For one of the stars, it represented a career turning point. For another, it inspired a highly unlikely avocation.
Followers of baseball found it an authentic and educational glimpse at an often-overlooked chapter of the game’s history. But you don’t need to be a sports fan to enjoy it.
The 1992 baseball comedy “A League of Their Own” has something for everybody.
It will return to the big screen on Sept. 17-18 at Hoquiam’s 7th Street Theatre.
Although the characters are fictionalized, director Penny Marshall and screenwriters Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel otherwise stick pretty close to the facts on the development of the World War II-era All-American Girls Baseball League.
Amid fears that the wholesale drafting of standout players would prevent men’s major league baseball from surviving the war, millionaire candy manufacturer Walter Harvey (a thinly-disguised stand-in for chewing-gum magnate and Chicago Cubs owner Phil Wrigley) forms the All-American League in 1943.
Searching for talent, a veteran scout (played by a very funny Jon Lovitz) finds a hot prospect in catcher Dottie Hinson (Geena Davis), who is playing sandlot ball in Oregon.
Content to work on a family-owned farm while awaiting the return of her serviceman husband, Dottie isn’t interested in joining the new league. But her less-talented, insecure younger sister Kit Keller (Lori Petty) has her heart set on playing. Dottie relents when the scout agrees to take them as a package deal.
The sisters are assigned to the Rockford (Illinois) Peaches, one of only four franchises in the Midwest-based league. They are managed by Jimmy Dugan (Tom Hanks), an alcoholic former major-league slugger. Rosie O’Donnell, Madonna and Megan Cavanagh play other team members.
Jimmy is so hung over at the outset of the season that he shirks the bulk of his managerial duties. His attitude changes, however, when the league begins gaining in popularity.
The sisters, meanwhile, are destined for a confrontation after Kit is traded to another team.
This was clearly a labor of love for Marshall, who put the cast through several months of baseball training in a successful attempt to make the action scenes convincing.
The director also wisely rejected a studio suggestion that the story should include a romantic subplot between Dottie (presumably if her husband was killed in combat) and the boozy but endearing Jimmy.
She instead inserted a scene in which Dottie’s husband (played by Bill Pullman in a cameo role) surprises her by arriving unannounced at the team hotel after being wounded in action. That reunion is so poignantly filmed that some viewers undoubtedly hated themselves for hoping this obviously loving couple would be separated.
While the screenplay takes some dramatic license (contrary to what the film depicts, the league was popular from the beginning), the filmmakers get a surprising amount of the historical details right. League officials, for example, actually required their players to attend charm school.
Dugan’s character was based on Jimmie Foxx, a Hall of Fame first baseman who actually managed in the All-American League while fighting what proved to be a losing battle with the bottle. While the real-life Foxx more closely resembled Brian Dennehy than Tom Hanks, the latter expertly blends humor and pathos in what, despite his top billing, was actually a glorified supporting role.
Hanks, of course, delivers the film’s most famous line, “There’s no crying in baseball.”
While it seems hard to believe today, Hanks was in a career slump at the time, after starring in the notorious flop “The Bonfire of the Vanities” two years earlier. The success of “A League of Their Own” helped propel him to eventual superstardom.
Davis landed the role of Dottie after original casting choice Debra Winger bowed out over creative differences with Marshall that reportedly included her objection to working with Madonna. The tall, graceful actress looked like an athlete and her understated acting style dovetailed nicely with her character’s career ambivalence.
The film inspired Davis, who had no athletic background at the time, to become an enthusiastic proponent of the federal Title IX regulation for gender equity in sports.
Five years after this movie was made, she took up archery in her early 40s. She became proficient enough at the sport to qualify for the Olympic Trials, where she finished 24th in a field of 300 — a remarkable accomplishment for a virtual novice at the sport.
Although she fell short of making it to the Olympics, Davis left the sport without expressing much disappointment. She undoubtedly realized that there is no crying in archery.
