A Puckish Incursion

For ten minutes, Damn Yankees is just another movie, despite the devil who shows up immediately in red tie and socks. He is not really a devil; merely a very fine actor named Ray Walston. But the elf who finally peeks through the celluloid illusion is real, though she is listed as a mortal actress—Gwen Verdon—in the credits. I blame no one for doubting what I say, since everyone knows that all the elves and pixies have been banished from our poor world. The gods, with their cruel sense of irony, disturb our nether darkness with Hollywood musicals instead of midsummer-night dreams. But, on rare occasions, a particularly subtle sprite darts out of Theseus’ troupe into Mr. Goldwyn’s or Mr. DeMille’s.

Damn Yankees is about a baseball fan who would do anything to get a pennant for the Senators. With a “poof,” the plausible devil appears, puffing his hell-fire through a laboratory-tested filter. “Anything?” he asks this Faust of the bullpen, and the cameras transform the fat and balding fan into a young athlete who can save the Senators. Hollywood is most obstrusively itself when the young ballplayer turns out to be Tab Hunter.

For ten minutes, Damn Yankees is just another movie, despite the devil who shows up immediately in red tie and socks. He is not really a devil; merely a very fine actor named Ray Walston. But the elf who finally peeks through the celluloid illusion is real, though she is listed as a mortal actress—Gwen Verdon—in the credits. I blame no one for doubting what I say, since everyone knows that all the elves and pixies have been banished from our poor world. The gods, with their cruel sense of irony, disturb our nether darkness with Hollywood musicals instead of midsummer-night dreams. But, on rare occasions, a particularly subtle sprite darts out of Theseus’ troupe into Mr. Goldwyn’s or Mr. DeMille’s.

Damn Yankees is about a baseball fan who would do anything to get a pennant for the Senators. With a “poof,” the plausible devil appears, puffing his hell-fire through a laboratory-tested filter. “Anything?” he asks this Faust of the bullpen, and the cameras transform the fat and balding fan into a young athlete who can save the Senators. Hollywood is most obstrusively itself when the young ballplayer turns out to be Tab Hunter.