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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: 085393197025Amazon.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:
- RUINED!: I had seen the movie years ago and it was hugely entertaining. The DVD release, however, is a butchered mess. Only about 4 songs remain, they have edited out entire sequences and plot lines, the film doesn't even make sense anymore....absolutely ridiculous. Whoever is responsible for releasing this garbage should be imprisoned. DY is an American musical treasure, but you could not tell from this abomination.
- damned yankees.............damn good!: i'm just a sucker for great old films......very good picture and sound....also it's neat to see how everything looked back in the 50's such as people, clothes, cars, homes and how even cities looked in general,....streets , buses and everything.
- Damn Yankees: While musicals were never really my forte, I saw this one at the movies when I was a kid and loved it .... still do. Ray Walston was a HOOT !
- Good to see it again: It is great to see this old classic again. We never thought we would be able to get it anymore.
- GREAT!: They don't make em like this anymore...great choreography, terrific Gwen, a wonderful musical! See it!
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