Product Description

Starring the original Broadway cast this is the musical adaptation of the novel "The Year The Yankees Won The Pennant" with a score by Adler & Ross ("The Pajama Game") and choreography by Bob Fosse. Washington Senators fan Joe Boyd sells his soul to the devil Mr. Applegate to become the greatest baseball player ever and to help his favorite team win the pennant. However doing this means Joe must leave his beloved wife Meg and it's not easy on him. Whenever he poses as a boarder to get closer to her Applegate must enlist the help of his favorite seductive helper Lola. But not even Lola's charms can woo Joe. Soon she finds herself falling for him but pledges to be his friend. Joe and Applegate make a contract allowing him out of the deal at a certain time but the devil makes sure that Joe doesn't get out. When Lola finds out about this she slips him four sleeping pills so he can sleep through the game the next day allowing Joe to help the Senators win the pennant. However Satan awakes and after turning Lola into an old hag turns Joe back into an old man on the field who returns to his wife.Running Time: 110 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY UPC: 085393197025

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3950 in DVD
• Brand: Warner Brothers
• Released on: 2004-10-12
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish, French
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: 1.00 pounds
• Running time: 111 minutes

Amazon.com
America's pastime gets a Faustian twist in this 1958 studio musical, which recounts the ballpark bargain struck by an aging Washington Senators fan obsessed with helping his team trump the Yanks. With echoes of the real-life 1919 Shoeless Joe Jackson scandal, and tart observations on the tradeoffs between youth and experience, Damn Yankees fuses a classic dramatic dilemma with musical comedy to often charming effect.

In transferring George Abbott's Broadway hit to the screen, codirectors Abbott and Stanley Donen are smart enough to retain Richard Adler and Jerry Ross's clever songs, Bob Fosse's sizzling choreography (with Fosse himself on camera for the sultry mambo number), and stars Ray Walston and Gwen Verdon, reprising their devilish turns as the Horned One himself, Mr. Applegate, and his temptress, Lola. Where the team strikes out, unfortunately, is in their concession to marquee politics, handing the pivotal role of Joe Hardy to handsome, vapid, celluloid heartthrob Tab Hunter, whose thin voice and unsteady screen presence argue that he should have stayed in the dugout.

Walston is reliably spry and acerbic as the canny archangel, and Verdon, in one of her rare starring screen turns, confirms the comedic timing and sexy, muscular grace that made her a deserved draw in subsequent stage hits including another Fosse triumph, Sweet Charity. With her combination of feline grace and alternately steely, flirtatious femininity, Verdon makes you believe her when she sings, "Whatever Lola wants, Lola gets." --Sam Sutherland

Customer Reviews

One of the greatest musicals ever made ! ! ! ! !
I was so ecstatic to see this movie! I'm 50 years old and hadn't seen this classic since I was a kid (years after on t.v.) I truly recommend this movie young and old alike, a timeless love story.

Damn good
An oldie but goodie, Ray Walston at his best years before Fast Times At Ridgemont High. Gwen Verdon when hot was more than cosmetic. Very good transition from stage to film. Excellent story.

damn yankees
It was excellent. The only problem that I had with it was that it was in wide screen with bars at top and bottom.