Success (1931) Online

Elmer (Jack Haley) is in love with Molly and wants to marry her. So, he wants to impress her father--a man obsessed with baseball. But he agrees to play in a ballgame when he really shouldn't. His eyes are bad and he really, really needs new glasses and ends up playing the game like a blind man.

While the not being able to see gimmick is a bit overdone (and hard to believe), the film does work because the writing (aside from that plot device) is good and the characters likable. And, if you do watch, look for Phil Silvers in an early role...one where he STILL has a full head of hair. And, the familiar character actor John Hamilton (Perry White from "The Adventures of Superman") looks unusual with dark hair and not his usual silver hair. Finally, I was surprised that radio (and occasional movie) comedian Fred Allen actually wrote this script!

Jack Haley wants to marry Helen Lynd, but her father, John Hamilton, insists she marry a baseball player. So Haley, who is blind as a bat, must win a baseball game in this Vitaphone short.

Haley was a capable song-and-dance man, but his persona in this period was the low-energy, mild-mannered milquetoast and would remain that way throughout the 1930s. It must have amused some people, and paired with a blow-hard comic like Jack Oakie, as he frequently would be, it makes a potentially interesting contrast. However, even the emphatic assertions of John Hamilton (whom I remember fondly as Perry White to George Reeves' Superman) never offer anything more than a potted skit.

Blind as a bat Elmer Pringle wants to marry Molly Kelly (Helen Lynd), but needs her Dad's permission to offer a marriage proposal. So as the story progresses, and Elmer repeatedly proves he can't see a thing in front of his face, I begin to wonder how he ever managed to spot pretty Molly in the first place. I guess that's something the writer overlooked.

Anyway, Molly's Dad is a rabid baseball fan, and he wants her to marry a baseball player. Dad by the way is portrayed by John Hamilton, and this is the earliest film appearance I've ever seen him in, looking like a much younger version of Perry White from the mid-Fifties TV show, "Adventures of Superman". Elmer gets so flustered with Mr. Kelly that he blurts out "I want your wife for my daughter", but the baseball absorbed father blows him off rather quickly.

Remaining undeterred, Elmer signs up with a local ball club, the back story of which is never offered, in as much as there's no way he could have made the Astoria team with his obvious vision problem. Making an unexpected catch in right field and handing up an accidental home run manages to win the old man over, but I have to say, if I were Molly, I'd have been on full alert for future errors in the romance department.

And now that I think of it, maybe it wasn't just Elmer who had eyesight issues. If you catch this short flick, check out the angle of right field directly behind first base. It might be the film makers located a ball field that was designed by engineers who couldn't see straight themselves.