Casey at the Bat

Ernest Thayer's poem is stretched out to more than an hour's length to mixed results.

Wallace Beery plays Casey as the sort of lumbering comic slob that would become his standard performance over the following decade and a half. Zasu Pitts is his shrinking girlfriend; Ford Sterling and Sterling Holloway are the comic villains and there's even the kid who adores Beery in the person of Specs O'Donnell.

Clearly first-time director Monte Brice -- he also co-wrote the screenplay -- is onto something, but equally clearly he is in over his head, trying to ride herd on four great comics. There is too much story for each of them and even if later variations would perfect the bits -- for Beery it seems to have been 1933's THE BOWERY -- Brice would apparently never get the hang of directing. He would return to pure writing and become part of Bob Hope's stable of gagmen for some great comedies in the 1940s.