Kill the Umpire

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Kill the Umpire ★★½ 1950

Baseball comedy with much shtick and sight gags. Bill Johnson (Bendix) keeps losing jobs because he's always skipping work to go to baseball games. With his wife (Merkel) threatening to take the kids and leave, Bill's father-in-law Jonah (Collins), a retired ump, comes up with a solution and sends him to umpire school despite Bill's contempt for the guy the fans love to hate. After graduation, Bill is assigned to the Texas Interstate League where he discovers a couple of gamblers are trying to fix the pennant race. 78m/B DVD . William Bendix, Una Merkel, Jeff Richards, Ray Collins, Gloria Henry, Connie Marshall, William Frawley, Tom D'Andrea, Jeff York, Robert J. Wilke; D: Lloyd Bacon; W: Frank Tashlin; C: Charles Lawton Jr.; M: Heinz Roemheld.