The Great American Pastime

The Great American Pastime was a 1956 movie about baseball. A romantic comedy about Little League Baseball, it was not successful, earning back $430,000 on an investment of over $760,000.

Produced by MGM, the film was directed by Herman Hoffman, who would go on to a successful career in television, and the script written by Nathaniel Benchley, son of famed humorist Robert Benchley. It starred Tom Ewell as Bruce Hallerton, and twin female leads in Ann Miller and Anne Francis. Ewell was coming off a staring role alongside Marilyn Monroe in The Seven-Year Itch.

Hallerton is an attorney in the small fictional town of Willow Town, New York. In a flashback format, he tells how Little League got him into trouble. He is approached by colleagues to coach a boys team, the Panthers, on which his son Dennis, who is not particularly interested in baseball, is a player. He is soon entangled in intrigue as various parents, including a young widowed mother played by Miller, push for their sons to receive more playing time. Ironically, Hallerton had accepted the job to spend more time with his son, but he turns out to be quite talented and as a result is drafted by a rival team, the Tigers. Hallerton's wife, played by Francis, is peeved at the situation, especially since the family has postponed a planned vacation in order for Hallerton to meet his coaching obligations.

A strong rivalry develops between the Panthers and the Tigers, pitting father against son, with Hallerton pushing the values of fair play for his team, while the rival Tigers want to win at all costs. One of the games between the two teams degenerates into a brawl, and as a result, many parents pull their kids off the Panthers, blaming coach Hallerton, who is at a low ebb, questioning his marriage (the widow played by Ann Miller is the temptress) and his competence as a father. Things fall back into place however, and the two rival teams meet in the season finale, which the Panthers manage to win in the last inning, and Hallerton is feted by the happy parents while reconciling with his son.

In spite of a big publicity push by MGM, the film failed to find an audience, with critics bemoaning Hallerton's character as completely flat and a copy of the stereotypical father regularly seen on television. The fact that the film was largely supported by Little League Baseball and did not deviate from an idyllic portrayal of the organization did not help either, as it led to a story that did not have any bite. In that, it is very much of its time, and it would only be two decades later that The Bad News Bears would poke a hole in the Little League mystique.

Further Reading

• Ron Briley: "The Great American Pastime (1956): Hollywood, Little League, and the Post-World War II Consensus", The Baseball Research Journal, SABR, Volume 45, Number 2 (Fall 2016), pp. 57-65.

Related Sites

• The Great American Pastime on IMDB