Paddy

Let me tell you a story about a woman I knew who loved movies.

My previous blog was about film. In the beginning it was devoted to contemporary ones for the most part. Then I discovered bloggers who wrote about older movies—the black and white ones. Over time, I devoted more space in my blog to the oldies as a result of reading theirs. I gravitated towards these bloggers for various reasons, but mostly because I learned more from them—about Old Hollywood, true, but also about who these bloggers were, what they value, why these movies mean as much as they do to them.

One in particular stood out for me.

She came from a family of movie lovers, her and her three sisters and their extended families. I’d never seen a clan bonded by a shared passion like theirs was, and is. Silent movies in particular was their great love, especially comedies. If they had built a shrine to Buster Keaton somewhere, it wouldn’t surprise me.

I visited her blog and she visited mine and in time, we got to know each other better. I wasn’t familiar with a number of her favorites. Her tastes often ran towards things like British dramas and Westerns, in addition to silent comedies. She had an eye for detail and a wit I found endearing; it was what kept me coming back.

Sometimes I would write a post on my blog in response to something she wrote and we’d discuss it. She had a perspective I found enlightening at some times, humorous at others, but I’d come to recognize it as uniquely hers. She didn’t write editorials per se, but through her reviews I learned which things in a movie she valued, such as music. She was big on American songbook-type material; ironic, since she was Canadian.

In fact, I believe I connected more with her comments, on both our blogs, than anything else. They let me see other sides to her: the wife, and mother of two—including a special needs child—who were her pride and joy; the performing artist; the Trekkie, the baseball fan. And yet as much as I know about her, in some ways I feel as if I’d only scratched the surface. She lived in another country. It wasn’t like we could’ve gone to the movies together.

Oh, but how I wished we could have. I always told her, one day I would come up there to Toronto and we’d go see a Keaton film together. The pandemic shot that dream down, but I had started to hope it might rise again. Now this.

I had ended my film blog and started this one and she followed me, something I wasn’t sure she would do since I talk about movies less often here. I’m so glad she did. Now her memory is part of this blog too, if only for a short time.

I can’t believe I won’t have her to talk to about movies anymore. She had been part of my online life for a decade and I thought she always would be. Watching old films will feel different now.

Patricia Nolan-Hall was a woman whose soul was tied to Old Hollywood and the memories they stirred, old and new. She was a blogger. She was my dear friend.

She was Paddy.

Hometown Manager Has Eyes For New Owner in “It Happened in Flatbush,” With William Frawley

Lloyd Nolan and Carole Landis star in this vintage baseball romantic comedy, also featuring a future legend of the early TV era.

by Rich Watson

This post is part of what’s known as a blogathon. That’s when a bunch of bloggers gather to write about a given topic. This one is called “The What a Character Blogathon,” devoted to supporting actors from the Golden Age of Hollywood. In my previous blog I took part in it for years, and 2021 marks its tenth anniversary. At the end I’ll tell you where you can read more entries in this event.

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In 1951, William Frawley was sixty-four, a veteran of not only a hundred-plus movies, but vaudeville as well. Rumor had it, though, he was an alcoholic and difficult to work with. It seemed he was approaching the end of his career in entertainment.

Then he heard about an opportunity in the new medium of television: a sitcom about a ditzy housewife and her musician husband. The show was looking for a duo to play their neighbors, an older married couple. Frawley, eager to land the role of the husband in the older couple, called the lead actors and co-creators of the new program: Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. 

They gave him a chance. Despite initial resistance from the network, CBS, Frawley, paired with Vivian Vance, was an anchor of what would become I Love Lucy, one of television’s greatest programs. Years later, Arnaz would testify that Frawley always came to work on time and was a total professional.

Lucy was the highlight of a long career for Frawley, the former court reporter from Iowa who toured the vaudeville circuit with his brother Paul, singing and writing, before moving to Broadway and eventually, Hollywood. 

Ronald Reagan Depicts Hall of Famer’s Comeback in ‘The Winning Team,’ with Doris Day

The troubled life of a baseball legend is depicted in this 1952 film.

by Rich Watson
 

Few major league pitchers were as dominant as Grover Cleveland Alexander. During the 1910s and 20s, when professional baseball was still new, he set records left and right that stand today: 373 wins, the all-time National League co-leader; 28 wins in his rookie season, a modern rookie record; 90 shutouts, a NL record; a three-time winner of the pitching Triple Crown (wins, ERA, strikeouts), and a World Series championship.

Alexander (AKA “Old Pete”) achieved all this despite suffering epileptic seizures stemming from a freak playing accident, which also led to bouts of alcoholism.

In 1952, his career was chronicled in a movie: The Winning Team, with Ronald Reagan and Doris Day.

Drew Barrymore and Jimmy Fallon in “Fever Pitch,” an Ode to Red Sox Fandom

A memoir about soccer was transformed into a romcom about baseball and spawned a life of its own.

by Rich Watson

In 1992, Nick Hornby, the English novelist and screenwriter, released a memoir called Fever Pitch, a love letter to his favorite sport, soccer. GQ called it “tears-running down-your-face, read-bits-out-loud-to-complete-strangers funny, but also highly perceptive and honest.” Time Out said it “transcends the mundane and the sporty to say something about the way we live.” 

One might not have suspected Hollywood to have taken interest in a highly personal volume about a sport that never quite caught on in America the way it has in other countries. Hornby, however, was hot, and often, that’s enough.

So how did the movie version get turned into a romantic comedy about baseball?

Excuses Interfere with Romance in “Alibi Ike,” Starring Baseball Fan Joe E. Brown

One of three baseball movies by this lifelong sports fan was also the debut of a future Hollywood legend.

by Rich Watson

If Joe E. Brown is remembered by modern movie audiences, it’s for his scene-stealing turn in Some Like it Hot, the gender-bending comedy with Marilyn Monroe in which Brown seduces Jack Lemmon in drag. It’s Brown who utters that film’s famous last line, “Well, nobody’s perfect!”

Long before that career-redefining role, Brown was a headlining actor in a number of comedies from the thirties, in particular baseball films. One of those was a romantic comedy co-starring a young woman taking the first step on a long journey to superstardom: Olivia de Havilland.