Alibi Ike (1935)

People are voting emotionally.

It is a performances centric movie

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Joe E Brown gets a lot of mileage out of his character in this baseball farce about the Cubs winning the World Series with Brown as an outrageously funny pitcher. The director of this film started in silents with a short comedy & a Rin Tin Rin film where Rin Tin Tin plays another dog. That does not mean this is a dog.The film is pretty entertaining as William Frawley plays the Cubs manager. This is one of the first of many sports films Frawley would do. As for Brown, he is an under-appreciated funny man who in his films always plays someone a bit eccentric. He is that character here for sure. The script is co-written by Lardner & the writer who did Torpedo Run & Command Decision later. For a 1935 feature, while it is by no means a perfect film, it does hold up better than some others from the year it was made. Dreaming of the Cubs winning a World Series continues to this day & it might be a few more years before it happens yet as the Cubs are closing in on 100 years without a World Series Victory.

The character of Alibi Ike was well known to the American public. There was not only Ring Lardner's short novel but a comic strip for a couple of years, with Ring Lardner as one of the strip's writers.Lardner's prose was funny, but it was also an incisive exposure of the ignorance and bigotry of middle America of the 1920s. He was inditing a culture which was smug in its ignorance and prejudices. There is, of course, none of this in this Joe E. Brown comedy, designed mainly for Brown to do his familiar shtick while cruising along with a well used plot.Warner Brothers was willing to bring social criticism into their films at this period (unlike the other studios), but they knew that it wouldn't work in a Joe E. Brown comedy. Brown's movies were designed for rural America (and were very successful), and rural America could laugh as Brown made fun of "citified ways", but they wouldn't have appreciated cogent criticism aimed at them. At least, they wouldn't have laughed.So this is a fast comedy, pretty funny, especially for baseball fans and baseball historians.

"Alibi Ike" 1935 was just one of Joe E. Brown's great contributions to the comedy world. In this picture he was a pitcher for the Chicago Cubs and played other roles as a St.Louis Cardinal, always arriving in the top of the nineth inning and saving the game as a top notch pitcher and hitter. It surprised me to see that Oliva de Havilland co-stared with this slap stick comedian, it was her very first film in 1935 and she went on to great fame in "Gone With The Wind" 1939 and many other famous classic movies. William Fawley, veteran film star("My Three Sons" TV Series) also performed his great talents. Another great star in this film was Roscoe Karns, who played, "Rocky King, Inside Detective" in the 1950's TV Series. Joe E. Brown's famous large mouth was his trade-mark and he sure gave people a great deal of happiness during World War II, his films will live on forever and ever.

I loved Lardner's short story and didn't really expect movie to have same punch. That said I love this movie; yeah, I'm a sucker for old movies. They didn't go on forever, had good pacing and terrific dialogue. This one fits the category. Joe E Brown is "goshdarnit" fun as Ike and just can't help himself. I've known people like this who have an excuse for everything. Yes, it's one joke but it's a funny one!