Accuracy - The Pride of the Yankees (1943) Discussion

[–] s_wilson33 20 years ago

It's fairly accurate with the big stuff, not so much the details as far as I've ever read. He came from a working class family and had a controlling mother. He was married and died with no children left behind. His numbers were astounding, but all that's remembered, for the most part, is The Streak.

And yes, Cooper was cast because he looked so much like the Iron Horse.

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[–] brower8 20 years ago

... of course, Gary Cooper was a 40-year-old man and he played Gehrig from age 18 (college) to 36 (Gehrig's death), and he looked over 40 when playing a college kid. The kid's parents begin unusually old for parents of a pre-teen youth and don't age at all.

It is far easier to use makeup to make someone look older than he is than to make someone younger -- which explains the high cost and rare success of cosmetics and surgery intended to make people look younger.

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[–] ingres77 20 years ago

As s_wilson said, it's follows the truth fairly closely. Lou's relationship with his parents, and his wife are pretty well done. But Eleanor and Lou didn't meet when he was a rookie. She was a Chicago socialite, and Lou was a veteren when they met. But the marriage ceremony really did happen as depicted in the film. Other changes are that the little boy - Billy - didn't really exist. Gehrig did hit two home runs in a World Series game, but that particular boy didn't exist, so far as I've ever heard. It was more a statement on who Gehrig was, and the affection he had for children. Eleanor and Mrs. Gehrig didn't really reconcile, either (that I know of). They had a very contentious relationship (which the film indicated). She wasn't present at her son's wedding (for instance). And the famous streak ended a bit differently. It was a decision Gehrig made prior to the game - not spur of the moment.

My one problem with the film, however, is the final speech. I think Gehrig's real life speech was one of the greatest of the century. It was heartfelt, moving, and unashamedly modest. It personified all that was great about the man - who symbolized all that was great about the sport of Baseball, and humanity in general.

It was a beautiful speech. I don't know why they changed it.

Here's what Gehrig said:

"Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about a bad break I got. Yet today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.

"I have been in ballparks for 17 years, and I 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 have considered it an honor to have known Jacob Ruppert; also, the builder of baseball's greatest empire, Ed Barrows; 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 against her own daughter, that's something. When you have a father and mother who work all their lives so that 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 may have had a tough break, but I have an awful lot to live for. Thank You."

It's not that different from what was in the movie. Some things are changed around, some things are added, some are taken out. The point is, why change it? The gist of what Gehrig said is there - but it wasn't accurate. And the problem is that there's no legitemate reason for it.

Great film, though.

Little by little the look of the country changes because of the men we admire.

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[–] AriesJB4 20 years ago

I also commented to my husband about the accuracy of Lou Gehrig's Yankee Stadium Farewell address, which occurred sixty-five years ago, July 4, 1939. Our local newspaper reprinted the original speech, and I can only say that due to time constraints, the highlights of the speech were truly condensed.

Receiving mention were his managers and teammates, the fans, his parents, his wife and "Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth." The original address has this "luckiest man" quote that Mr. Gehrig is remembered for as part of the introductory paragraph. The film ends with this line. Chalk up one for Hollywood for tying up all the loose ends.

It is really a puzzlement, because I always thought that the speech in the film was verbatim as originally spoken.

"Pride of the Yankees" is a great film and one that never fails to bring tears to my eyes, especially with "Always" and "Auld Lang Syne" - nostalgic yes, unforgettable no.

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[–] ingres77 20 years ago

The speech in the movie isn't that much shorter than the original. Here it is:

I have been walking on ball fields for sixteen years, and I have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans.

I have had the great honor to have played with these great veteran ball players on my left -- Murders' Row, our championship team of 1927. I have had the further honor of living 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 times, 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.

I still think they should've used the original.

Little by little the look of the country changes because of the men we admire.

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[–] 20 years ago

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[–] ingres77 20 years ago

Right. If you make a biopic with the intent of accuratly portraying the life of the individual - you can't deviate on such a crucial point. Many Gehrig fans hated this movie when it came out for precisely this reason. Everyone rememberd this speech (it had only taken place a couple years prior to the films release), and it angered many that a different speech was given in the movie.

But you know what the real kicker is? There was absolutely no reason for it. It wasn't time constraints - because the movie is only 128 minutes long. What would an extra minute or so matter? It's not like the original speech wasn't moving - I actually think it was superior to the one given in the movie (not only because it was real, though). There was no reason whatsoever for the change.

Little by little the look of the country changes because of the men we admire.

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[–] YankeeBoy 20 years ago

"It sort of hurts when you care enough about the original text, the truth of the way it happened, and the movies go and change it." "Right. If you make a biopic with the intent of accuratly portraying the life of the individual - you can't deviate on such a crucial point."
Yeah, I know. I think we call it "lying" in real life but I gues we let them get away with it all the time in the movies.
I love "Pride of the Yankees,' cause I love the Yankees and it's got a real good feel to it as a movie, but I'm too yuong to know whether or not it's very acurate, though from what I've read about Lou it is. Funny about how his parents start out old and never seem to age, but I guess that's just another lie we gotta accept.
Some people are saying now that ALS aka "Lou Gehrig's Disease" was really a man-maid disease like AIDS that some people created in a lab just to kill Lou because he was a German and such a great person and role modle, sort of like some people killed the Lindbergh baby because Lindbergh was so pro-German. Wow, that's incredble if its true, but I doubt it all.

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[–] ingres77 20 years ago

Don't put too much faith in that little theory.

Conspiracy theorists can come up with any number of odd stories.

During my service in [Congress], I took the initiative in creating the Internet. - Al Gore

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[–] montgomerydou55 8 years ago

Because he was a German?
How about Babe Ruth, Harry Heilmann, Bob Meusel, and Casey Stengel? They were German too.

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[–] bws042257 17 years ago

during world war 2, gary cooper - as part of the uso - would frequently be asked to reread the speech (movie version) to the troops...

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[–] bws042257 17 years ago

thanks for posting that...you're right, it's a beautiful speech..i think what i like most about it is it's humility and appreciation, even to the groundskeepers and the adversaries (the giants)...

i had heard it was done extemporaneously (without preparation)...

what happened to athletes like gehrig and honus wagner (who refused a lucrative tobacco endorsement deal because he did not want children to think that tobacco was harmless)?

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[–] ingres77 17 years ago

Those athletes are out there.

You just don't hear a lot about them.

I remember, for instance, Michael Jordan visiting local high schools (I live in SE North Carolina) after some of the more damaging hurricanes in the late 1990s. He wasn't tailed by the press. It wasn't all over ESPN. It was fairly low-key.

He met with some of the kids who were seriously effected, who's houses were ruined. The kids were pulled out of their classrooms, and met with him personally. There wasn't a big to-do about it.

He also donated money both to the families, and to broader relief efforts.

This kind of humanity does occur, it just doesn't get reported on as much.

And, in the end, isn't that the point? Helping people because you care, not because it makes people like you more?

Children shouldn't be entertained with derision before they’ve been ravished by awe.

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[–] aimsusie 19 years ago

The movie got some things right and some things wrong. According to my book
"Film Flubs - Memorable Movie Mistakes", here's what it got wrong.
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Hard-core fans had a field day comparing on-screen events with reality in Pride of the Yankees (1942). In one scene, Gary Cooper, as Lou Gehrig, tries to awaken his future wife (Teresa Wright) in the middle of the night by throwing pebbles at her window. A cop walks by and asks what he is doing there, and he says he's going to ask her to marry him. Just prior to that scene, Gehrig and his teammates are seen beating the St. Louis Cardinals. Historians noted the Yankees beat the Cardinals only once prior to 1943 - in 1928 when they swept the series. Gehrig and girlfriend Eleanor married in 1933, meaning that he strolled around for about five years on the way to her house. In a touching scene, Babe Ruth (played by Babe himself) and Lou Gehrig promise a sick young boy that they will both hit homers for him, in a conversation in the boy's room in St. Louis. That would make it 1926 or 1928, the only years during Gehrig's career when the Yankees played World Series games in St. Louis. In the movie, Babe Ruth hits one home run and Gehrig hits two. There was no game in which this actually happened. The real truth is that producer Sam Goldwyn moved the "called" home run of the 1932 Series from Chicago to St. Louis. The actual incident happened on October 1, 1932 and Ruth did hit two homers that day. Gehrig's two home runs in a World Series game against St. Louis were in 1928.
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[–] Greenteeth 19 years ago

I don't know how accurate it is. I do think the tone of it is great. It's not over the top. Lou's mother is pretty obnoxious, but it is done in a believable way. When Lou realizes he is losing strength, the looks on Cooper's and Wright's faces are believable. And the scene of his big day seesm to me to be taken straight from the famous photograph. It is a sad moment, but not overwhelming.

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[–] AngelDoll 19 years ago

I would kind of accept the idea that maybe it's better that the speech in the movie wasn't the real speech given by the real Lou Gehrig. I understand why it would upset people, but I think it would be weird to have someone else give the same exact speech. The speech is Lou's speech, and only Lou's speech. The real Lou Gehrig. If someone tried to give the same speech with the same emotion and heart, it wouldn't be the same. They preserved the speech by not using it verbatim. That's how I see it.

I just finished watching the movie a few minutes ago and absolutely fell in love with it :)

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[–] 19 years ago

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[–] 19 years ago

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[–] aquilablanco-1 18 years ago

Now I notice--- in the real farewell speech, Lou Gehrig gave kudos to his mother-in-law. Obviously she was as prominent in his and Eleanor's lives as his own mother. No mention of his father-in-law--- was Mr. Twitchell deceased by this time?
Yet in the movie, I got the impression that Eleanor's Mom was dead and her father more or less made the daughter his companion in some of his pastimes like the son he never had, being a big baseball fan for example. Or was one story about one contentious relationship with one of the (likely very different) mothers-in-law all the film-makers had time for?

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[–] 18 years ago

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[–] Paculliton 18 years ago

Eleanor's father had numerous extra-marital affairs and her parents' marriage split up while Eleanor was still a young teen. She remained with her mother. (I'm not sure when her father died, though.)

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[–] Molly-31 18 years ago

I usually try to cut them some slack when they take liberties in films with what happened in real life, but I have resisted watching Pride of the Yankees for years because I knew they didn't give Lou's real speech. In my opinion, given the circumstances and the context, changing the speech was unforgivable.

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[–] photoseller 18 years ago

They probably placed his famous remark from the speech at the end instead of the front (as it really was) for timing effect, to keep the audiance glued to every word, that is my opinion anyway, still a classic film, and nobody could have played him better than Gary Cooper, the man actually looks very much like him, though Cooper was a righty.

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[–] JacquesDemy 17 years ago

The speech in the movie is more concise and also has created a more emotional and dramatic effect. Though its historical inaccuracy certainly is a flaw, the movie is still a great biographical movie, on the whole. I especially enjoy Teresa Wright's performance, which is also part of the inaccuracy of the film, since real Eleanor couldn't be so lovely.

The weirdest thing about the film for me is that they totally ignored Eleanor's mother in the script, which probably is one reason why they modified the speech: to avoid mentioning her, because her unfortuante marriage might be disgraceful and under the restriction of the Hays Code.

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[–] mikeclaw 17 years ago

Accuracy? It's a work of fiction. It's about a great baseball player who died young. Other than that, it's fiction.

Hollywood could have made a great and inspiring and fascinating movie about his life. Instead, they just made a stock Hollywood cliche.

People are focusing on the fact that they changed the text of his speech, but that's a minor detail. The movie is basically a love story between Lou and Eleanor, but it bears no resemblance whatsoever to their real courtship and marriage. It's a stock Hollywood fairy tale. In truth, he met her at a party with several teammates. She was basically a groupie, and he barely knew her at the time that he proposed. There was no romantic thing where he stood below her window and tossed pebbles up before proposing. Nothing even remotely like that. Eleanor was a very ambitious woman who pushed her husband to be more marketable, pushed him to battle the Yankees over his salary, pushed him to try and become a Hollywood star to increase his profile. As the movie suggests, Gehrig's mother was somewhat domineering, and Eleanor never did get along with his parents. Even after he died, they battled. Lou's parents tried to sue her after he died in order to get more money than what he left them. I'm not trying to paint her in a negative light. Sounds like they had a good, loving marriage and she was a rock of strength for him as he became ill and died. But their relationship was nothing at all like what you see in this movie. The film is a work of fiction.

Read the book "Luckiest Man" and you'll really understand and appreciate Gehrig. Among everything else that the movie made up or got wrong, the movie (because they wanted to have an upbeat ending) concludes with the speech. But his life after that moment ... as brief as it was ... was incredibly moving and honorable.

The movie is fiction. His real life was more interesting.

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[–] mikex5 17 years ago

I just read your post and had to reply. I have read several biographies on Lou and read several articles about Lou from the papers of the time.

With the film, they got many details wrong, but they captured the spirit that was Gehrig. The scene wher Lou falls off his bench, and Bill Dickey waves off his teammates to help Lou up was suggested by Dickey himself. The incident actually happened in the Spring of '39, not in a regular season game. I know Hollywood and directors like to put their own spin and mark on things.

There is very little written about Eleonor or Lou;s parents after Lou's death. The woman that was married to the Babe when Eleonor married Lou, may have started the Babe fued. Their relationship was strained. But after Lou's death, the 2 women were friends since Elenonor seems to mention..Claire, I think, as a companion in her later years.

Patton got many details wrong (I read a biography on Patton about 10 years ago) but the movie captured his spirit. Patton was the complete opposite of Scott, yet Scott was brilliant. I think Cooper and Wright and the other principal actors got the spirit of the characters right and did a fantastic job.

Cooper was not in any way athletic and was right handed. So. I can overlook it. The movie was released in 1942. But they filmed it in 1941. The script was suggested while Lou was still alive. Going into 1941, Lou thought he would beat the ALS. After Lou died, Eleonor was a consultant...it;s tough to say how much she was involved as sources vary. But they filmed this thing right after Lou died. The movie, with the speach was sentimental enough and the producers didn't want to bring Lou;s death into it. In her book, "My Luke and I," Eleonor said after so many years, she was ready to tell her story, and in the subsequent movie based on her book, she wanted that scene there.

"I hear this place is restricted, Wang, so don't tell 'em you're Jewish, okay?"

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[–] mikeclaw 17 years ago

I agree ... the movie capture the spirit of Gehrig. But the movie focused on the romance between Lou and Eleanor, and that storyline is about 95% fictional. Basically, they wrote a fictional Hollywood story about an athlete falling in love, and then they made him die and they named him Lou Gehrig.

As much as I think the story of his decline and death is inspirational and moving, I understand why Hollywood at that time wanted to end with the speech. Even in a tragic story, they wanted a happy, upbeat ending. (Ever want a good laugh? Watch the TV movie "The Karen Carpenter Story" and see how they managed to give that one a happy ending.)

I'm a huge baseball fan. You won't find a bigger one. I'm a great admirer of Gehrig's. Tremendous admirer. I'd like to see a real movie about him. One that doesn't just show him as an admirable man, but which also tries to tell the real story of his life. It would be a better movie than "Pride of the Yankees."

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[–] vivacious_dan 9 years ago

Are the details really that important? I am a huge Gary Cooper fan and have been watching his movies for years and I just got around to watching this gem today as it aired on TCM this week.

I thought it was fantastic and Cooper nailed the role. He was so genuine and sincere, I truly believed he was Lou Gehrig. I also really believed in he and Eleanor's romance, they seemed like an actual married couple who were in love. The scenes towards the end where she knew he was dying were the most touching parts.

Did anyone really expect them to follow everything 1:1? It's a movie, for crying out loud! I loved the story in the film that they met by Gehrig tripping on the bats and Eleanor calls him "Tanglefoot" and then he trips her at dinner and calls her "Tanglefoot", I thought it was clever. To me, it doesn't detract from the film that in real life (supposedly) she was a groupie and a social climber and that she fought for him to get every dime out of the Yankees that he could. What's so wrong about that? And maybe Eleanor's joke towards the end of the film with Gehrig where they say he is only pretending to be sick so he can come back to the Yanks next season and make $50K was a nod to how she really was?

I don't mind them changing the speech. Gehrig had literally just died, what two or three years prior to the film's release? Don't you think it would have been a bit odd to have Cooper read the exact same words? It may have even been creepy. The thousands of extras who were in Yankee stadium for that scene may have also found it disorienting to have someone else, not Gehrig, reciting the same speech, word for word. The speech in the film conveyed the same spirit and emotion and courage and heroism. What more can you ask for from a film? I didn't see any major differences made, other than the mother in law.

I like that the movie ended with the speech. Did we really need to see Gehrig die? We already know he is dying, why do we need to see it actually happen? People keep knocking the movie for this, saying they were trying to end it on a "positive note". It was still sad since you knew he didn't have long to live. But he went out of the game, and in life, with his head held high with extreme courage and honor. Can't think of a better way to end the movie than that.

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[–] runner10862000 13 years ago

when gehrig walks into the yankee locker room for the first time he gazes at the lockers of babe ruth, bob muesal, tony lazzeri, and mark koenig. lazzeri and koenig didn't join the yankees until later.

trivianerd

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[–] bradford-1 10 years ago

If you think PRIDE is a lotta bushwah, you ever watch THE BABE RUTH STORY? Double oy!!

"May I bone your kipper, Mademoiselle?"

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