Mr. Deeds Goes to Yankee Stadium

<p> Celebrated film director Frank Capra was a central architect of the feel good movie genre now known as populism which celebrates people families second chances and other traditional American icons such as small town or pastoral life and baseball. Capra developed his own brand of populism by interweaving traditional values of the genre with a younger more vulnerable hero starting with <I>Mr. Deeds Goes to Town</I> in 1936. The result Capraesque populism has had a significant influence on American pop culture in general and forms a small but important subgenre of baseball movie.</p><p> This book examines eight of these Capraesque baseball films starting with the all-important <I>Pride of the Yankees</I> (1942) which one admiring critic has called Mr. Deeds Goes to Yankee Stadium. An introduction provides an overview of baseball and populism. Individual chapters are devoted to the populist legacy from Will Rogers (Capra's mentor) to Capra <I>The Pride of the Yankees The Stratton Story Angels in the Outfield The Natural Bull Durham Field of Dreams Frequency</I> and <I>The Rookie.</I></p>