It Happens Every Spring

It Happens Every Spring
Directed by	Lloyd Bacon
Produced by	William Perlberg
Written by	Valentine Davies Story by Shirley W. Smith and Valentine Davies
Starring	Ray Milland Jean Peters Paul Douglas
Music by	Leigh Harline
Cinematography	Joseph MacDonald
Edited by	Bruce B. Pierce
Distributed by	20th Century Fox
Release dates	June 10, 1949
Running time	87 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

It Happens Every Spring is a 1949 comedy film starring Ray Milland and directed by Lloyd Bacon. The story of a baseball pitcher is completely fictitious, and the main character King Kelly is not based on or related to the actual player.

Plot

A college professor is working on a long-term scientific experiment when a baseball comes through the window, destroying all of his glassware and spilling the fluids that the flasks and test tubes contained. The pooled fluids combine to form the (fictitious) chemical "methylethylpropylbutyl," which then covers a large portion of the baseball. The professor soon discovers that the fluid, along with any object with which it makes contact, is repelled by wood (cf. Alexander Fleming's serendipitous discovery of penicillin).

Suddenly, he realizes the possibilities and takes a leave of absence to go to St. Louis to pitch in the big leagues, where he becomes a star and propels his team to the World Series.

Cast

• Ray Milland as Vernon K. Simpson / King Kelly
• Jean Peters as Deborah Greenleaf
• Paul Douglas as Monk Lanigan
• Ed Begley as Edgar Stone
• Ted de Corsia as Jimmy Dolan
• Ray Collins as Prof. Greenleaf
• Jessie Royce Landis as Mrs. Greenleaf
• Alan Hale Jr. as Schmidt
• Bill Murphy as Tommy Isbell

Production

Alan Hale, Jr. has a small role as a catcher on the college baseball team.

Although the home team is "St. Louis", and both St. Louis major league teams (the Cardinals and the Browns) played at Sportsman's Park at the time, the exteriors for the movie were filmed in Los Angeles' Wrigley Field, which was built to resemble Wrigley Field in Chicago.

A novelization of the film was written by Valentine Davies.

Reception

New York Times critic Bosley Crowther found the film trying, particularly Valentine Davies's "monotonous" script. He did have measured praise for Paul Douglas, however.

Leonard Maltin gives the film three and a half stars, calling it “a most enjoyable, unpretentious picture”.

See also

• List of American films of 1949

External links

• It Happens Every Spring at the American Film Institute Catalog
• It Happens Every Spring at IMDb
• It Happens Every Spring at AllMovie
• It Happens Every Spring at the TCM Movie Database
• It Happens Every Spring at the Movie Review Query Engine
• The Internet Archive holds a radio adaptation of the film, originally broadcast on October 3, 1949 by Lux Radio Theater.