Take Me Out To The Ball Game (US Import DVD)

US Import

Whether its Batter up! or Curtain Up!, Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly are ready when they play early-1900s vaudevillians who spend the winter flinging the on-stage blarney and the summer flinging the ol horsehide for baseball's defending world champs, The Wolves. Sinatra is a second sacker Dennis Ryan and Kelly is shortstop Eddie O'Brien in this Busby Berkeley-directed romp that combines a baseball storyline with that other all-American pastime: romance. Esther Williams plays the new team owner thrust into this pack of baseball Wolves. And Betty Garrett is a Baseball Annie with eyes for blue-eyed Ryan. Kelly and Stanley Donen's deft musical stagings ranged from a softshoe duet charmer to an exciting barrel roll Kelly solo. Like the film itself, the duo came up a winner. Their work persuaded producer Arthur Freed to green-light their direction of the same year's On the Town.