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Gary Cooper as Lou Gehrig in The Pride of the Yankees (1942). C: Rudolph Maté. D: Sam Wood.
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The Pride of the Yankees (1942) is one of my all-time favorite movies. Of the estimated 1,500+ movies I've seen, it ranks in my top 100.
It's another of those old movies I saw repeatedly as a kid, and fell in love with, watching local L.A.-area television. All these movies are movies I love now as much as, if not more than, I did as a kid—The Pride of the Yankees, The Gunfighter (1950), Damn Yankees! (1958), Boy's Town (1938), San Francisco (1936), Little Caesar (1931), Dead End (1937), The Delicate Delinquent (1957), North by Northwest (1959), How Green Was My Valley (1941), King Creole (1958), The Fortune Cookie (1966), The Magnificent Seven (1960), The Great Escape (1963), Sons of the Desert (1933), just to name a few.
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Rudolph Maté was the cinematographer on this picture. He was a master at his craft, one of the best cinematographers of the Golden Age. He might easily have made a career as Rita Hayworth's personal cinematographer. But he had worked too hard and too long to have settled for that, no offense to Rita Hayworth's other fans besides myself.
To see Maté at his best, watch Alfred Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent (1940). Pay close attention to these scenes: Hitchcock's appearance on screen, walking while reading a newspaper; the crowd gathering at the peace conference in Amsterdam; and the scenes at the windmills, both outside and inside.
His other noteworthy credits include Dodsworth (1936), Stella Dallas (1937), The Adventures of Marco Polo (1938), Love Affair (1939), My Favorite Wife (1940), That Hamilton Woman (1941), To Be or Not to Be (1942), Sahara (1943), and Gilda (1946).
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It is a myth that the movie relies on behind-the-scenes fakery to make the right-handed Cooper look left-handed like Gehrig. There are even sub-myths: for example, that the film was flipped around to present a mirror image, thus allowing him to "play" right-handed and appear to be left-handed while batting, throwing, and running the bases; that there were mirror-image uniforms; and that Cooper ran the bases in reverse, from home plate to 3rd base to 2nd to 1st. None of it was true.
The truth is Cooper worked out every day with former Brooklyn Dodger (then-current Yankees scout) Babe Herman to practice batting and throwing left-handed. Former Yankee Lefty O'Doul also helped with his batting and batting stance, not only to try to make him look like a ballplayer while standing in the batter's box and swinging the bat but to look like Lou Gehrig when doing it. Herman and O'Doul struck out—Cooper looks like a guy who never played baseball in his life. But bless all three of them for their work ethic and dedication.
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Several people who were or had been on the Yankees' payroll contributed to this movie—then-current Yankees catcher Bill Dickey; former Yankees players Babe Ruth, Lefty O'Doul, Bob Meusal, and Mark Koenig; Yankees announcer Bill Stern; Yankees scout Babe Herman; and former Yankees general manager (and then-current Yankees president) Ed Barrow. All were consultants to the movie. Dickey, Ruth, Meusal, Koenig, and Stern all had parts in the movie, playing themselves. Outside of Yankeedom, sports agent Christy Walsh also served as a consultant.
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Teresa Wright is one of my all-time favorite actors, male or female. She played Eleanor Twitchell Gehrig in the movie. She is the only actor ever to have been nominated for Oscars in her first three pictures—The Little Foxes (1942), The Pride of the Yankees (1942), and Mrs. Miniver (1942), all in supporting roles. She won an Oscar for her role in Mrs. Miniver.
The real Eleanor Gehrig was yet another consultant on the movie. She lent Wright one of her bracelets to wear on film, the one Lou had given her on their 4th wedding anniversary. It is now on display at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.
Almost one year before the movie was released, Eleanor Gehrig had seen enough of the film and of Gary Cooper to say this: "Gary and Lou have the same expressions. They are the same type of man. Gary studied every picture of Lou's. He had every one of Lou's mannerisms down to a science, and he is so like my husband in the picture that there were times when I felt I couldn't bear it."
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The screenplay is terrific, full of smart dialogue and crackling humor. Jo Swirling and Herman J. Mankiewicz co-wrote it. Their writing credits go back to silent pictures in the early 1920s. Jo Swirling's screenplays include Platinum Blonde (1931), The Westerner (1940), Blood and Sand (1941), The Pride of the Yankees (1942), Lifeboat (1943), Leave Her to Heaven (1945), and Guys and Dolls (1955). Mankiewicz's screenplays include the original Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1928), Dinner at Eight (1933), Citizen Kane (1941) (co-writer), The Pride of the Yankees (1942), and The Pride of St. Louis (1952).
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This photo of Lou Gehrig signing an autograph is undated but was likely taken during his last month in a Yankees uniform, April 1939. Gehrig made his final appearance in the Yankees lineup on April 30. The iron man of baseball was just 36 years old, but the disease that now bears his name had already ravaged most of his strength and much of his coordination. He told manager Joe McCarthy on May 2, while on the road in Detroit, that he was taking himself out of the lineup "for the good of the team."
Gehrig, beloved in New York, had a storied career. He played in 2,130 consecutive games, a record that stood for 56 years. He led his Yankees to six World Series titles. When he left baseball, he was second only to Babe Ruth in career home runs and slugging percentage, and was one of the all-time leaders in on-base-percentage, total bases, doubles, and triples. He was a career .340 hitter.
In 1937 he batted .351, had a .643 slugging percentage, 366 total bases, and played in 157 games. But in April 1939, he batted just .143, had a .143 slugging percentage and 4 total bases in 8 games. Sportswriters and fans were split over whether something was wrong with him physically or whether he had simply lost his baseball abilities.
In mid-June 1939 the Mayo Clinic reached a diagnosis: amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a debilitating and ultimately fatal disease. Two days later the Yankees announced Gehrig's retirement and diagnosis, and the City of New York went into mourning. Two years later he was dead.
On July 4, 1939, the Yankees held Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day before a sold-out crowd in Yankee Stadium. They "retired" his uniform number, 4, the first player in MLB history to receive that honor. He and several Yankees, one-by-one, stood before a microphone at home plate and delivered speeches. At the end of The Pride of the Yankees we hear a reasonable facsimile of Gehrig's speech, with that memorable line about being "the luckiest man on the face of the earth."
What gets lost in the story is the speech manager Joe McCarthy gave directly before Gehrig's. McCarthy had loved and treated Gehrig like a son. He could barely contain his emotions as he ended his speech with: "Lou, what else can I say except that it was a sad day in the life of everyone who knew you when you came into my hotel room that day in Detroit and told me you were quitting as a ballplayer because you felt yourself a hindrance to the team. My God, man, you were never that."
