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TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALL GAME at The Hi-Pointe This Saturday Morning
“Oh, Miss Higgins! You’re the prettiest manager in baseball!”
Celebrate two of America’s great pastimes, Baseball and the Hollywood Musical, this Saturday morning at St. Louis’ fabulous Hi-Pointe Theater this weekend as part of their Classic Film Series. It’s Saturday, April 13th at 10:30am at the Hi-Pointe located at 1005 McCausland Ave., St. Louis, MO 63117. Admission is only $5.
In TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALL GAME, set in the first decade of the 20th century, Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly play Dennis Ryan and Eddie O’Brien, two best friends who play with the Brooklyn Wolves baseball club in the summer, then work the vaudeville circuit during the off-season (I guess ball players weren’t paid one hundred years ago what they are today). Their carefree lives are shaken up when go-getter Esther Williams inherits their franchise and takes over as an active, controversial, manager who annoys the heck out of man-about-town Eddie but charms the socks off girl-shy Denny.
The musical numbers in TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALL GAME were designed to showcase Kelly’s dancing and Sinatra’s vocals, with Sinatra only getting some light dancing to disguise his limitations. Sinatra and Garret team up for the tune ‘Baby, It’s Fate’. Gene Kelly’s best number is The Hat Me Father Wore on St. Patrick’s Day, a lively Irish jig that he performs with style. Sidekick Jules Munshin joins with Kelly and Sinatra for the physical ‘O-Brian to Ryan to Goldberg’ number, and Sinatra contributes his usual ballad, this time sung to Williams. The cast all get together for a barn-storming rendition of ‘Strictly USA’, which is repeated in the musical finale with some tongue-in-cheek lyrics (catch the references to Kelly and Sinatra’s frequent co-stars, Judy Garland and Kathryn Grayson). TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALL GAME was one of the last films directed by Busby Berkeley and is all prettily Technicolored in the way that only MGM could do when it came to musicals. It’s always fun to see Kelly and Sinatra kick up their heels in dance routines the way they did in ANCHORS AWEIGH and ON THE TOWN.
Don’t miss your chance to see TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALL GAME on the big screen.
The Hi-Pointe’s site can be found HERE
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