The Babe Ruth Story
I understand the Babe walked out before the movie ended.
shareHilarious!
Am I to be thought the only criminal, when all humankind sinned against me?
Quite possibly the dorkiest performance ever by an actor attempting to play an athlete.
sharepcqgod, I agree 100 percent, it's the funniest movie I have ever seen, that tried not to be. A classic!! Steve
shareBendix didn't know how to swing a bat. Ruth had to show him. And Bendix was not a lefty, so they filmed him swinging righty, then reversed the film.
The WORST sports movie of all time.
I agree fernmann7, and it may not only be the worst sports movie ever made, but perhaps the worst movie of any kind ever made. This is what makes it so fun to watch and laugh at!
Worst sports movie & worst biopic of all ime.
I mean, the Babe performing a miracle cure just by walking past a kid?
And the song and dance to "Singin' in the Rain",
they say that Gene Kelly was such a natural dancer, he made it look like anyone could do it.
William Bendix shows that it ain't so.
Sam Tomaino
Doesn't "Babe Ruth" die at the end of the film (or at least he's fraily aiding a "miracle cure" while being wheeled into a hospital room) In either case, it's pretty maudlin that Ruth himself saw the finished film - or did they add the mawkish scene later after Ruth's death? Not sure if Ruth dies or not at the end of the film - anyone have history on this? Thanks in advance..
shareyes, Tigers10, that is an ambiguous ending, and does look like it was added after the Babe's death of throat cancer. Does anyone know?
I don't care what anybody says, I love this movie, because it has heart, and shows the soul of the Babe, and his character, which was not always in a good light. We all know Babe Ruth lived for the love of the game. For a non-athlete, Bendix did a great job, and managed to look a lot like him with the putty nose. I know his form on the mound was terrible, and he couldn't match the Sultan of Swat onscreen in his baseball scenes, but the rest of it was really good. Some scenes actually make me misty-eyed too, especially the heart-tugging ending.
I saw this movie for the first time on TV back around 1955, and it really inspired me to play Little League Baseball. I was no Babe Ruth on the field, but it taught me to be a real team player, and that was a valuable lesson for a kid to learn in the mid-1950s. I've been a big baseball fan ever since.
I sure hope it is released on DVD soon. I would love to have a copy. William Bendix was a favorite actor of mine when I was a kid because he was the perfect and funny everyman, Chester A. Riley, in the early-1950s TV sitcom "The Life of Riley". It's always great to see him in his 1940s movies.
Dejael
I agree...this should have been a better film, but as it is, I feel it's merely become a thing of derisive lore and deserves reevaluation. It's not a ROBOT MONSTER sort of travesty by a longshot, and nowhere near "all-time worst" territory.
Butt out of this or I’ll strip the hide off your cherry picker!
https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/6w1i7n/whats_the_worst_biopic_of_all_time/dm4t264/
The Babe Ruth Story. It was rushed through production so it could be released before Ruth's death, and it paints him as a godlike figure. He cures a kid of being crippled just by talking to him, and it completely ignores his first wife and numerous marital infidelities. Also, even when he's just a teenager, he's played by a guy who's clearly over forty years old.share
The Babe Ruth Story - The Best of The Cinema Snob
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTuhQ1SxGJQ
The Babe Ruth Story tried to tell the story of famed baseball player Babe Ruth... but was made while he was on his deathbed and was rushed to make it out there before he died. The film itself is poorly acted (Babe is played by a former batboy, with all the acting and batting talent that entails; he also played Ruth from adolescence to adulthood looking 35 all the way), heavy-handed in its directing, and full of Glurge moments like Babe Ruth curing a kid with cancer by merely saying "Hello" as well as curing another kid by hitting a home run. Small wonder Allied Artists Video went down as soon as it did, considering they somehow thought it was a good idea to release this stinker so early in their run.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Horrible/LiveActionFilms0ToF
Bendix is woefully miscast and the script is horrible. The film is so bad that it is laughable at even the most tender moments. It is best comparable to an Ed Wood movie in its absurdness. One over the top ridiculous scene, portrays Ruth hitting a stray dog on the field with a batted ball. Ruth rushes over to the dog and leaves the ballpark to personally rush the dog, not to a veterinary hospital, but a human hospital to save the dog’s life! Babe then gets suspended for missing the game. None of this of course ever happened in reality.
http://stuffnobodycaresabout.com/2015/07/29/this-is-the-last-known-photograph-of-babe-ruth/
https://www.fangraphs.com/tht/bombing-in-the-bronx-the-babe-ruth-story/
https://wheezersociety.blogs.com/wheezer/2010/11/horrible-casting-mistakes-william-bendix-as-babe-ruth.html share
It seems that Second City TV were commenting on the outrageousness of this film with their parody "promo" of this film, with John Candy as the Sultan of Swat wearing a number "4" Yankees uniform (which in fact was Lou Gehrig's number; but then this error may have been deliberate and intentional, given how much license was taken with the Babe's life in the original film). Plus the sick kid having a Brooklyn Dodgers pennant. And some have even opined that SCTV's parody was better than this!
shareI wished I could have seen this. Hilarious and funny stuff from SCTV.
shareMany years ago, I read a biography of the Babe written by his wife. She absolutely DESPISED this movie; she also said that, when the Babe visited the set, he was treatly rudely by Bendix.
shareThe entire SCTV "Lust for Paint" skit is available on YouTube. Babe Ruth is not the main theme of the Toulouse Lautrec skit and doesn't appear until 7:50/14:36.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzTND7J0GXY
Yes, it is better than the original Johnny Jackson [Sylvester] scene.
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Drake
FYI
[spoiler][/spoiler]
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