The Sheila Variations

Pride of the Yankees

Okay, so I saw the film yesterday for the first time. I live-blogged it. Because I am totally a weird person.

There were a couple of comments made to the posts about how they filmed Cooper playing right-handed, and then reversed the film. I remember hearing a bit about that ... and knew I had to research it. And naturally, because I have one of the best libraries in the world, I knew where to turn. I pulled out A. Scott Berg's biography of Sam Goldwyn (Goldwyn produced the picture) and looked up the section on Pride of the Yankees. (Interesting factoid: Not only did they have Cooper bat right and then reverse the film - but they had Cooper run to third base, instead of first, so it would look normal when reversed, and also had all the numbers and letters on all the uniforms turned backwards - so that when the film was reversed, it would all look normal. Amazing. Through the looking glass movie-making). Goldwyn was, at first, really against the picture. He said, "[Baseball movies] are box office poison. If people want baseball, they go to the ballpark." But Niven Busch (a screenwriter, under contract with Goldwyn) thought the Lou Gehrig story would be a massive success. He was the one who really pushed to get the movie made.

And hang on a second, I just realized something: Lou Gehrig made his famous farewell speech on July 4, 1939. !!!! So I, completely inadvertently, found the movie yesterday, decided to buy it because I had never seen it, came home and watched it, commenting on it all the whole - on the very day that farewell speech was made. Weird!!

Some really cool background info in the book, so I'll post it:

From Goldwyn, by Scott Berg:

Busch nonetheless proceeded to recommend a story about the life of Lou Gehrig, who had recently died at the age of thirty-seven. On July 4, 1939, the New York Yankees herculean star of 2,130 consecutive games had appeared on the diamond of Yankee Stadium for the last time, to bid his public farewell; he was suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. "I've been walking on ball fields for sixteen years, and I've never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans," he said. After acknowledging his teammates, past and present, the sportswriters, his team managers, his parents, and his wife -- "a companion for life ... who has shown me more courage than I ever knew" -- the "Iron Man" began to lose control. "People all say I've had a bad break," he found the strength to add; "but today .... today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth."

Busch ran the newsreels of "Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day" for his boss. When the lights came on in his screening room, Goldwyn was mopping his eyes. "Run them again," he said.

After the second viewing, a fully composed Goldwyn barked, "Get Mulvey in New York. We'll get the rights." In an instant, Goldwyn was talking to his senior associate -- whose wife, Marie "Dearie" McKeever, had recently inheritied a one-quarter interest in the Brooklyn Dodgers from her father. "Mulvey," he said, "call Mrs. Gehrig. Tell her there's a remote possibility that we might be interested in the story of her husband." For some $30,000, she sold the rights.

It wasn't exactly smooth sailing after that. It never is, in the movies.

While Goldwyn was negotiating with publicist and sports enthusiast Christy Walsh for the services of Babe Ruth and other real New York Yankees, Busch realized the extent of Goldwyn's ignorance about the game. After a particularly grueling bargaining session, Goldwyn pulled Busch aside and quietly asked him what position Lou Gehrig played. "First base," Busch replied. "First base?" Goldwyn asked, making sure he got it right. "First base," Busch underscored, emphasizing it in such a way that "I think he got the idea that there were ten bases and one worked his way up to first." Negotiations continued that afternoon until the round of Goldwyn screams that customarily closed each session. "You're robbing me!" Goldwyn yelled at Walsh. "I'm not going to pay through the ass for just some lousy ... THIRD baseman!"

Next they had to get the story down - before assigning it to screenwriters. What would be the arc, the story told. Paul Gallico was chosen for this job. (Is this the Paul Gallico? The novelist? Poseidon Adventure Paul Gallico? It must be, right?)

Busch assigned Paul Gallico to write the story for the film, called The Pride of the Yankees. Knowing the climax of the picture, Gallico worked backward, fleshing out the people Gehrig had referred to in his valedictories. He told the story of the immigrant Gehrigs, especially Lou's mother, who had worked as a cook at a fraternity at Columbia University so her son might get an education and become an engineer. When she suddenly needed an operation, Lou did not tell her he obtained the money for it by accepting an offer from the Yankees. Then Gallico followed Gehrig's rise to the major leagues and his rivalry with Babe Ruth. The centerpiece of the hfilm would be the love story between the bashful athlete and the sophisticated Chicago socialite Eleanor Twitchell -- their cute courtship, his untying himself from his mother's apron strings, and the Gehrigs' final acceptance of his fatal illness. Jo Swirling and Herman mankiewicz wrote a screenplay that landed right on the foul line between earnest and maudlin. The New York Times would later note that "without being pretentious", it was "a real saga of American life -- homey, humorous, sentimental and composed in patient detail."

The cast needed to be chosen as well. Heads up: Goldwyn pretty much "discovered" Gary Cooper, back in the 1920s, when he noticed that the glorified extra in some cowboy movie not only was truly handsome - in the way only big movie stars are handsome - but also that he could ACT. I posted the story here. It's one of my favorite "actor gets discovered" stories.

Goldwyn saw Gary Cooper in the lead from the start. It was the last commitment he had from the actor under his present contract, and it was the first time Goldwyn had offered him a role commensurate to his screen status. Niven Busch successfully pushed Goldwyn to give Teresa Wright, whom he was soon to marry, her first starring role, as Eleanor. Walter Brennan played yet another Cooper sidekick, a sportswriter friend. The no-frills Sam Wood was hired to direct. It was "a tough picture to produce," Goldwyn admitted to Joe Schenck upon the film's completion, "as there are so many people throughout America who knew Gehrig that his biography had to be handled with the greatest of care."

Then came the small problem: Gary Cooper couldn't play baseball.

The biggest problem grew from Gary Cooper's being as unfamiliar with baseball as Sam Goldwyn was.

Except for his years in England, Cooper had spent most of his childhood on a horse in Montana, and he had never held a bat in his hands. To make matters worse, he was right-handed, and Gehrig was one of the most celebrated southpaws in the history of the game. Sam Wood could cover certain running and fielding moves by filming a double in long shots, but there was no escaping Cooper's having to step up to home plate and take a convincing whack on the ball. The actor went into spring training with several ballplayers and learned to throw, catch, slide, and bunt properly. He even developed a strong, steady swing, but he just could not master it left-handed. Film editor Danny Maxwell saved the day with an ingenious idea. He suggested to Goldwyn that they allow Cooper to bat right, but have him run to third base, not first. If the costumer reversed the letters and numbers on the players' uniforms in those few shots, Mandell could simply flip the film over, giving the impression of a lefty running to first base.

Wild! Goldwyn was aware that this film's success depended on men AND women coming to see it. So:

To ensure that The Pride of the Yankees ended up a picture for the millions of women left at home as much as a sports movie, Goldwyn insisted on a nightclub sequence, featuring the dance team of Veloz and Yolanda. The Gehrigs' favorite ballad, Irving Berlin's "Always", wafted through the film. Goldwyn's heavy dose of romance proved the secret to the film's success.

One word on this: As a woman, yes, I loved the love story. But I'm not an idiot. Romance doesn't work if it's done insincerely, or as a bone thrown out to me. You can take your bone and shove it. What I liked about the romance in this movie is that they both seem like real people. She's not just a generic woman. She seems very three-dimensional. She's womanly, and yearns to be married - yet she's also a big sports fan, and can hold her own with a bunch of athletes. He is seriously an awkward and bumbling person (off the baseball field). He can't get her out of his mind, and courts her in the most awkward way possible. But - when the time comes for him to stand up to his mother, and say: "Let my wife be the boss of my own house. Not you" - he is able to do so. He does the right thing. I also liked how the two of them wrestled, for fun. hahahaha Such an interesting thing, in a movie from the 1940s - to see the two of them rolling around, laughing hysterically, literally beating the crap out of each other. It seemed so real. The laughter seemed real, the submerged sexual passion seemed real ... I liked both of them. They seemed like a real couple.

So I didn't get the feeling I sometimes get with so-called guy pictures - where I actually resent the love story - because it so has nothing to do with the plot, and it seems like a condescending ploy to keep me interested. As though I, being a woman, can ONLY relate to romance. Feck off. To me, if they had taken the entire romantic sub-plot out of The Caine Mutiny it would have been a better movie. Don't condescend to me with a love story that has nothing to do with ANYTHING.

Okay, back to the movie at hand:

Charles Skouras -- whose brother Spyros had moved that year from managing the Fox Metropolitan Theaters in New York to the presidency of the parent company, Twentieth Century Fox -- liked The Pride of the Yankees enough to pass on several recommendations. Goldwyn followed his advice of exhibiting the picture at as much as 25 percent over the regular general admission price of movies "and in no event at less than fifty-five cents general admission." Skouras also suggested creating a word-of-mouth campaign by premiering the picture in just one city. After New York, the picture moved across the country, capped by a benefit at the Pantages Theater in Hollywood that raised $5,000 for the Naval Aid Auxiliary. "From what I understand," Goldwyn wrote Joe Schenck, "it will be the last opening that Hollywood will be allowed to have for the duration of this war. As you know they are stopping night baseball and all outdoor sports at night. Nor can we shoot any more scenes at night. From now on all this is 'verboten'."

Goldwyn made more money off The Pride of the Yankees than from any film he had yet produced. Several thousand dollars came from such producers as Pandro Berman and Buddy DeSylva, who had bet that the film would not gross more than $3 million, the benchmark those days for blockbuster business.

The reviews rivaled the receipts, particularly those of several individuals whose opinions Goldwyn greatly respected. Eleanor Gehrig said the film was all she could hope for and that she was 'completely happy with it." Wendell Wilkie, whom Goldwyn had supported for President in 1940 -- told him, "Sam, you have done something very important here. You help democracy everywhere by showing what opportunies there are in America." Goldwyn replied, "Why shouldn't I -- who knows better than I do the opportunities in America?" The picture was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actress, and Best Actor. Goldwyn assumed that all the film's glory would clinch Gary Cooper re-signing with him.

Instead, the actor resigned. Goldwyn's one leading man could hardly wait to end his relationship with the producer. After his experience with Goldwyn, Cooper chose to become an actor for hire, making his lucrative deals one at a time and proceeding to enjoy more than a decade of solid hits. One year younger than the century, Cooper had been too old to enlist in the armed services, but in 1943 he went on a five-week tour of American bases in New Guinea. The movie actor had little he could perform on a stage beyond striking an unaffected pose and reciting Lou Gehrig's farewell speech. That invariably brought the men to tears, then to their feet in inspired applause.

And that, my friends ... is that. Good to have an extensive library, where you can look up everything from the history of Locke's influence on Thomas Jefferson to the story of the making of The Pride of the Yankees.

Posted by sheila