Gary Cooper was born to play the role of Lou Gehrig. Cooper looks like the Iron Horse, has the same sharp cheekbones and demeanour. Gehrig would have been impressed with this remarkable film. Released just a year after his death from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or what came to be commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease, the screenplay by Citizen Kane co-writer Herman J. Mankiewicz, is a fresh and unique take on the docudrama. The film follows Gehrig’s rise to stardom from the working class section of Yorkville, Manhattan to the Bronx where he played 2,130 consecutive baseball games for the New York Yankees. Intelligent and earnest beyond belief, Gehrig joined the Yankees in 1925. The film does a fine job of showing his greatest moments, his friendly rivalry with Babe Ruth, the discovery of his illness at the Mayo Clinic, and then his dramatic farewell speech to his fans.
Cooper excels in his performance, re-creating Gehrig. Rare is the movie in which an actor can embody a real life individual so completely. The ethnic family life of Gehrig is a true re-enactment of immigrant New York during the twenties and the Depression. Elsa Janssen gives a great performance as Gehrig’s German-born mother, who taught Lou the respect and chivalry he exhibits as a man and when courting Eleanor, his true love played by the great Teresa Wright. Their relationship is pure Cooper wholesomeness, like Gary and Grace Kelly in High Noon. Eleanor kept Lou on the right track, providing escape from the perils of stardom and the pressure of the game. Walter Brennan is wonderful as a sportswriter who follows the Yankees and thinks Lou is the greatest Yankee ever. He becomes an important figure in transmitting the myth and heroic attributes of Lou. And Babe Ruth plays himself and does a fine job, too!
This movie is fondly remembered largely because of the farewell speech. Recreated magnificently, Cooper delivers it so perfectly that one almost thinks it is Ken Burns’s Baseball documentary. But the best scene in the movie is one set in a children’s hospital, where both Babe and Lou visit a terminally ill boy. Babe promises him a home run, and the kid asks Gehrig if he will hit two. It’s sentimental, it’s corny, and it never fails to bring tears to my eyes when Lou hits two home runs. Cooper’s baseball skills are also pretty good and he pulls the game parts off with a decent imitation of Lou’s swing.
The end of the film, as the disease begins to ravage Lou is sad and inspirational at the same time. Taking himself out of the Yankee line-up and going to the Mayo Clinic on his own is heart wrenching to watch. For a tremendous baseball fan, Pride of the Yankees ranks with Field Of Dreams, The Natural and Eight Men Out among the best baseball movies. I still feel that the definitive baseball film has yet to be made, but Pride of the Yankees comes close. One wonders why Hollywood will spend money on a film version of the life of Jim Morris (The Rookie, starring Dennis Quaid) but not on some of the amazing hall-of-famers who have yet to be immortalized on celluloid. Guys like Sandy Koufax, Bob Gibson and Ted Williams are all complex characters whom would make excellent film subjects. Yankee fan or not, this is a great film. The big improvement of the 2002 DVD version over previous DVD and VHS versions is that it is not colourized, preserving the original black and white as it was meant to be seen.
