VEB Film Club: The Pride of the Yankees

Yesterday at 09:00 AM

We watch an old film

It's the MLB playoffs and the Cardinals aren't in it. What does this mean? We find new things to write about. Today, we're bringing back an old feature, started during the pandemic, when we were really starved for content. We watch an old baseball film and then talk about it. Really, the idea started simply as an excuse to watch old baseball films. And to have something to write about cause there really was nothing to write about in 2020!

Today's feature: Pride of the Yankees! Why this movie? The Yankees are in the playoffs. That's the entire reason. Oh and the movie is supposed to be good too. I honestly have no idea what to expect from a movie made in 1942 about baseball. I've seen a few Gary Cooper movies (Ball of Fire is awesome, probably a very different vibe than this! Made just one year earlier too!). I am also familiar with Walter Brennan, favorite of Howard Hawks and in a bunch of Westerns. Apparently Babe Ruth is acting as Babe Ruth in this? Hey that'll be cool, even if he's a terrible actor.

Heather do you have any expectations before watching this?

Scooter: I'm with you. I have no idea what to expect from this really. I'm going into this pretty blind other than that I'm assuming it's about the New York Yankees and I think maybe Lou Gehrig? There's like a specific player that is the pride of the Yankees? I'm thinking I'm gonna cry.

Old movies about baseball always make me cry.

We each watch the movie on our own, and the following is a discussion afterwards.

Gabe: You know it's kind of funny. If you were to describe or give me the general idea of what this movie was prior to me watching it, I don't think I would have expected to like it. Lou Gehrig is portrayed as essentially Fred Rogers. Great person, doesn't really make the most compelling lead in a movie. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood got around this by making the real lead of the movie a flawed reporter. Pride of the Yankees provides a portrait of a great person with pretty much no flaws who doesn't have any real conflict who sadly gets diagnosed with a disease that ends his baseball career and ultimately his life. Were this story made up completely, I don't think anybody would think that description would make a good movie.

But I liked it anyway? It helps that it feels true. Lou Gehrig really did live with his mother until he was 30, so he really was a big momma's boy. The movie understandably forgoes his previous attempts at relationships that were apparently ruined by his mother (so says Wikipedia), but it's not needed because that comes across already. They did as good of a job at portraying the mother in a relatively positive light, while hinting that she was too attached.

I said he has no flaws, and I don't consider this a flaw, but it is interesting how much he comes across as sort of a dopey rube in this movie. Another interesting choice, and I'm not sure it was a choice, was....his love of baseball doesn't really come across in this movie? Am I crazy? There's no conflict whatsoever when his mother wants him to be an engineer. He just does it (baseball) because he needs money for her to go to the hospital.

I don't know, I think something got lost in translation, the game didn't seem that important to him. His life revolved around his mother, and then around his wife, who was very into baseball, so he was very much into baseball. That's not at all what happened in real life - he didn't meet his wife until deep into his career, while this movie would have you believe they met in essentially his first game? I know I'm reading too much into this and this is one of those movie things, but the timeline sure makes it seem like he got into baseball just for the money and stayed in it for his wife.

I have a lot to say it turns out. You're up to the plate Heather.

Scooter: "Hey Lou, maybe you're trying too hard."

"You can't try to too hard."

I'll start off by saying if Lou Gehrig is half as good in real life as he's depicted in this movie I can see why America loved him so. I have a soft spot in my heart for him, and I wasn't even close to being alive at the same time as him. Naturally, during the ad break that Amazon Prime is now I guess implementing I did a little research to find out how accurate this movie is. Was Gehrig really this close with his mother? Did she really want him to become an engineer? Did those jerks from the fraternity actually exist? These are the questions I needed answered.

What I found was that it mostly seems true. Lou Gehrig was an all-around terrific guy. All I could find that might be inaccurate is that actually Gehrig took himself out of the lineup the night before and not right before his plate appearance and the window he broke at Columbia probably belonged to the journalism school and not the athletic building. In the movie Eleanor Twitchell described Gehrig as a "Newfoundland puppy" and I don't know if a more accurate description of him as he's portrayed in this film exists. He is the perfect hero for a United States facing war time. He is a kind and humble man that works hard, does his job and does it well without complaint, and perhaps most importantly, sacrifices his own ego and desires for the good of others. He's practically Captain America. It certainly makes it sting even more knowing how it all ends.

Goddamn is life fragile. Even men who's feet leave footprints of giants are still, at the end of the day, merely men. In an ironic and cruel twist, after a record 2,130 consecutive games one of baseball's greatest players and one of baseball's greatest men would play in his last. It's tragic and it's heartbreaking and it's unfair — life so often is — and in the face of it, Lou Gehrig stood strong and brave. You absolutely nailed it, Gabe. If it was a story someone wrote, the film would fall completely flat, but as a story of remarkable man facing the end of his remarkable life, you can only watch that closing scene of Gary Cooper as Gehrig leave the field with a tightness in your chest and somberness in your heart.

Gabe: I have to ask: Did you cry? I didn't, and it's mostly because of how they filmed it and the fact that it was in 1942. What do I mean by that? Well, first off, the way actors cried in movies back in the day was... not convincing. There are some things I like about 30s and 40s acting - witty back-and-forths is unparalleled - but genuine emotion is not one of them. Although that kid who he promised to hit two homers for - when you see him later on when I think he's entering the Mayo Clinic - the slightly more grown-up version of him - that kid nailed it. I actually think he probably actually cried. Probably looked up to Gehrig in real life. The other aspect was I didn't think it was a good decision to have the announcer narrate the first part of the farewell ceremony, there was emotion to be milked and that kind of killed it for me.

Also, while I didn't expect to be impressed by the baseball play, I was impressed by how they got around the fact that it'd be hard to film actual baseball play. Like did they film some of these scenes with an actual big crowd, because I don't know how you fake that kind of thing in 1942? Sometimes, Cooper was superimposed, but it was really well done. And I know they filmed it in a AAA park, so at least some of that crowd shots was real I think?

Heather: I didn't cry. I thought I might because something that tends to make me cry in cinema is someone putting on a brave face in a bad situation and though I wasn't sure what this movie was about exactly I suspected it was about Lou Gehrig and that seems to define him pretty perfectly. I started to feel emotional in two places — you know that warm, stinging, feeling behind your eyes like you could cry, but you still can keep it from happening. The first time was when he stood up for Ellie and he confronted his mother about the ugly dresser. throughout the movie, he's called his mother, his best girl, and I thought maybe this would cause a conflict between him and Ellie, but he didn't hesitate to stand up for his wife and i just loved that.

The second time was when he gave Ellie the bracelet. I inferred that he took pieces from his very prestigious awards and made something for his wife to remember him by when he's gone — I am actually getting more choked up thinking about it now — and it was just so sentimental and sweet. Now that I think about it... maybe this movie is a romance?

Gabe: It is absolutely more of a romantic movie than a baseball movie. Baseball is the setting. But as they say, how can you not be romantic about baseball?

Maybe my last point and a question for the readers, but when did baseball cards become valuable? Or something resembling what we think of baseball cards. It just blew my mind that when the story begins in 1916 or so, kids scoff at Lou Gehrig's baseball cards when they are all inner circle Hall of Famers! Honus Wagner! Tris Speaker! That'd be like someone at any point ever saying "pff Willie Mays and Hank Aaron are washed up, I don't want those cards!" Nobody has ever said that. So clearly baseball cards in 1916 were not even close to the same thing.

Scooter: I actually had a similar thought during that scene! when they pulled out the rookie Babe Ruth card my first thought was "I wonder how much money that's worth now?"

But that does lead me to my first big surprise of the movie. Only surprise of the movie I suppose?

I was not expecting that kid to be Lou Gehrig. I don't know why I wasn't — seems pretty obvious now. I guess maybe because I was going into watching this with absolutely no fore-knowledge on what it was about, but that was a total shock to me. I actually said "Oh s#%$!" out loud to no one at all.

Some thing I read was that this movie won an Oscar for the editing and that is actually a thing that really seemed to stand out to me. There were a lot of montages with the scrapbook and awards to signal the passage of time and the editing there really did help support that.

Gabe: That's hilarious. I just now realized that scene was supposed to show the audience he loves baseball. So I guess I was wrong there. Still found it weird he gave his mom no pushback or had no doubts that he would go into engineering, but I'm glad I remembered that scene. Quick trivia: weirdly acclaimed group of writers made this movie happen. The original story was by Paul Gallico, later famous for The Poseidon Adventure but had a bunch of his stuff adapted for film and TV. The screenplay was written by Herman J Mankiewicz, who co-wrote Citizen Kane and was a contributing writer to The Wizard of Oz, and Jo Swerling, who wrote the play Guys and Dolls, Lifeboat and contributed some additional stuff to both It's a Wonderful Life and Gone with the Wind.

It was also an Oscar favorite: it got nominated for 10 Oscars! Only won best Editing, but that's a lot!

Definitely got the A team to make this movie. Theresa Wright, who got nominated for this movie, also got nominated for Best Supporting Actress that same year for Mrs. Miniver. She won for Mrs. Miniver, not for Pride of the Yankees. Would not be allowed to get nominated for multiple acting awards nowadays. Also got nominated the year before. Never nominated again. That's wild. Three nominations, all in a two-year period.

Scooter: And if IMDb is to be believed, those were only her second and third feature films? I really liked her as Eleanor Gehrig. She was just the right amount of teasing for her to be fun and likable and I think that's a credit to how the actress played her. Eleanor and Lou's romance felt like an actual friendship and partnership, which might be considered a bit progressive for that time! Now that i think about it, Gehrig was never really shown with a lot of male friends outside of the reporter Sam Blake. In fact, a lot of the men in the movie were pretty antagonistic towards him. The lead's strongest relationships in this movie were with women: his mother and his wife. It's sort of an interesting for a sports movie. I feel like a lot of modern sports movies I've seen focus on the camaraderie among teammates.

Those fraternity boys were mean. I don't know if I have hated anyone more than the scene where they're listening to him under the stairs talk to the pretty lady. I actually cheered when he jumped across the table to fight that particularly smug jerk.

Gabe: Well, you're right, but that probably mimic'd real life? The Yankees of that era was a rowdy bunch, specifically Babe Ruth. Obviously, they couldn't go into that aspect too much, but it is addressed when Sam Blake said "You have nothing to worry about Eleanor, you're lucky, most women have to worry they were getting drunk or with dames" (paraphrased). Researching after watching, Blake and his rival newspaper were supposed to kind of be sneaky representatives for the real rivalry between Ruth and Gehrig, who could almost literally not be more opposite in real life. They don't really appear to be friends in the movie (which now that I'm thinking of it... kind of odd to not at least pretend huh?) and I think the beef started with Gehrig's mother of course, although they may or may not have squashed it by time of Gehrig's death.

Scooter: That was some thing I noticed, too! Babe Ruth is not painted super flattering in this movie, and yet he is in it playing himself.

I don't really have anything to add to that. I just was surprised he would agree to be in the movie.

Gabe: He had to lose a bunch of weight to play himself. Recently had a heart attack, so... kind of dangerous.

Maybe that was just Babe Ruth's public persona and nobody thought he was portrayed negatively? But yeah definitely fascinating

Anything else to add?

Scooter: I think I mostly covered everything I wanted to say! Overall, I enjoyed the movie. Sometimes with older movies, the acting is a little bit more overt and less subtle and that's just not how it is done anymore. Like you mentioned with the crying, it came up a little bit in this movie, but I think, for the most part the portrayals felt pretty realistic. The only sort of unbelievable part was Lou Gehrig himself. He just seemed too good to be true, but by most accounts, it seems like that's just how he was. To bring it back to the Cardinals a little bit I couldn't help but think of Stan Musial, and that quote about him being "baseball's perfect warrior;baseball's perfect knight." What incredible standard to have maintained.