''Damn Yankees!'' is a 1967 American TV adaptation directed by
Kirk Browning
Kirk Browning (March 28, 1921 – February 10, 2008) was an American television director and Television producer, producer who had hundreds of productions to his credit, including 185 broadcasts of ''Live from Lincoln Center''.
Born in New York ...
of the 1955 baseball musical ''
Damn Yankees
''Damn Yankees'' is a 1955 musical comedy with a book by George Abbott and Douglass Wallop, music and lyrics by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross. The story is a modern retelling of the Faust legend set during the 1950s in Washington, D.C., d ...
'', itself based on
Douglass Wallop's 1954 novel ''
The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant''.
Longtime sportscaster and
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast. It is one of NBCUniversal's ...
host
Joe Garagiola
Joseph Henry Garagiola Sr. (February 12, 1926 – March 23, 2016) was an American professional baseball catcher, and later a radio and television personality with a varied career.
He played nine seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the ...
supplied an on-camera set-up to the background for the story’s premise of envy of the successful
New York Yankees
The New York Yankees are an American professional baseball team based in the Boroughs of New York City, New York City borough of the Bronx. The Yankees compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) Am ...
team.
The
pop-art production design and staging featured
collage
Collage (, from the , "to glue" or "to stick together") is a technique of art creation, primarily used in the visual arts, but in music too, by which art results from an assembly of different forms, thus creating a new whole. (Compare with pasti ...
animation and early examples of color
Chroma key
Chroma key compositing, or chroma keying, is a Visual effects, visual-effects and post-production technique for compositing (layering) two or more images or video streams together based on colour hues (colorfulness, chroma range). The techniq ...
compositing to achieve
traveling mattes for TV.
[The Cleveland Press, TV Showtime, Apr. 7-14, 1967, cover art.]
It was recorded at NBC's
Brooklyn Studios and “colorcast“ on April 8, 1967 as a production of a relaunched ''
General Electric Theater
''General Electric Theater'' is an American anthology series hosted by Ronald Reagan that was broadcast on CBS radio and television. The series was sponsored by General Electric's Department of Public Relations.
Radio
After an audition show ...
'' which ran from the late 1960s into the early 1970s.
Cast
*
Lee Remick
Lee Ann Remick (; December 14, 1935 – July 2, 1991) was an American actress and singer. She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for the film ''Days of Wine and Roses (film), Days of Wine and Roses'' (1962) and was nominated fo ...
as Lola
*
Phil Silvers
Phil Silvers (born Phillip Silver; May 11, 1911 – November 1, 1985) was an American entertainer and comedic actor, known as "The King of Chutzpah". His career as a professional entertainer spanned nearly 60 years. He achieved major popularity w ...
as Applegate
*
Jim Backus
James Gilmore Backus (February 25, 1913 – July 3, 1989) was an American actor. Among his most famous roles were Thurston Howell III on the 1960s sitcom ''Gilligan's Island,'' the father of James Dean's character in '' Rebel Without a Cause, ...
as Benny Van Buren
*
Fran Allison
Frances Helen Allison (November 20, 1907June 13, 1989) was an American television and radio comedienne, personality, and singer.
She is best known for her starring role on the weekday NBC-TV puppet show '' Kukla, Fran and Ollie'', which ran fr ...
as Mrs. Meg Boyd
*Jerry Lanning as Joe Hardy
*
Ray Middleton as Joe Boyd
*
Linda Lavin
Linda Lavin (; October 15, 1937 – December 29, 2024) was an American actress and singer. Known for her roles on stage and screen, she received several awards including three Drama Desk Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, two Obie Awards, and a T ...
as Gloria Thorpe
*
Bob Dishy
Bob Dishy is an American actor of stage, film, and television.
Biography
Early life and education
Dishy grew up in the Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn. His father, a salesman, was born in Beirut and his mother in Jerus ...
as Rocky
Note: All the principal cast were singers, so they could all supply their own vocals for the soundtrack without being dubbed.
References
External links
''Damn Yankees''at
IMDb
IMDb, historically known as the Internet Movie Database, is an online database of information related to films, television series, podcasts, home videos, video games, and streaming content online – including cast, production crew and biograp ...
1967 television films
1967 films
American television films
Films directed by Kirk Browning
1960s sports comedy films
American sports comedy films
The Devil in film
American baseball films
Films based on American novels
Films about the New York Yankees
Washington Senators (1901–1960)
Music based on the Faust legend
Films based on musicals
1960s English-language films
1960s American films
English-language romantic comedy films
English-language sports comedy films
Films set in Washington, D.C.
English-language musical comedy films
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