In this golden age of home viewing, the Criterion Collection still provides some of the best editions of the best movies ever released, usually with a rich selection of extras and often including audio commentaries (a feature they pioneered, and perhaps the greatest gift ever to film students and cinephiles alike). This column features one Criterion release per week, based entirely on where my interests lead me.
Bang the Drum Slowly is included in the Criterion box set The Golden Age of Television. For more about that series and the context in which the programs in it were created, see this review.
Bang the Drum Slowly is one of the many early television plays that was remade as a movie, so the story is familiar to generations that may not be aware of its television origins (and before that as a novel by Mark Harris). Robert De Niro isn’t in this version, but Paul Newman is, and Newman’s performance in a very stage-oriented production is the best reason to watch the television version.
Newman opens Bang the Drum Slowly with direct address to the camera, introducing himself as author Henry Wiggen, who wrote the story about to be performed and also the novel on which it was based. Oh, and he is also a pitcher for the New York Mammoths, which is the primary role he will play for the rest of the story. If you ever thought Newman was just a pretty boy coasting on good looks and charm this performance should convince you otherwise: he’s a skilled actor and carries off the many direct addresses that punctuate this script convincingly (not the least of which is appearing to be an inexperienced speaker uncomfortable being the center of attention).
Wiggen is the star of the Mammoths, which gives him so bargaining power with the team’s management (bear in mind that the reserve clause still ruled in 1956 so the player-owner power dynamic was skewed toward the owners). His roommate, catcher Bruce Pearson (Albert Salmi) is the opposite: a role player who could be easily replaced at any time. Manager Dutch Snell (Rudy Bond) chews him out for making wrong calls and the guys in the locker room (who have nicknames like Coker, Goose, and Horse) make fun of him for being not very bright (which he isn’t). But Pearson is happy enough being who he is and seems oblivious to the fact that he sometimes gets on other people’s nerves.
Things change during the offseason when Wiggen gets a phone call from Pearson from a medical clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. He doesn’t realize, but you probably do, that that’s the home of the Mayo Clinic and an unexpected call from there probably doesn’t mean good news. Sure enough, Pearson has a disease he describes as “kinda fatal” and this development creates the tension that motivates the rest of the play.
Wiggen is a real armchair politician who decries working for “slave wages” and is trying to negotiate for a raise, something particularly important at the moments since his wife Holly (Georgann Johnson) is expecting. But Wiggen also feels some responsibility toward his roommate, who would be dumped from the team in an instant if management knew about his ill health, and whose situation is made even more precarious since the arrival of a new hotshot catcher named Piney Woods (George Peppard in his television debut).
Such is the drama that plays out over the final three-fourths of Bang the Drum Slowly—how far will Wiggen listen go to protect his teammate over his own financial best interests and what clever ruse will he use that avoid disclosing Pearson’s condition, at which point the story would be over? It helps that Pearson has a Hollywood disease that leaves him looking like he’s in the best of health until almost the end, and that Wiggen has enough pull with his teammates to get them to play along. The conclusion is a real tear-jerker that is still effective today, despite the passage of time and the minimal means then available for a live TV production. Wiggen gets the last word, which I won’t spoil, but I will say that it expresses an important insight about human relations that remains relevant today. | Sarah Boslaugh
Spine #: 495
Technical details: 52 min.; B&W; screen ratio 1.33:1; English.
Edition reviewed: DVD (3 discs).
Extras: Introduction by Cliff Robertson for the 1981 PBS television series The Golden Age of Television and including interviews with Albert Salmi, director Dan Petrie, screenwriter Arnold Schulman, Rudy Bond, and George Peppard; audio commentary by Daniel Petrie (for the first six chapters).
Fun Fact: The title “Bang the Drum Slowly” comes from the lyrics of a ballad, “Streets of Laredo,” which include the request of a dying young cowboy to “Bang the drum slowly and play the fife lowly, and play the dead march as you carry me along…” It adds an appropriately melancholy air to this sports melodrama about a player who never amounted to much but managed to bring out the best in a far more talented teammate.
Parting Thought: Melodramas as often thought to appeal primary to women, but many sports and war movies check the boxes as well, with stock characters, appeals to emotion, episodic plots and clearly delineated moral choices. What are some modern examples of melodramas designed to appeal to men?
