reveal a lead actor clearly too old for the part, as Reagan is playing a man half his age; this was something more convincingly done by Gary Cooper and Jimmy Stewart. Unfortunately, you spend the whole film wondering what Reagan's "double vision" problem is, exactly - and, don't expect the film to give you the answer. Day sings a very pretty Christmas song ("Ol' Saint Nicholas").**** The Winning Team (6/20/52) Lewis Seiler ~ Ronald Reagan, Doris Day, Frank Lovejoy, Frank Ferguson

Alexander saves the world series for the ST LOUIS CARDINALS against the New York Yankees, yet the fans at Yankee Stadium all cheer him....and a New York cab driver and policeman help Alexander's wife (Doris Day) get to Yankee Stadium in time to give Alexander much needed moral support.