Elmer the Great

Now at the Chicago Cubs training camp (implausible in that it’s clearly among Souther California hills, where no baseball teams ever trained), Joe E. Brown, a former semi-pro ballplayer, as the Indiana rube title character, knocking around top pitchers, masked Frank McHugh as catcher High-Hips, in Elmer The Great, 1933.

Established in his first scene as an avid sleeper, Indiana baseball prodigy Joe E. Brown (title character) awakened by his brother (Sterling Holloway), for some reason discouraging his shopkeeper boss Nellie (Patricia Ellis) letting the rep from the Chicago Cubs (Charles Wilson) show him a contract, in Elmer The Great, 1933.

Donna Mae Roberts on the switchboard, Charles Wilson the big-shot calling from Chicago, Patricia Ellis as Nellie at the store, various other characters in the Indiana home town, in a script based on a Broadway play by Ring Lardner and George M. Cohan, opening the First National Joe E. Brown vehicle, Elmer The Great, 1933.

A country hick (Joe E. Brown) bats his way to baseball stardom in the comedy Elmer The Great (1933).