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*[[Eddie Jones (actor)|Eddie Jones]] - Dave Hooch, Marla's father
*[[Eddie Jones (actor)|Eddie Jones]] - Dave Hooch, Marla's father
*[[Justin Scheller]] - Stillwell, Evelyn Gardner's obnoxious young son
*[[Justin Scheller]] - Stillwell, Evelyn Gardner's obnoxious young son
*[[Ryan Olsen]] - Dollbody Kid, Kid that asks Dottie to "...slip in the backseat and make a man out of me."
*[[Mark Holton]] - Stillwell as an adult. He attends the Peaches' reunion at the Baseball Hall of Fame on behalf of his mother who had died
*[[Mark Holton]] - Stillwell as an adult. He attends the Peaches' reunion at the Baseball Hall of Fame on behalf of his mother who had died
*[[Pauline Brailsford]] - Miss Cuthburt, the Rockford Peaches' chaperone
*[[Pauline Brailsford]] - Miss Cuthburt, the Rockford Peaches' chaperone

Revision as of 18:27, 22 December 2010

This article is about the 1992 film. For other uses, see A League of Their Own (disambiguation).
A League of Their Own
Theatrical release poster
Directed byPenny Marshall
Screenplay byLowell Ganz
Babaloo Mandel
Story byKim Wilson
Kelly Candaele
Produced byElliot Abbott
Robert Greenhut
StarringGeena Davis
Lori Petty
Tom Hanks
Madonna
Rosie O'Donnell
CinematographyMiroslav Ondricek
Edited byGeorge Bowers
Adam Bernardi
Music byHans Zimmer
Distributed byColumbia Pictures
Release date
  • July 1, 1992 (1992-07-01)
Running time
128 minutes
CountryTemplate:Film US
LanguageEnglish
Budget$40 million
Box office$132,440,069[1]

A League of Their Own is a 1992 American comedy-drama film that tells a fictionalized account of the real-life All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL). Directed by Penny Marshall, the film stars Geena Davis, Lori Petty, Tom Hanks, Madonna and Rosie O'Donnell. The screenplay was written by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel from a story by Kim Wilson and Kelly Candaele.

Plot

The film opens in 1988 with an elderly, widowed Dottie Hinson reluctantly attending the induction of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. Dottie was once one of the league's greatest players but, although she loved baseball, she never really considered it a big part of her life. Upon her arrival at Cooperstown's Doubleday Field, Dottie is reunited with former teammates and friends. This prompts a flashback to how the league was started back in 1943.

When World War II threatens to shut down Major League Baseball, candy manufacturing magnate Walter Harvey (Garry Marshall) decides to create a women's league to make money. Ira Lowenstein (David Strathairn) is put in charge of public relations and scout Ernie Capadino (Jon Lovitz) is sent out to recruit players.

Capadino likes what he sees in catcher Dottie Hinson (Geena Davis). She is a terrific hitter and "kind of a dolly" likely to attract male fans. He offers her a tryout, but the married woman is content where she is, working in a dairy and on the family farm in Oregon while her husband is fighting in the war. He is less impressed with her younger sister, pitcher Kit Keller (Lori Petty), who loves the game passionately but is overshadowed by Dottie. He finally lets her come along when she persuades Dottie to give it a try for her sake. Along the way, he also checks out Marla Hooch (Megan Cavanagh), a great switch-hitting slugger. However, the blunt scout finds her too homely and rejects her. Dottie and Kit refuse to continue on without her, forcing Ernie to reluctantly give in.

When the trio arrive at the tryouts in Chicago, they meet other hopefuls from across the country. These include taxi dance hall bouncer and second baseman Doris Murphy (Rosie O'Donnell) and her best friend, third baseman 'All the Way' Mae Mordabito (Madonna), two tough-talking New Yorkers. During tryouts they also encounter soft-spoken right-fielder Evelyn Gardner, illiterate and shy left-fielder Shirley Baker, and pitcher and former Miss Georgia Ellen Sue Gotlander. They are assigned with 9 others to form the Rockford Peaches, while 48 others are split up between the Racine Belles, Kenosha Comets, and South Bend Blue Sox. The Peaches are managed by alcoholic former baseball great Jimmy Dugan (Tom Hanks). Jimmy initially treats the whole thing as a joke, leaving the managerial duties to Dottie. However, he takes over when he clashes with Dottie over whether or not to let their best hitter, Marla, swing away, a decision which proves him to be a smarter manager than he has shown. Meanwhile, the players have to attend mandatory etiquette classes to maintain a "lady-like" image, even though they are also required to wear very short (by 1940s standards) skirts as part of their uniforms.

The league attracts little interest at first. Lowenstein tells the Peaches that things are so bad that the owners are having second thoughts about keeping the league going beyond the 1943 season. With a Life magazine photographer in attendance, he asks them to do something spectacular. Dottie obliges when a ball is popped up behind home plate, catching it while doing a split. The resulting photograph makes the cover of the magazine. Jimmy is (predictably) disgusted, while the opposing manager and catcher are stunned. More and more people show up and the league becomes a success.

The sibling rivalry between Dottie and Kit intensifies as the season progresses: Kit has a massive inferiority complex because Dottie is a better player, a better hitter, and an overall better-looking woman. After Kit gets upset over Dottie supporting Jimmy when he replaces her for a relief pitcher, Dottie tells Lowenstein she is thinking of quitting as she does not want to be blamed for her sister's bitter unhappiness. Lowenstein, who had been publicizing the photogenic Dottie as the "Queen of Diamonds", has Kit traded to Racine. An enraged Kit blames her sister for getting her traded.

Prior to the beginning of a crucial game to the World Series run-up, a telegram messenger delivers word to the Peaches' utility player Betty 'Spaghetti' Horn that her husband George was killed in action in the Pacific Theatre; the same evening, after an emotional breakdown, Dottie's husband Bob (Bill Pullman) arrives at the team's boarding house. He has been honourably discharged from service after being injured during a sniper fight in Italy. The following morning, as Jimmy is assembling his players for batting practice, he discovers to his shock that Dottie is quitting now that Bob has returned and they are driving back to Oregon. He tells her that she is one of the star players, and that if she sneaks off and quits likes this she will regret it the rest of her life.

The team continues on without Dottie until the championship game of the AAGPBL Word Series, where she appears in full uniform to play one final game against her sister's team - the Peaches' long-standing rivals, the Racine Belles. In the top of the ninth inning, Dottie hits Kit's pitch over her head, scoring two runs for Rockford, making Kit panic that she has let her team down. Kit comes up to bat with her team trailing in the bottom of the inning. Although Dottie gives the pitcher advice on Kit's weakness for chasing high fastballs, Kit hits the ball into the outfield and rounds the bases, ignoring a stop signal from the third base coach. Dottie catches the ball and blocks home plate, but Kit runs into her hard. She drops the ball and Kit scores the winning run, finally achieving the respect and adoration she'd sought throughout her life. After the game is done, Dottie confronts her sister, and she and Kit reconcile before Dottie leaves with Bob to return to the farm and raise a family.

The film moves back to the present day. Dottie and Kit, who haven't seen each other in a while, are reunited, along with many other former players, at the opening of the women's section of the Baseball Hall of Fame where they take a picture of the original Rockford Peaches team from 1943. Many of the older women shown in the final scenes were actual AAGPBL players.

Cast

Rockford Peaches

Others

Production

League Stadium, located in Huntingburg, Indiana, served as the home field for the Rockford Peaches. Many other game scenes were filmed at Bosse Field in Evansville, Indiana,[2] the United States' third oldest ball park and oldest minor league ball park; it served as the home of the Racine Belles. The scenes that take place in fictional Harvey Field were shot at Wrigley Field in Chicago, Illinois. As with his film counterpart, Chicago Cubs owner P.K. Wrigley was the original sponsor of the real-life league.

Other scenes for the movie were filmed around Chicago, including Walter Harvey's invitation to Jimmy Dugan to manage the Peaches, which was filmed at Cantigny Park in Wheaton, IL. The mansion in the scene formerly belonged to Robert McCormick, editor of the Chicago Tribune.

The Soaper-Esser house (built 1884-87) in which the women lived is located at 612 North Main Street in Henderson, Kentucky, and is on the historic register. The roadhouse scenes were filmed at the Hornville Tavern in Evansville, Indiana and Fitzgerald's in Berwyn, Illinois. All scenes on the train and at the train stations were filmed at the Illinois Railway Museum in Union, Illinois. The Nebraska Zephyr, now part of the museum's collection, was prominently featured.

Madonna ("This Used to Be My Playground") and Carole King ("Now and Forever") contributed songs to the film, however Madonna's song wasn't included as part of the official soundtrack. The video for the former was featured on the DVD.

Deleted scenes

According to the DVD extras narrated by Penny Marshall many scenes had to be deleted from the film due to its long running time, nearly two and half hours. According to Marshall the cuts resulted in whole subplots being dropped from the film. Among the cuts were:

  • The film was originally to open in 1943 with Walter Harvey and the other baseball club owners meeting at Harvey's mansion in Chicago to discuss how to remedy the baseball situation with World War II raging on. Once it was decided to bookend the film with the former players meeting in Cooperstown, New York in 1988, this scene was relegated to a quick glimpse in a newsreel that opened Dottie's flashback sequence to 1943, explaining to the audience the possible shutdown of major league baseball with the war on.
  • Jon Lovitz's character of Ernie Capadino originally had a more substantial role early on in the film, but many of his scenes were cut out due to time. Two scenes that were cut were a scene in the dining car on the train to Chicago in which Capadino becomes disgusted by Marla Hooch's huge appetite, and a scene at Harvey Field which showed Capadino comically explaining to Dottie, Kit, and Marla how he started in baseball and how he met Babe Ruth.
  • Many small scenes that revealed the backgrounds of players were cut. Among them was a scene before the first game in which Marla receives a package from her father, who has spent a whole week's salary to buy a new glove for her. Another deleted scene later shows her mailing the money back to him. A scene involving Mae Mordabito explaining to Doris Murphy that she wishes her mother could see her play ends with Doris asking how many months her mother has before she is released (it's hinted that Mae's mother is a prostitute). Also there was scene in which Ellen Sue Gotlander described her beauty queen background and how her talent specialty was to throw around fire batons.
  • A major subplot in the film was to have revolved around an attraction between Dottie Hinson and Jimmy Dugan. At one point in the film Jimmy and Dottie share a passionate kiss which Dottie later regrets. This was to be followed by the scene in which Dottie decides to leave the league prompting Ira Lowenstein to offer her a trade to another team (Lowenstein assumes tension between Dottie and Kit as to the reason why Dottie wants to leave), eventually leading to Kit being traded to the Racine Belles. Marshall, however, felt that the subplot distracted from the film and in addition seemed to be out of touch with Dottie's character and the era of the film. She decided to cut all scenes hinting at an attraction between Dottie and Jimmy (all that was ever shown was a mutual respect towards each character's ability to play baseball). Likewise, the scene involving Dottie wanting to leave the league was re-edited as to indicate that it was her tensions with Kit that prompted her wanting to quit.
  • Later in the film Marla Hooch is shown returning to the league after her honeymoon, now as a member of the Racine Belles. This sequence came after the scene in which Betty "Spaghetti" Horn learns her husband was killed in action. As some of the Peaches welcome her back, Marla tells them she is pregnant but not to reveal it to league officials as they will make her resign. The girls promise Marla that they will not slide into second base as to protect her stomach. Later while Dottie is on first base she gets into an argument with Jimmy over the kiss they had in the ultimately deleted subplot. So distracted is Dottie that she ignores the third base coach Evelyn Gardner's sign not to slide into second. When the ball is hit Dottie goes sliding into second base hitting Marla in the stomach, prompting her being taken to the hospital (this whole scene was deleted from the film). A distraught Dottie is shown in the next scene crying in her bedroom (she finds out that Marla is okay but remains filled with guilt) only to be interrupted by her husband who has returned home from the European front (this scene remains in the film). Marshall re-edited the whole sequence as to show Dottie's grief being caused by her fear of losing her husband as Betty did, rather than the guilt of sliding into Marla.

Reception

The film was released on July 1, 1992, and was #1 by its second weekend (July 10–12).[3] It was a commercial success, making $107 million in the United States on a $40 million budget (and an additional $25 million worldwide), and was well-received by critics.

The Jimmy Dugan proclamation, "Are you crying? There's no crying! There's no crying in baseball!" was rated 54th on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest film quotes of all time.

A television series[4] based on the film aired on CBS in April 1993, with Garry Marshall, Megan Cavanagh, Tracy Reiner, and Jon Lovitz reprising their roles. It was quickly canceled.


References

  1. ^ http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=leagueoftheirown.htm
  2. ^ "A League of Their Own". The Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 2008-10-02.
  3. ^ "A League of Their Own (1992)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 2008-10-02.
  4. ^ ""A League of Their Own" (1993)". The Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 2008-10-02.
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