Take Me Out to the Ball Game

Whether it's Batter up! or Curtain Up!, Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly are ready when they play early-1900s vaudevillians who spend the winter flinging the on-stage blarney and the summer flinging the old horsehide for baseball's defending world champs, The Wolves. 

Sinatra is second sacker Dennis Ryan and Kelly is shortstop Eddie O'Brien in this Busby Berkeley-directed romp that combines a baseball storyline with that other all-American pastime: romance. Esther Williams plays the new team owner thrust into this pack of baseball Wolves. And Betty Garrett is a Baseball Annie with eyes for blue-eyed Ryan.

Kelly and Stanley Donen's deft musical stagings ranged from a softshoe duet charmer to an exciting solo barrel roll from Kelly. Like the film itself, the duo came up a winner. Their work persuaded producer Arthur Freed to green-light their direction of the same year's On the Town.