Elmer the Great 1933

The Cubs were swept by the Yankees in the 1932 World Series, so in 1933 Ring Lardner wrote a movie (it had originally been a play,  written by Lardner and George M. Cohan) in which the Cubs win the Series over the Yankees in seven games, with the help of Elmer, played by Joe E. Brown, who is remembered today, if at all, as Osgood Fielding III, with the memorable last line of Billy Wilder's Some Like  It Hot (1959).  Brown was actually something of a star in the 30's, mostly in B pictures aimed at rural audiences. In Elmer the Great he is lured out of Indiana to play for the Cubs when the woman he loves pretends to spurn him so he will take advantage of the opportunity.  Brown plays something of a hick who ends up outsmarting the gamblers who try to trick him into throwing the World Series.  Lardner was an important Chicago baseball writer and novelist who felt betrayed by the 1919 Chicago Black Sox and this film is in some ways an attempt to get even (director John Sayles played Larder in Sayles's 1988 film Eight Men Out).

I did not find Brown particularly appealing as Elmer, and he wasn't helped by Mervyn LeRoy's somewhat slack direction (LeRoy is remembered today mostly for producing, especially The Wizard of Oz in 1939, though he did direct quite a few films).  There is not much baseball actually shown in the film but there is at least one funny bit:  it rains ands the Yankees hit a ball to Brown when the bases are loaded and he takes a long time to find it in the mud.   The film does have a number of definite pleasures, mainly the effective use of the slang of the period --"Imagine a crossroads apple-knocker high-hatting the Chicago Cubs!" -- and an impressive array of skillful character actors, including Sterling Holloway as a resident of Indiana (he played a similar role in the Mitch Leisen-Preston Sturges film Remember the Night, 1940), Frank McHugh, Russell Hopton, Berton Churchhill and others.

In Elmer the Great the Cubs win the World Series, which last actually happened in 1908, though this year they do have the best record in baseball and have already clinched their division.