The Pride of the Yankees
Encyclopedia
The Pride of the Yankees is a 1942 American
film directed by Sam Wood
and starring Gary Cooper
, Teresa Wright
, and Walter Brennan
. The film is a tribute to the legendary New York Yankees
first baseman
Lou Gehrig
, who died only one year before the film's release, at age 37, from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
, which later became known to the lay public as "Lou Gehrig's disease".
Though subtitled "The Life of Lou Gehrig", the film is less a sports biography than an homage to a heroic and widely loved sports figure whose tragic and premature death touched the entire nation. It emphasizes Gehrig's relationship with his parents (particularly his strong-willed mother), his friendships with players and journalists, and his storybook romance with the woman who became his "companion for life", Eleanor. Details of his baseball career—which were still fresh in most fans' minds in 1942—are limited to montages of ballparks, pennants, and Cooper swinging bats and running bases, though his best-known major league record (2,130 consecutive games played) is prominently mentioned.
Yankee teammates Babe Ruth
, Bob Meusel
, Mark Koenig
, and Bill Dickey
play themselves, as does sportscaster Bill Stern
. Brennan plays a sportswriter friend. The film was adapted by Herman J. Mankiewicz
, Jo Swerling
, and an uncredited Casey Robinson
from a story by Paul Gallico
. The film's climax is a re-enactment of Gehrig's poignant 1939 farewell speech at Yankee Stadium. The iconic closing line, "Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth" was voted 38th in the American Film Institute
(AFI) list of the 100 all-time greatest movie quotes.
student whose old-fashioned mother wants him to study hard and become an engineer. But the young man has a gift for baseball. A sportswriter named Sam Blake (Brennan) befriends Gehrig and persuades a scout to come see him play. Before long Gehrig signs with the team he has always revered, the Yankees. With his father's help, he endeavors to keep his career change a secret from his mother.
Gehrig works his way up through the minor leagues and finally joins the Yankees. His hero, Babe Ruth, is at first condescending and dismissive of the rookie; but his strong, consistent play wins over Ruth and the rest of the team, and before long Gehrig is joining his teammates in playing pranks on Ruth on the team train.
During a game Gehrig trips over a stack of bats and is teased by a spectator, Eleanor (Wright), who laughingly calls him "tanglefoot". Their relationship grows, and soon Lou pops the question. Gehrig's mother, who still hasn't accepted the fact that her son will not be an engineer, does not take the news of his pending marriage well. But Lou finally stands up to her and marries Eleanor.
The Yankees become the most dominant team in baseball, and Gehrig becomes a fan favorite. His father and fully converted mother attend games and cheer for him. In a re-creation of a famous (and possibly apocryphal) story, Gehrig visits a crippled boy named Billy (Gene Collins) in a hospital. He promises to hit two home runs in a single World Series
game in the boy's honor—then fulfills his promise.
Gehrig is now the "Iron Horse", a national hero at the peak of his career with multitudes of fans, many loyal friends, and an adoring wife; but gradually he notices, with growing alarm, that his strength is ebbing away. Though he continues to play, and extends his consecutive-game streak to a seemingly insurmountable record, his physical condition continues its inexorable decline. One day, in Detroit, he tells Yankees manager Joe McCarthy that he has become a detriment to the team and benches himself. After an examination, a doctor gives him the awful news: Gehrig has a rare, incurable disease, and only a short time to live.
A year later, at Lou Gehrig Day at Yankee Stadium, an older Billy (David Holt) finds Gehrig and shows him that he has made a full recovery, inspired by his hero's example and the two-homer fulfilled promise. Then, as Eleanor weeps softly from the stands, Gehrig addresses the fans: "People all say that I've had a bad break," he says. "But today ... today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth."
at the Astor Theatre, and was shown for one night only at "forty neighborhood theatres". Preceding the film was the premiere of an animated short called "How to Play Baseball
", produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios at Samuel Goldwyn
's request.
magazine called the film a "stirring epitaph" and a "sentimental, romantic saga ... well worth seeing."
Time
magazine said the film was a "grade-A love story" done with "taste and distinction" though it was "somewhat overlong, repetitive, undramatic. Baseball fans who hope to see much baseball played in Pride of the Yankees will be disappointed. Babe Ruth is there, playing himself with fidelity and considerable humor; so are Yankees Bill Dickey, Bob Meusel, Mark Koenig. But baseball is only incidental. The hero does not hit a home run and win the girl. He is just a hardworking, unassuming, highly talented professional. The picture tells the model story of his model life in the special world of professional ballplayers."
Bosley Crowther
of The New York Times
called it a "tender, meticulous and explicitly narrative film" that "inclines to monotony" because of its length and devotion to "genial details."
won an Academy Award
for his work on The Pride of the Yankees. The film received ten additional Oscar nominations:
The American Film Institute
ranked The Pride of the Yankees 22nd on its list of the 100 most inspiring films in American cinema
.
In AFI's 2008 "Ten Top Tens"—the top ten films in ten "classic" American film genres—The Pride of the Yankees was ranked third in the sports category.
.
Gary Cooper, who was right-handed, could not master a convincing left-handed swing, and was filmed swinging from the right side. Editors then created the appearance of left-handed batting by reversing the film negative. During filming Cooper would run to third base instead of first to complete the illusion.
In one of the film's more memorable scenes, a physician at the Mayo Clinic matter-of-factly informs Gehrig of his tragic diagnosis, dismal prognosis, and brief life expectancy. In fact the Mayo doctors painted an unrealistically optimistic picture of Gehrig's condition and prospects, reportedly at his wife's request. Among other things he was given "a 50–50 chance of keeping me as I am" for the foreseeable future, and was told that he "...may need a cane in 10 or 15 years." Deliberate concealment of bad news from patients, particularly when cancer or an incurable degenerative disease was involved, was a relatively common practice at the time.
Yankee Stadium speech
Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about a bad break. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth. I have been in ballparks for seventeen years and have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans.
Look at these grand men. Which of you wouldn't consider it the highlight of his career just to associate with them for even one day? Sure, I'm lucky. Who wouldn't consider it an honor to have known Jacob Ruppert? Also, the builder of baseball's greatest empire, Ed Barrow? To have spent six years with that wonderful little fellow, Miller Huggins? Then to have spent the next nine years with that outstanding leader, that smart student of psychology, the best manager in baseball today, Joe McCarthy? Sure, I'm lucky.
When the New York Giants, a team you would give your right arm to beat, and vice versa, sends you a gift - that's something. When everybody down to the groundskeepers and those boys in white coats remember you with trophies — that's something. When you have a wonderful mother-in-law who takes sides with you in squabbles with her own daughter — that's something. When you have a father and a mother who work all their lives so you can have an education and build your body — it's a blessing. When you have a wife who has been a tower of strength and shown more courage than you dreamed existed - that's the finest I know.
So I close in saying that I might have been given a bad break, but I've got an awful lot to live for.
Film speech
I have been walking onto ball fields for sixteen years, and I've never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans. I have had the great honor to have played with these great veteran ballplayers on my left - Murderers' Row, our championship team of 1927. I have had the further honor of living with and playing with these men on my right - the Bronx Bombers, the Yankees of today.
I have been given fame and undeserved praise by the boys up there behind the wire in the press box, my friends, the sportswriters. I have worked under the two greatest managers of all time, Miller Huggins and Joe McCarthy.
I have a mother and father who fought to give me health and a solid background in my youth. I have a wife, a companion for life, who has shown me more courage than I ever knew.
People all say that I've had a bad break. But today...today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth.
with Gary Cooper and Virginia Bruce
and a September 30, 1949 broadcast of Screen Director's Playhouse
starring Gary Cooper and Lurene Tuttle
.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
film directed by Sam Wood
Sam Wood
Samuel Grosvenor "Sam" Wood was an American film director, and producer, who was best known for directing such Hollywood hits as A Night at the Opera, A Day at the Races, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, and The Pride of the Yankees...
and starring Gary Cooper
Gary Cooper
Frank James Cooper, known professionally as Gary Cooper, was an American film actor. He was renowned for his quiet, understated acting style and his stoic, but at times intense screen persona, which was particularly well suited to the many Westerns he made...
, Teresa Wright
Teresa Wright
Teresa Wright was an American actress. She received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1942 for her performance in Mrs. Miniver. That same year, she received an Academy Award for Best Actress nomination for her performance in Pride of the Yankees opposite Gary Cooper...
, and Walter Brennan
Walter Brennan
Walter Brennan was an American actor. Brennan won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor on three separate occasions, which is currently the record for most wins.-Early life:...
. The film is a tribute to the legendary New York Yankees
New York Yankees
The New York Yankees are a professional baseball team based in the The Bronx, New York. They compete in Major League Baseball in the American League's East Division...
first baseman
First baseman
First base, or 1B, is the first of four stations on a baseball diamond which must be touched in succession by a baserunner in order to score a run for that player's team...
Lou Gehrig
Lou Gehrig
Henry Louis "Lou" Gehrig , nicknamed "The Iron Horse" for his durability, was an American Major League Baseball first baseman. He played his entire 17-year baseball career for the New York Yankees . Gehrig set several major league records. He holds the record for most career grand slams...
, who died only one year before the film's release, at age 37, from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis , also referred to as Lou Gehrig's disease, is a form of motor neuron disease caused by the degeneration of upper and lower neurons, located in the ventral horn of the spinal cord and the cortical neurons that provide their efferent input...
, which later became known to the lay public as "Lou Gehrig's disease".
Though subtitled "The Life of Lou Gehrig", the film is less a sports biography than an homage to a heroic and widely loved sports figure whose tragic and premature death touched the entire nation. It emphasizes Gehrig's relationship with his parents (particularly his strong-willed mother), his friendships with players and journalists, and his storybook romance with the woman who became his "companion for life", Eleanor. Details of his baseball career—which were still fresh in most fans' minds in 1942—are limited to montages of ballparks, pennants, and Cooper swinging bats and running bases, though his best-known major league record (2,130 consecutive games played) is prominently mentioned.
Yankee teammates Babe Ruth
Babe Ruth
George Herman Ruth, Jr. , best known as "Babe" Ruth and nicknamed "the Bambino" and "the Sultan of Swat", was an American Major League baseball player from 1914–1935...
, Bob Meusel
Bob Meusel
Robert William "Bob" Meusel was an American baseball left and right fielder who played in Major League Baseball for eleven seasons from 1920 through 1930, all but the last for the New York Yankees...
, Mark Koenig
Mark Koenig
Mark Anthony Koenig was an American shortstop in Major League Baseball. He played for 12 seasons from 1925–1936. He was the starting shortstop for the New York Yankees 1927 Murderers' Row team, and was the last surviving member of that legendary team...
, and Bill Dickey
Bill Dickey
William Malcolm Dickey was a Major League Baseball catcher and manager.He played his entire 19-year baseball career with the New York Yankees . During Dickey's playing career, the Yankees went to the World Series nine times, winning eight championships...
play themselves, as does sportscaster Bill Stern
Bill Stern
Bill Stern was a U.S. actor and sportscaster who announced the nation's first remote sports broadcast and the first telecast of a Major League Baseball game. In 1984, Stern was part of the American Sportscasters Association Hall of Fame’s inaugural class which included sportscasting legends Red...
. Brennan plays a sportswriter friend. The film was adapted by Herman J. Mankiewicz
Herman J. Mankiewicz
Herman Jacob Mankiewicz was an American screenwriter, who, with Orson Welles, wrote the screenplay for Citizen Kane . Earlier, he was the Berlin correspondent for the Chicago Tribune and the drama critic for The New York Times and The New Yorker. Alexander Woollcott, said that Herman Mankiewicz was...
, Jo Swerling
Jo Swerling
Jo Swerling was an American theatre writer and lyricist and a screenwriter.Born in Berdichev, Russian Empire, Swerling was a refugee of the Czarist regime who grew up on New York City's lower East Side, where he sold newspapers to help support his family...
, and an uncredited Casey Robinson
Casey Robinson
Casey Robinson was an American producer and director of mostly B movies and a screenwriter responsible for some of Bette Davis' most revered films...
from a story by Paul Gallico
Paul Gallico
Paul William Gallico was a successful American novelist, short story and sports writer. Many of his works were adapted for motion pictures...
. The film's climax is a re-enactment of Gehrig's poignant 1939 farewell speech at Yankee Stadium. The iconic closing line, "Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth" was voted 38th in the American Film Institute
American Film Institute
The American Film Institute is an independent non-profit organization created by the National Endowment for the Arts, which was established in 1967 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act...
(AFI) list of the 100 all-time greatest movie quotes.
Plot
Lou Gehrig (Cooper) is a young Columbia UniversityColumbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
student whose old-fashioned mother wants him to study hard and become an engineer. But the young man has a gift for baseball. A sportswriter named Sam Blake (Brennan) befriends Gehrig and persuades a scout to come see him play. Before long Gehrig signs with the team he has always revered, the Yankees. With his father's help, he endeavors to keep his career change a secret from his mother.
Gehrig works his way up through the minor leagues and finally joins the Yankees. His hero, Babe Ruth, is at first condescending and dismissive of the rookie; but his strong, consistent play wins over Ruth and the rest of the team, and before long Gehrig is joining his teammates in playing pranks on Ruth on the team train.
During a game Gehrig trips over a stack of bats and is teased by a spectator, Eleanor (Wright), who laughingly calls him "tanglefoot". Their relationship grows, and soon Lou pops the question. Gehrig's mother, who still hasn't accepted the fact that her son will not be an engineer, does not take the news of his pending marriage well. But Lou finally stands up to her and marries Eleanor.
The Yankees become the most dominant team in baseball, and Gehrig becomes a fan favorite. His father and fully converted mother attend games and cheer for him. In a re-creation of a famous (and possibly apocryphal) story, Gehrig visits a crippled boy named Billy (Gene Collins) in a hospital. He promises to hit two home runs in a single World Series
World Series
The World Series is the annual championship series of Major League Baseball, played between the American League and National League champions since 1903. The winner of the World Series championship is determined through a best-of-seven playoff and awarded the Commissioner's Trophy...
game in the boy's honor—then fulfills his promise.
Gehrig is now the "Iron Horse", a national hero at the peak of his career with multitudes of fans, many loyal friends, and an adoring wife; but gradually he notices, with growing alarm, that his strength is ebbing away. Though he continues to play, and extends his consecutive-game streak to a seemingly insurmountable record, his physical condition continues its inexorable decline. One day, in Detroit, he tells Yankees manager Joe McCarthy that he has become a detriment to the team and benches himself. After an examination, a doctor gives him the awful news: Gehrig has a rare, incurable disease, and only a short time to live.
A year later, at Lou Gehrig Day at Yankee Stadium, an older Billy (David Holt) finds Gehrig and shows him that he has made a full recovery, inspired by his hero's example and the two-homer fulfilled promise. Then, as Eleanor weeps softly from the stands, Gehrig addresses the fans: "People all say that I've had a bad break," he says. "But today ... today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth."
Release
Gehrig died on June 2, 1941. The film premiered on July 14, 1942 in New York CityNew York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
at the Astor Theatre, and was shown for one night only at "forty neighborhood theatres". Preceding the film was the premiere of an animated short called "How to Play Baseball
How to Play Baseball
How to Play Baseball is a cartoon released by Walt Disney Animation Studios in September 1942, produced at the request of Samuel Goldwyn and first shown to accompany the 1942 feature film The Pride of the Yankees.-Synopsis:...
", produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios at Samuel Goldwyn
Samuel Goldwyn
Samuel Goldwyn was an American film producer, and founding contributor executive of several motion picture studios.-Biography:...
's request.
Reception
VarietyVariety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
magazine called the film a "stirring epitaph" and a "sentimental, romantic saga ... well worth seeing."
Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
magazine said the film was a "grade-A love story" done with "taste and distinction" though it was "somewhat overlong, repetitive, undramatic. Baseball fans who hope to see much baseball played in Pride of the Yankees will be disappointed. Babe Ruth is there, playing himself with fidelity and considerable humor; so are Yankees Bill Dickey, Bob Meusel, Mark Koenig. But baseball is only incidental. The hero does not hit a home run and win the girl. He is just a hardworking, unassuming, highly talented professional. The picture tells the model story of his model life in the special world of professional ballplayers."
Bosley Crowther
Bosley Crowther
Bosley Crowther was a journalist and author who was film critic for The New York Times for 27 years. His reviews and articles helped shape the careers of actors, directors and screenwriters, though his reviews, at times, were unnecessarily mean...
of The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
called it a "tender, meticulous and explicitly narrative film" that "inclines to monotony" because of its length and devotion to "genial details."
Awards and other recognition
Film Editor Daniel MandellDaniel Mandell
Daniel Mandell was an American film editor with more than 70 film credits. His career spanned films from The Turmoil in 1924 to The Fortune Cookie in 1966...
won an Academy Award
15th Academy Awards
The 15th Academy Awards was held in the Cocoanut Grove at The Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Best Picture honors went to the film Mrs. Miniver. The ceremony is most famous for the speech by the film’s Oscar-winning actress Greer Garson...
for his work on The Pride of the Yankees. The film received ten additional Oscar nominations:
- Best Actor in a Leading Role (Cooper)
- Best Actress in a Leading Role (Wright)
- Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Black-and-White
- Best Cinematography, Black-and-White
- Best Effects, Special Effects
- Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture
- Best Picture
- Best Sound, Recording (Thomas T. MoultonThomas T. MoultonThomas T. Moulton was an American sound engineer. He won five Academy Awards in the category Sound Recording and was nominated for eleven more in the same category...
) - Best Writing, Original Story
- Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay
The American Film Institute
American Film Institute
The American Film Institute is an independent non-profit organization created by the National Endowment for the Arts, which was established in 1967 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act...
ranked The Pride of the Yankees 22nd on its list of the 100 most inspiring films in American cinema
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Cheers
100 Years…100 Cheers: America's Most Inspiring Movies is a list of the most inspiring films as determined by the American Film Institute. It is part of the AFI 100 Years… series, which has been compiling lists of the greatest films of all time in various categories since 1998...
.
In AFI's 2008 "Ten Top Tens"—the top ten films in ten "classic" American film genres—The Pride of the Yankees was ranked third in the sports category.
Inaccuracies/artistic license
As the film opens, Gehrig is depicted belting a home run through the window of his alma mater's athletics department. Actually, his farthest hits smashed not into the athletic department, which was located on the north end of campus, but through the windows of the nearby Columbia University Graduate School of JournalismColumbia University Graduate School of Journalism
The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism is one of Columbia's graduate and professional schools. It offers three degree programs: Master of Science in journalism , Master of Arts in journalism and a Ph.D. in communications...
.
Gary Cooper, who was right-handed, could not master a convincing left-handed swing, and was filmed swinging from the right side. Editors then created the appearance of left-handed batting by reversing the film negative. During filming Cooper would run to third base instead of first to complete the illusion.
In one of the film's more memorable scenes, a physician at the Mayo Clinic matter-of-factly informs Gehrig of his tragic diagnosis, dismal prognosis, and brief life expectancy. In fact the Mayo doctors painted an unrealistically optimistic picture of Gehrig's condition and prospects, reportedly at his wife's request. Among other things he was given "a 50–50 chance of keeping me as I am" for the foreseeable future, and was told that he "...may need a cane in 10 or 15 years." Deliberate concealment of bad news from patients, particularly when cancer or an incurable degenerative disease was involved, was a relatively common practice at the time.
Gehrig's farewell speech
Lou Gehrig's speech at Yankee Stadium on July 4, 1939 was not reproduced verbatim in the film; the script condensed and reorganized Gehrig's actual spontaneous and unprepared remarks, and moved the iconic "luckiest man" line from the beginning to the end for heightened dramatic effect. Gehrig's message, however, remained essentially unchanged.Yankee Stadium speech
Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about a bad break. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth. I have been in ballparks for seventeen years and have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans.
Look at these grand men. Which of you wouldn't consider it the highlight of his career just to associate with them for even one day? Sure, I'm lucky. Who wouldn't consider it an honor to have known Jacob Ruppert? Also, the builder of baseball's greatest empire, Ed Barrow? To have spent six years with that wonderful little fellow, Miller Huggins? Then to have spent the next nine years with that outstanding leader, that smart student of psychology, the best manager in baseball today, Joe McCarthy? Sure, I'm lucky.
When the New York Giants, a team you would give your right arm to beat, and vice versa, sends you a gift - that's something. When everybody down to the groundskeepers and those boys in white coats remember you with trophies — that's something. When you have a wonderful mother-in-law who takes sides with you in squabbles with her own daughter — that's something. When you have a father and a mother who work all their lives so you can have an education and build your body — it's a blessing. When you have a wife who has been a tower of strength and shown more courage than you dreamed existed - that's the finest I know.
So I close in saying that I might have been given a bad break, but I've got an awful lot to live for.
Film speech
I have been walking onto ball fields for sixteen years, and I've never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans. I have had the great honor to have played with these great veteran ballplayers on my left - Murderers' Row, our championship team of 1927. I have had the further honor of living with and playing with these men on my right - the Bronx Bombers, the Yankees of today.
I have been given fame and undeserved praise by the boys up there behind the wire in the press box, my friends, the sportswriters. I have worked under the two greatest managers of all time, Miller Huggins and Joe McCarthy.
I have a mother and father who fought to give me health and a solid background in my youth. I have a wife, a companion for life, who has shown me more courage than I ever knew.
People all say that I've had a bad break. But today...today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth.
Adaptations to other media
The Pride of the Yankees was adapted as an hour-long radio play on the October 4, 1943 broadcast of Lux Radio TheaterLux Radio Theater
Lux Radio Theater, a long-run classic radio anthology series, was broadcast on the NBC Blue Network ; CBS and NBC . Initially, the series adapted Broadway plays during its first two seasons before it began adapting films. These hour-long radio programs were performed live before studio audiences...
with Gary Cooper and Virginia Bruce
Virginia Bruce
Virginia Bruce was an American actress and singer.-Career:Born Helen Virginia Briggs in Minneapolis, Minnesota, she went with her family to Los Angeles intending to enroll in the University of California when a friendly wager sent her seeking film work. She got it as an extra in Why Bring That...
and a September 30, 1949 broadcast of Screen Director's Playhouse
Screen Director's Playhouse
Screen Director's Playhouse is a popular radio and television anthology series which brought leading Hollywood actors to the NBC microphones beginning in 1949...
starring Gary Cooper and Lurene Tuttle
Lurene Tuttle
Lurene Tuttle was a character actress, who made transitions from vaudeville to radio, to films and television. Her most enduring impact was as one of network radio's most versatile actresses...
.