General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Damn Yankees (1958 film)

Damn Yankees is a 1958 American musical comedy film from Warner Bros., produced and directed by George Abbott and Stanley Donen, that adapts their 1955 Broadway hit about a Washington Senators fan who sells his soul to the Devil so his team can beat the New York Yankees.¹ The screenplay by Abbott is based on the stage musical, with a book by Abbott and Douglass Wallop and music and lyrics by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross, itself drawn from Wallop's novel The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant.² Tab Hunter, Gwen Verdon, and Ray Walston lead the cast.¹

Key fact	Detail
Release	Warner Bros., September 1958; 110 minutes, color, musical comedy¹
Directors and producers	George Abbott and Stanley Donen, who shared both credits as they had on The Pajama Game; Donen was "in charge of camera matters"¹
Source	Broadway musical (1955), book by Abbott and Douglass Wallop, music and lyrics by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross, from Wallop's novel The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant²
Stage pedigree	The Broadway show ran 1,019 performances from 5 May 1955 to 12 October 1957 and won seven Tony Awards, including Best Musical¹^•³
Lead casting	Tab Hunter replaced Stephen Douglass as Joe Hardy; Gwen Verdon (Lola) and Ray Walston (Mr. Applegate) recreated their Tony-winning Broadway roles²^•⁴
Choreography	Bob Fosse staged the dances and appears on-screen as Lola's mambo partner in "Who's Got the Pain?"²^•¹
Foreign title	Released outside the United States as What Lola Wants, because the studio believed foreign audiences would not know that "Yankees" named the New York ball club¹

Spoilers

Story

The story updates the Faust legend, in which Faust traded his soul to the Devil for riches and renown, to a modern setting.¹ Joe Boyd, a middle-aged real estate agent and devoted fan of the losing Washington Senators, says he would sell his soul for a long-ball hitter. The smooth-talking Mr. Applegate, the Devil, transforms him into young slugger Joe Hardy, who leads the Senators' rise against the famously unassailable Yankees. Joe insists on an escape clause: he can walk away and return to his wife Meg until 9 o'clock the night before the pennant-deciding game, but if he plays in that final game he remains Joe Hardy forever. Applegate sends the siren Lola to seduce Joe away from his old life; she instead falls for him and works against the Devil, who then spreads false reports that Joe is an escaped criminal and puts his identity on trial before the final game.⁵

The name "Shoeless Joe," the star player's nickname in the story, may have been inspired by the real "Shoeless" Joe Jackson, whose career ended when he and seven White Sox teammates were banned for life after being accused of throwing the 1919 World Series.¹

From stage to screen

Back in the 1950s, hit stage musicals were regularly adapted for the screen, and Warner Bros. purchased the film rights to Damn Yankees, reportedly paying between $500,000 and $750,000 depending on the source.² Abbott and Donen repeated the producing and directing arrangement they had used on The Pajama Game (1957), with Donen handling camera work; Donen's biography states that he requested Abbott's input to keep the film consistent with the Broadway production.¹ Frederick Brisson, Robert Griffith, and Harold Prince, the trio who mounted the stage show, were listed as associate producers.²

Most of the original Broadway cast recreated their roles, including Verdon, Walston, Russ Brown (Benny Van Buren), Shannon Bolin (Meg Boyd), Rae Allen (Gloria Thorpe), Robert Shafer (Joe Boyd), and Jean Stapleton (Sister Miller). The major exception was Hunter, who took over the role of Joe Hardy from Stephen Douglass; modern sources surmise the studio chose him for his box-office appeal, and his singing voice was partially dubbed.²^•¹ The husband-and-wife design team William and Jean Eckart, who had designed the Broadway production, designed the film's production and costumes.²

Music and choreography

The film keeps the Adler and Ross songs that had carried the stage show, including "(You've Got to Have) Heart," "Whatever Lola Wants (Lola Gets)," "Shoeless Joe from Hannibal, Mo.", "Those Were the Good Old Days," and "Two Lost Souls."² Several Broadway numbers were cut, among them "A Man Doesn't Know," "Near to You," and "The Game." Richard Adler, whose partner Jerry Ross died of lung disease in 1955 during the show's run, wrote a new song for the film, "There's Something About an Empty Chair," to replace "A Man Doesn't Know."¹ A contemporary New Yorker record review of the soundtrack album noted the tampering with regret, praising Verdon's renderings of "Whatever Lola Wants" and "A Little Brains, a Little Talent" and Walston's "Those Were the Good Old Days."⁶

Fosse's choreography was adjusted for the screen. His suggestive hip movements for Verdon in "A Little Brains, a Little Talent" were considered too risqué for a mainstream 1958 American audience, so in the film she simply pauses at those points.⁷ Verdon's performance of "What Lola Wants" was likewise tamed to comply with the censors.¹ Fosse himself appears on screen, credited as Lola's mambo partner and addressed in the film by his own surname.¹

Production and release

According to studio production notes, seven cameras filmed three actual Yankees-Senators games for use in the film. The "Shoeless Joe" ballet sequence and certain close-ups and crowd scenes were shot at Los Angeles' Wrigley Field; because the story is set in Washington, D.C., building fronts were added and canvas drops painted to look like sky, masking the palm trees around the Los Angeles ballpark so the exteriors would match Griffith Stadium footage.¹ The film also used special effects for Applegate's appearances and transformations, a split-screen effect showing six scenes at once during "Six Months Out of Every Year," colored bubbles around Applegate's head in "Those Were the Good Old Days," and fast motion as he races to reach the final game.¹

A 25 June 1958 Hollywood Reporter news item reported that Damn Yankees was the first Hollywood musical to be scored abroad: because a strike by the American Federation of Musicians' studio musicians was in its fifth month, music director Ray Heindorf supervised the recording in Rome. Heindorf was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Music but lost to André Previn for Gigi.¹ The film's opening was held in Denver, Colorado, the location of the Yankees' farm club.¹

Reception and afterlife

The film carried the stage show's reputation with it: the musical had won seven Tony Awards, including Best Musical, with Walston and Verdon winning for Best Leading Actor and Actress in a Musical.³^•⁴ A retrospective assessment in Critics At Large judged that the Abbott-Donen transfer "didn't quite work" despite preserving nearly the whole Broadway cast, while calling the show itself, when done right, irresistible.⁸ The film has remained in circulation on home video and streaming services.⁹ A 1967 NBC televised version directed by Kirk Browning starred Lee Remick, Jim Backus, and Phil Silvers, and a new screen version was reported in development in 2004 but had not gone into production as of June 2005.¹

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026