"Death On The Diamond" traps a pretty solid cast into a cheesy murder mystery. This picture trots out every baseball and murder mystery cliché and contrivance known to Hollywood, and puts them all into an underwhelming movie that wastes 70 minutes of our time. A ball player leans against the dugout wall as a hand reaches out from a darkened stairway ... A dying player staggers into the locker room, and answers the Big Question, saying, "The murderer is..." before collapsing on the floor dead... A player running home with the winning run is shot between third and home plate... A missing player falls face first out of an empty locker... Heard enough?
Robert Young does his best, aided by Madge Evans and Paul Kelly, but the obstacles are daunting, first off a hackneyed script, and second, comic relief is supplied by Ted Healy, perhaps the most obnoxiously unfunny comic (?) in Hollywood's long history. Last, but not least, even I guessed the murderer halfway through. This is a serious flaw, because I am the worst mystery guesser on the East Coast, maybe the country. So, in view of the preceding, I had no choice but to give the movie a mediocre rating of five.
Robert Young does his best, aided by Madge Evans and Paul Kelly, but the obstacles are daunting, first off a hackneyed script, and second, comic relief is supplied by Ted Healy, perhaps the most obnoxiously unfunny comic (?) in Hollywood's long history. Last, but not least, even I guessed the murderer halfway through. This is a serious flaw, because I am the worst mystery guesser on the East Coast, maybe the country. So, in view of the preceding, I had no choice but to give the movie a mediocre rating of five.