The Timeless Tale of Lou Gehrig

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"All the arguing in the world can't change the decision of the umpire."

Lou Gehrig (Gary Cooper)

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Of all those who have worn the pinstripes of the New York Yankees, few have worn them with as much distinction as a man who never played an inning of major league ball, Gary Cooper.

Cooper portrayed Yankee great Lou Gehrig in "The Pride of the Yankees," which premiered on this day in 1942.

I'll save you from doing the math. That's 75 years ago, but the story itself is timeless.

Not only was he the pride of the Yankees. Gehrig was the pride of humanity, and it is a story that seems to be too good to be true — until you realize it is true.

Well, there were some details that only an expert of some kind would know — like the fact that even though Gehrig's jersey number could be seen in re–creations of World Series play from the 1920s, the Yankees did not start using numbers until the very end of that decade. Or the fact that some of the car models that were seen in the movie did not exist at the time when they were supposedly in use.

But Gehrig was, if anything, more noble in real life than he was in the movie. And there was no better choice to play him than Cooper, the 11th–greatest male movie star, according to the American Film Institute.

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Cooper made a career of playing characters, both real and fictional, that were worthy of admiration.

He played Sergeant York, a real–life hero from World War I. After he played Gehrig, he played fictional hero Will Kane in "High Noon."

The American Film Institute included all three roles in its list of the top 50 movie heroes of all time. Deservedly so, too. If Cooper had not died in 1961, he might well have been cast to play Atticus Finch in "To Kill a Mockingbird," judged by AFI to be the most heroic part in movie history — but I'll tell you the truth. It is hard for me to imagine anyone other than Gregory Peck as Atticus.

To get back to the casting of "The Pride of the Yankees" ...

There were times when Cooper wasn't quite right for the part — like when he was supposed to be playing Gehrig during his college days. Cooper was in his 40s, simply too old for that. It would have been better to have a younger actor play the younger Gehrig — perhaps the movie's producers couldn't find one who looked enough like Cooper.

Other than that, though, he was perfect for the part. Teresa Wright was perfect in her role as his wife, and Walter Brennan, a three–time Oscar winner who appeared with Cooper in "Sergeant York," was ideal as sports writer Sam Blake.

Cooper and Wright were rewarded with Oscar nominations for their work. Brennan was not.

In all "The Pride of the Yankees" received 11 Oscar nominations but only won one — for Best Film Editing.

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For me the defining moment of Cooper's performance was not the re–creation of Gehrig's farewell to baseball but rather when the character visited a hospitalized child and promised to hit two home runs for him in a World Series game.

Turned out there were some inaccuracies in that tale, but that really doesn't bother me. It was the kind of thing Gehrig would have done. It was just the kind of guy he was. Like when he delivered his "Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth" speech less than two years before his death.

He knew he was dying. Where many people would be thinking only of themselves and the unfairness of their situation, Gehrig's heart was full of gratitude for the love that surrounded him in Yankee Stadium that day.

He never seemed to think of himself. He was always thinking of the other guy. And when that Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day was held at Yankee Stadium in 1939, his words reflected gratitude for what was given to him, not bitterness over what had been taken away.

Those of us who are less saintly can only hope to face our deaths with that kind of dignity.

It took a special actor to bring that to the big screen, and Gary Cooper was a special actor. As great as he was as Sergeant York and Will Kane, his performance as Lou Gehrig may have been his finest.

A Too-Good-to-Be-True Good Guy

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"I ain't a–goin' to war. War's killin', and the book's agin' killin'! So war is agin' the book!"

Sgt. York (Gary Cooper)

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I've never been a big fan of war movies.

There are some war movies that I like, but they almost always involve more than shooting and explosions. I've never been much for splashy special effects. For me, a war movie has to tell a good story, preferably with some kind of redeeming quality to counterbalance the violence. It helps if the story being told happens to be true.

Howard Hawks' "Sergeant York," which was at the theaters 75 years ago today, was such a movie. In fact, I would hesitate to call it a war movie. It was about a man who had sincere religious beliefs that came into conflict with the laws and requirements of the country in which he lived. War was merely the subtext of the larger issues that Alvin York's story raised.

Really, though, it would have been hard to go wrong. It was a biography of a hero whose story really seemed too good to be true. The American Film Institute ranked the film character the 35th–most heroic character in movie history; AFI also ranked the actor who portrayed him, Gary Cooper, as the 11th–greatest actor of all time.

Given the fact that York was one of the most decorated American soldiers of World War I, a conflict that had been fought in the lifetimes of most American adults in 1941, it should be no surprise that his story would draw huge audiences, and it did. It easily cleared more than $16 million at the box office, more than four times the earnings of the runnerup, "Honky Tonk," starring Clark Gable and Lana Turner.

My mother was quite taken with the movie and frequently quoted her favorite dialogue from it. York's sister, played by 16–year–old June Lockhart, and mother (in an Oscar–nominated performance by Margaret Wycherly) waved to Alvin as he left to report for duty. "What are they a–fighting for, Ma?" York's sister asked. "I don't rightly know, child," her mother replied.

(I've known that dialogue most of my life, I guess. Mom repeated it so many times. She was like that about her favorite lines from movies. Sometimes she used funny pronunciations of words as part of her regular conversation. One of her favorites was using words spoken by Inspector Clouseau in the Pink Panther movies — but that's a topic for another time.)

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When the story began, Alvin York was a hillbilly from rural Tennessee who liked to drink and carouse. He needed motivation to walk the straight and narrow — and he found it in the form of a beautiful young girl (Joan Leslie). York set out to raise the money for payment on a prize piece of farm land, which he figured would seal the deal with this girl. But the land was sold to someone else so he went back to his old ways.

But he found religion, and it changed his life. His pastor was played by Walter Brennan, who was nominated for Best Supporting Actor (but lost to Donald Crisp in "How Green Was My Valley.")

Because of his conversion, York was an unlikely war hero. He even tried to get out of serving by claiming conscientious objector status, but he was drafted anyway. During his training it was discovered that he was a superior marksman — a skill he had picked up hunting in the hills — and he was promoted to corporal.

York put his marksmanship skills to good use during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive in 1918 when enemy machine gun fire pinned down his unit. With only a handful of men — and doing most of the work himself, picking off enemy soldiers from a sniper position — York captured more than 130 Germans.

He was a national hero and received the Medal of Honor — even though he always said his motivation was to save the lives of his men.

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As I say, the movie was a big hit at the box office. The story was heroic, but it was also helped by the tragedy of Pearl Harbor, which happened while "Sergeant York" was in theaters. I have heard that some young men went directly from watching the movie to local recruitment offices to sign up, so inspired were they by Cooper's performance.

Cooper won the Oscar for Best Actor for his portrayal of York.

Oh, the Stories Bacall Could Have Told

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"You know, you got to be careful of dead bees if you're goin' around barefooted, 'cause if you step on them they can sting you just as bad as if they was alive, especially if they was kind of mad when they got killed. I bet I been bit a hundred times that way."

Eddie (Walter Brennan)

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There was an ... I don't know ... impertinence about Lauren Bacall in Howard Hawks' "To Have and Have Not," which was released 70 years ago today, that was very appealing.

She was 19 when the movie was filmed and pretty ... and making her big–screen debut opposite Humphrey Bogart in a movie directed by Howard Hawks. How could it be much better?

Bacall and Bogart later married and co–starred in three other movies together, each memorable in its own way, but "To Have and Have Not" was always the standard against which the others were judged.

There was an electricity between Bogart and Bacall that simply could not be duplicated completely in their other movies. Part of that may have been the story, but a lot of it, I think, was due to the chemistry between Bogart and Bacall as they began one of the most successful Hollywood relationships of all time. It practically crackled on the screen.

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Like when Bacall told Bogart, "You know you don't have to act with me, Steve. You don't have to say anything, and you don't have to do anything. Not a thing. Oh, maybe just whistle. You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow."

That line, by the way, is #34 on the American Film Institute's list of the Top 100 movie quotes of all time.

Lots of movie fans came to think of the character Bacall played as being Bacall herself. I guess that was — and still is — a fairly common misconception.

In fact, as I have heard it, Bacall's character was modeled in many ways after Hawks' wife, who was also known as "Slim," wore captivating dresses, had long blonde hair and a sultry voice and was perplexing.

Ernest Hemingway wrote the original story, but, beyond the title, there really were few similarities between the book and the movie.

I felt it was like a remake of "Casablanca" — perhaps better. Bogart played the same I–stick–my–neck–out–for–nobody kind of character. He wasn't running a night club this time; he was a fishing boat captain in the Caribbean who sometimes smuggled French Resistance fighters to the island of Martinique. His faithful sidekick wasn't Dooley Wilson playing the piano but alcohol–swilling Walter Brennan.

And he had a beautiful love interest — who was even younger than Ingrid Bergman had been. (Was she more beautiful? That's a matter of personal taste.)

Several members of the "Casablanca" cast were in "To Have and Have Not" — primarily minor characters, probably not readily recognizable to anyone who isn't familiar with "Casablanca." But they were there.

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As I mentioned earlier, Dooley Wilson wasn't around to play the piano, but Hoagy Carmichael was there.

There's an old story that says Andy Williams, who would have been about 16 at the time, did the singing for Bacall, but it isn't true. It was confirmed that Williams and some female singers were brought in to audition to do the dubbing because of fears that Bacall wouldn't be able to handle it. But, apparently, those fears were overridden by the wish to have Bacall do her own singing.

And, while I will admit that she wasn't perfect, she wasn't bad, either.

I regret that she didn't live to see this anniversary, the 70th of her movie debut. It would have been great fun to hear the tales she had to tell.

Generational Clash in the Old West

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Simms Reeves (Hank Worden): Plantin' and readin', plantin' and readin'. Fill a man full o' lead, stick him in the ground an' then read words on him. Why, when you've killed a man, why try to read the Lord in as a partner on the job?

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For the most part, John Wayne was an heroic figure.

But, occasionally, he lapsed into a darker character. He didn't explore that side of his movie persona too often, which is too bad, really, because it was an opportunity to see him as a flawed and imperfect man. Far too frequently, his movie roles portrayed him as some kind of western Superman.

He was far from that in the movie that premiered 65 years ago today — Howard Hawks' "Red River." Unlike the sort of character he was known for playing, Wayne's character in "Red River" was an unsympathetic one, clinging to old ways in spite of changing dynamics.

Set in the mid–19th century, Wayne played a frontiersman who craved the life of a Texas cattleman, and he abandoned a wagon train to pursue his dream, accompanied by Walter Brennan. His fiancee was part of the wagon train, which was targeted in an Indian raid shortly thereafter. The only survivor of the raid was a young boy who was informally adopted by Wayne.

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Together, they built one of the wealthiest cattle ranches in Texas — only to see its value reduced to nothing following the Civil War.

His fiancee's death had left Wayne's character embittered and destroyed any hope that he could find happiness in his new life.

Most westerns up to this time — and, certainly, most of Wayne's movies — had an inspirational quality to them. "Red River" had a sharp edge, a gritty quality to it.

I've heard "Red River" described as a "Mutiny on the Bounty" set in Big Sky country, and that isn't a bad comparison.

Upon the return of his adopted son, played by Montgomery Clift, from the war, Wayne's character decided to move his cattle about 1,000 miles to the north, to Missouri where beef markets could be found, but en route to Missouri there were gangs and Indians.

Wayne was able to keep his men in line as long as Clift backed him up, but there came a time when Wayne stepped over the line and Clift challenged him.

It was the familiar clash between the old generation and the new. Clift represented a willingness to embrace change while Wayne resisted.

It's a conflict that has been played out countless times on the big screen and in real life.

Clift seized the herd and made for Kansas, where there was a new railroad to Missouri.

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If it wasn't the first time Wayne played against type, it was one of the first times — and it wouldn't be the last. I'm sure it must have been a bit of a shock for moviegoers who weren't accustomed to seeing Wayne in that kind of role.

In many ways, though, the role Wayne played in "Red River" was the perfect preparation for the role he would play in John Ford's "The Searchers" eight years later.