Casey at the Bat (1916)

Here's what you've waited years for — the answer to "Why Casey Fanned Out".

Casey, a baseball hero in Mudville, is revered for his game-winning abilities but struggles with personal relationships, except for his love for his niece and a few children. When his niece gets injured, he's distracted during a crucial game, causing him to lose, and after being shunned by the town, he leaves his lifelong home.

Date of release
1916-07-02
Runtime
50m
Genres
Comedy, Drama
Director
Lloyd Ingraham

Casting

Interesting facts

Casey at the Bat is a lost 1916 American silent sports drama film produced by Fine Arts Studios in Hollywood, directed by Lloyd Ingraham, and starring DeWolf Hopper with principal support from Marguerite Marsh, Frank Bennett, and Kate Toncray. The photoplay's scenario, written by William E. Wing, was based on Ernest Thayer's 1888 baseball poem of the same title.

Production

In the spring of 1916, during pre-production, news reports indicated that Lloyd Ingraham was not Triangle Film Corporation's initial choice to direct the five-reeler. The Los Angeles Times in its April 16 issue—less than two weeks before filming began—announces that DeWolf Hopper was already busy "practicing sincere baseball every morning" and that Edward "Eddie" Dillon would be "directing both the baseball [practice] and the picture." A change i…

Casting DeWolf Hopper in the title role proved publicly to be a popular choice, one predicted to be "a very excellent subject" given Hopper's lengthy association with the fictional baseball player. For many years the towering 6-foot-5-inch actor, singer and comedy star of vaudeville and musical theater had become inextricably linked to Thayer's poem, which by 1916 he had recited on many occasions on stage and at special events across the country.…

The production was filmed in approximately three weeks, between the final days of April 1916 and May 20. The scenes of the three baseball games portrayed in the film were shot outside the city of Los Angeles, at the nearby community of Lankershim, which in 1927 would be renamed North Hollywood.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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