Three days before the 66th anniversary, on this day in 2013, the movie "42" premiered in American theaters. It told the story of that event with Chadwick Boseman starring as Robinson and Andre Holland playing black sportswriter Wendell Smith, who played a significant role in encouraging Branch Rickey (Harrison Ford), the general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, to choose Robinson to be the first black ballplayer in the majors.
Blacks had already served with distinction in World War II yet the armed forces were still segregated. Robinson broke baseball's color barrier more than a year before Harry Truman desegregated the troops.
Last week, we marked the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who is widely regarded as the father of the civil rights movement. But King was a teenager when Jackie Robinson first played in the major leagues.
When Rickey presented the idea to Robinson, the future barrier buster asked if Rickey wanted someone who didn't have the guts to fight back.
Rickey replied that he wanted someone who had the guts not to fight back.
It was a different country in the 1940s, and Rickey knew that there would be obstacles every day in every city. He knew that whoever that first black ballplayer in the majors turned out to be, he would be subjected to all kinds of abuse — almost all of it sanctioned by the laws and attitudes of the time.
That is probably difficult for many people to comprehend in the 21st century.
But, as I say, it was a different country. And Jackie Robinson was one of those who helped change it.
The movie repeatedly made that point — as it should. To the black community, Robinson was a hero. It is fair to say he was considerably less than that in the eyes of the white community.
But he persevered.
And he inspired the many black ballplayers who followed — one of whom, Ed Charles, was depicted as a child in the movie. Charles, who died last month at the age of 84, was a member of the 1969 Amazin' New York Mets.
As miraculous as the Mets were, they weren't as miraculous as Jackie Robinson's barrier–breaking season.
While Charles was presented as a child of perhaps 9 or 10 in the movie, he was actually a teenager in 1947.
One more thing. Ford, who was 70 when "42" premiered, was better suited for the role of Branch Rickey than he was to play Indiana Jones again (as he had five years earlier) or Han Solo again (as he did two years later). In fact, Ford was five years older than Rickey was in Robinson's historic season.
I've been a sports fan all my life, and I enjoy good sports movies, but "Trouble With the Cueve," which premiered on this day in 2012, wasn't really a sports movie, even though it had baseball as its backdrop.
I tend to enjoy Clint Eastwood movies, but I will be the first to acknowledge that sometimes you can see things coming in a Clint Eastwood movie long before they get there. Such moments are always there in Eastwood movies, but what keeps them from being trite is the fact that they are always poignant in their presentations. They never seem cliched even if at times they are predictable.
Case in point: Eastwood movies have ways of repeatedly reminding the audience of the title in obvious and not–so–obvious ways. It isn't always easy to tell them apart, either. In "Trouble With the Curve," Eastwood played Gus, an aging baseball scout whose eyesight was failing him. Early in his scouting career, "curve" probably referred only to a type of pitch, but all sorts of new images became associated with it as his character aged.
There were curves that his life and his work kept throwing at him. Of course, everyone is susceptible to that — but I got the sense from watching the movie that Gus had been more fortunate than most. Not so in his later years. At one point in the movie Eastwood was driving his car and was in a collision with another car on a curving road.
Then there were his problems with his daughter. In that instance, I suppose, curve could be physical as well as psychological.
Of course, the curve that held the movie together was the one that a hot prospect couldn't hit. Gus couldn't see it, but he could hear it. It was easy not to like the prospect; he was the kind of narcissistic athlete that, unfortunately, is seen more and more frequently these days. The audience's first glance at him told you everything you needed to know — after demanding peanuts from a ballpark vendor he derisively called "Peanut Boy," the prospect clearly believed he needn't compensate the vendor for the nosh.
"Peanut Boy" got even with the prospect later — in a scene that was reminiscent of the one in "The Natural" when Robert Redford's character blew three straight pitches past a blowhard slugger. In "Trouble With the Curve," it clearly confirmed that Eastwood's character had been right in his assessment.
To say any more would deprive you of the pleasure of experiencing that cinematic moment. It was a gem even if you saw it coming — and, frankly, I didn't.
Eastwood movies seldom pull a fast one on the viewer. There's an honesty in Eastwood movies. They never start out as one thing and then shift gears improbably halfway through. What you see is what you get.
Eastwood movies tell good stories well — something that hasn't been in style in Hollywood for awhile, which may be what appeals to a writer like myself. "Trouble With the Curve" was no exception to the Eastwood rule.
As I say, sports was the backdrop of the story, but it wasn't what the story was about — unlike, say, for example, "Million Dollar Baby." Actually, I thought it had more in common with "Gran Torino." Perhaps that is because Eastwood has entered a different phase in his life and career. He is playing older men and chronicling what life is like for older men in today's world. Sometimes they are retired. And sometimes they are, like Gus in "Trouble With the Curve," being pushed toward retirement to make room for the new.
It was never said directly, but I suspected that Gus remembered a time when older people were treated with respect, and their experience was valued — and he lamented the absence of that in the modern world, where computers get the respect and people get the leftovers, if there are any.
Gus knew he wasn't perfect. He was seen at the grave of his long–dead wife, confessing his shortcomings and telling her how much better she had been at some things than he was — especially communicating with their daughter.
Gus' daughter Mickey (Amy Adams) was all too aware of his imperfections. The two were estranged, apparently had been for years. She harbored resentments, as most of us do, about her childhood (and adulthood, too) and her all–too–frequently absent father.
In spite of themselves, they shared many similarities. They were driven to succeed in their careers, above and beyond anything else — although, as it turned out Mickey, an attorney who was in line for a partnership at the Atlanta law firm where she worked, was more driven by her father's career than her own.
She was with her father at the request of his longtime friend and current employer, played John Goodman, who was concerned about Eastwood more as a friend but also as an employee who could still do his job. In the process she met a former pitcher (Justin Timberlake) who had been recruited by her father — but then blew his arm out and was angling for a broadcasting gig via talent scouting.
Remember when I said that you can sometimes see things coming from a ways off in an Eastwood movie? Well, this relationship was one of those things.
But that was OK, too.
It wasn't the best Clint Eastwood movie I have ever seen, but "Trouble With the Curve" was worth the time it took to watch it.
"All the arguing in the world can't change the decision of the umpire."
Lou Gehrig (Gary Cooper)
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.
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.
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.
"One day, not today, not tomorrow, not this season, probably not next season, either, but one day, you and I are gonna wake up and suddenly we're gonna be like every other team in every other sport where winning is everything and nothing else matters. And when that day comes, well, that's, that's when we'll honor them."
Jack (Matthew McConaughey)
The motion picture can inspire people in ways that no other medium can.
That may never have been illustrated as well as it was in "We Are Marshall," which premiered 10 years ago today. It told the story of a school and a town shaken by tragedy — and rising from the ashes. Literally. The airplane carrying nearly all of the Marshall University football team crashed just short of the airport as the team was returning to Huntington, West Virginia, from a game.
I remember when the Marshall football team was almost entirely wiped out by that plane crash in 1970.
I was a young boy in Arkansas, a follower of the Razorbacks, and they had played a school earlier that year that had a similar tragedy befall it. One of two planes carrying the members of the Wichita State University football team to a game in Utah crashed in Colorado. The upperclassmen and the head coach were among those killed.
Wichita State resumed playing with the players who survived by virtue of the fact that they were riding on the other plane, but they went on to lose all their games in 1970, including a 62–0 loss in Little Rock to the Razorbacks about three weeks after the crash. Frank Broyles, the Arkansas coach, tried not to let things get out of hand, bringing in the second– and third–stringers fairly early in the game — but try telling young guys not to do well when they get a rare opportunity to play.
About the only way to keep that score down would have been to invoke the mercy rule — except I'm not sure if that even existed in 1970.
Anyway, when that tragedy struck Marshall, I thought I was seeing history repeat itself.
And I was — only it was worse.
At least Wichita State had some of its players left. Quite a few, actually, although most lacked much in the way of playing time.
The Marshall football team, as I say, was nearly wiped out. The remainder of the 1970 season was canceled, and the program was nearly dropped.
But the student body resisted — and insisted that the football program continue.
If you're a football fan, you have to understand that the Marshall football program of today bears little resemblance to the one in the early 1970s. Granted, Marshall did struggle this season and won't be playing in a bowl — but the team has been in bowl games in five of the last seven seasons.
In 1970, when the last couple of games were canceled, Marshall was 3–6 and had seldom won more than it lost in the previous seasons. In spite of this season's record, it can truthfully be said that the football team has risen from the ashes and is better than it was before.
Preserving the football team was not exactly an act of loyalty to a storied program at the time. For some, dropping the program was about redirecting funds to areas where they could be more productive. That is certainly a worthy goal for any college administrator, but there are other considerations.
David Strathairn, an actor whose work I have admired for many years, played the university's president who was initially inclined to suspend the program indefinitely. He had the best of intentions, not the least of which was the money that could be saved and redirected to other things.
But preserving the program was important to the students — and to the community. It wasn't about winning; for most, it was about moving on — but in an "we all move forward together" kind of way.
It was a long hard journey for Marshall, and it started with getting someone to accept the incredible challenge of taking over as the program's head coach and essentially building it from scratch. Yes, a long hard journey that was dramatized effectively in "We Are Marshall."
Everyone in Huntington was facing a challenge after that crash. The football players who survived the tragedy were dealing with plenty of issues. The father of one of the victims and his son's fiancee struggled to move on.
One of the few teammates to survive took it upon himself to carry the program forward on his shoulders. It was a burden he soon found to be impossible yet he felt a solemn duty to his deceased teammates. "They left it in my hands," he tearfully told his coach.
"No, they didn't," the coach replied. "They just left."
A surviving assistant coach (Matthew Fox) helped the new head coach (Matthew McConaughey) rebuild the team quickly, but the tragedy weighed heavily on him, and he wondered if they were disgracing the memory of his colleagues.
But that's the thing. When you've been knocked to your knees, you have to endure some difficult moments to return to what you consider normal, and some people don't possess whatever you want to call it — courage comes to mind for me — needed to persevere.
It is that courage that is inspiring, but it can be so easily manipulated in the movies. It's enough to put a viewer on the defensive from the start, isn't it? I mean, you know when you sit down to watch a movie like "We Are Marshall" that you're going to be manipulated, and you kind of brace yourself for that, don't you? I know I do. I think it's some sort of defense mechanism.
But "We Are Marshall" got away with it in large part, I believe, because it was unquestionably and demonstrably true.
Oh, sure, I know there were some things that were made up for dramatic effect, but much of it was probably dialogue (and, being a writer myself, I have to tip my hat to whoever wrote some of those lines). The events were beyond dispute — and even though you knew there had to be a moment of triumph, a time when the football team would win a game for the first time since the crash, it was no less effective when it happened on the big screen.
The sad truth about life is that not everyone who tries to rise from the ashes is successful. They don't make movies about those who, as Tennyson might have put it, are washed down by the gulfs, only about those who "touch the Happy Isles."
But, while not all who attempt to touch those Happy Isles succeed, all who try do so with the hope of success. "We must accept finite disappointment," Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, "but never lose infinite hope."
Anything that inspires people — a movie, a book, a song, a speech — appeals to that infinite hope, not acceptance of finite disappointment.
The story of Marshall University, its football team and the town of Huntington fed that hope by virtue of its truth.
It was not a Hollywood story strategically slated for a holiday premiere. It was the real thing.
If there is anything that is almost guaranteed to engage a movie audience, it is a story about an underdog overcoming the odds — and when director John G. Avildsen's "Rocky" made its debut on this day in 1976 movie audiences got enough of that to keep them satisfied until "Hoosiers" hit the big screen 10 years later — although they had plenty of those underdog movies, some good and some not so good, in the interim.
They always do. Movie makers know underdog stories make money. Well, that ones that do it right make money — and "Rocky" did it right.
I well remember the first time I saw "Rocky." It was in a theater in my hometown. Now my hometown theater — well, the one of my early childhood — was one of those spacious theaters with a lobby and a balcony and one truly big screen, but it had been out of business for awhile by the time "Rocky" made its premiere. So I never got to see it in that setting (although I have often wished that I had). I saw it in the more compact theaters in which one sees movies today — more like screening rooms than theaters, if you ask me, but that's a topic for another time. By modern standards, it was rather tiny. It only contained two screens — but that allowed twice as many movies to be shown and, therefore, provided twice as many options for consumers in my hometown.
The arrival of that two–screen theater produced as much buzz in my hometown as the arrival of the first McDonald's.
Anyway, in that more modern moviegoers' milieu, I saw something from the old days of which I have heard but I have seldom actually seen. I saw an audience stand and applaud when the movie was over.
A sport of some kind is always good for that kind of reaction (for a real–life example, one need look no further than this year's World Series, won by the Chicago Cubs for the first time in more than a century) — even though other pursuits can be used. "Rocky," of course, was about an individual sport — boxing. Team sports are good, too, but they teach a different kind of lesson that extols different values. Those movies are tributes to the virtues of teamwork and unselfishness. Movies about individual sports are more about determination, self–sufficiency and resourcefulness.
You couldn't really say Rocky (Sylvester Stallone) was down on his luck. He had never had much in the way of luck. He wasn't a bum, as Marlon "I coulda been a contendah" Brando memorably said of himself in "On the Waterfront." Rocky really could have been a contender. He was a Philly brawler who had squandered his prime and figured he would never get to fight for a title, not even once. (In the words of a Beatles' song, "Isn't he a bit like you and me?")
That was a source of frustration for Mickey (Burgess Meredith), the operator of a gym and trainer of would–be contenders, which, in turn, was a source of friction between Rocky and Mickey.
But then Rocky was offered an opportunity to fight the champ, a fellow named Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers), to mark the occasion of America's bicentennial. The champ didn't take the fight seriously, but Rocky did. He got up in the predawn hours to drink a glass of raw eggs and run in the dark, cold streets of Philadelphia, and he used sides of beef as punching bags in a meat freezer under the management of his friend Paulie (Burt Young).
Mickey swallowed his pride and approached Rocky about helping him prepare for the fight, but Rocky, briefly succumbing to that all–too–human tendency to engage in a little "how do you like me now?" banter, refused. When Mickey walked away, humbled and hurt, Rocky followed and reconciled with him.
Now, in case you have never seen this movie — and, frankly, it is hard for me to imagine anyone who hasn't seen "Rocky" by now — it is important to realize that Apollo wasn't looking for a legitimate fight. He was looking for more of an exhibition, a fight against an unknown on New Year's Eve. Rocky didn't get his shot at the title because he had been an up–and–coming contender. He was chosen purely at random. The champ saw Rocky's nickname — "The Italian Stallion" — and liked its possibilities as a marketing angle for the fight.
The champ never thought the Italian Stallion would be a serious threat, and he didn't go through serious preparations for the fight, which kind of foreshadowed, in a life–imitates–art kind of way, Buster Douglas' stunning upset of seemingly invincible heavyweight champion Mike Tyson in 1990. In one of my enduring memories from the movie, Apollo's trainer (Tony Burton) watched with alarm a TV report on Rocky's training regimen in the meat locker and kept telling Apollo to come watch the segment. But Apollo was too busy going over marketing plans for the fight.
Many things were finally coming to Rocky after a lifetime of waiting. Here he was getting a chance, at long last, to fight for the title, and he had also found love. Adrian (Talia Shire) was Paulie's sister, kind of plain and quiet. She worked at a pet store and lived with Paulie. She cooked his meals, cleaned his house, did his laundry. Apparently as a younger man he had promised to look after her because the family had concluded she couldn't look after herself. "I don't get married because of you," he yelled at her in frustration the night she moved out of his house — and into Rocky's tiny apartment. Maybe her family thought she was retarded or autistic. Fact was she was just introverted.
It was probably the love story — more than anything else — that made "Rocky" and its many sequels work. Most people probably fantasize about doing whatever they do professionally so well that they receive standing ovations and live handsomely for the rest of their lives.
Most people never achieve that, of course, so they can't relate to "Rocky" on that level (except in their dreams), but most people probably do find love — some don't but most do — and sometimes it is against the odds, in their own minds if no one else's.
On that level, most people probably could relate to "Rocky" in their real experiences — even if they had never participated in a sport, whether team or individual.
Rocky's love for Adrian was at the heart of everything he did. The movie was as much about his commitment to her as it was his commitment to giving his very best shot in the fight of his life. Maybe — no, make that probably — more.
So much of that is due to Shire's performance. Audiences already knew her as the Corleones' sister from the "Godfather" movies, and she had been nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in "Godfather Part II."
She received a Best Actress nomination for her work in "Rocky" as the shy, sensitive Adrian. It was a powerful performance, all right, and perhaps she should have won — but she won neither Oscar.
"When she hesitates before kissing Rocky for the first time," wrote film critic Roger Ebert, "it's a moment so poignant it's like no other."
In a way, I guess, the audience already knew how the fight between Rocky and Apollo Creed would turn out before it even happened.
It didn't really matter, I guess, if Rocky wasn't a winner in the ring (except it always bothered me that, in the fight scenes in the first and subsequent Rocky movies, when punches landed, they always sounded like car doors being slammed in echo chambers).
He won the love of his life against all odds.
And so, too, did the movie. It won Best Picture (as well as Best Director and Best Film Editing) at the Academy Awards — in spite of heavyweights like "All the President's Men" and "Network" on the Academy's ballots.
Talk about your underdog–makes–good finish.
And Bill Conti was nominated for — and probably should have won — the Oscar for Best Original Song. "Gonna Fly Now" is such an iconic movie tune now. Forty years later it lives on in more memories than the winner of that Oscar, Barbra Streisand and Paul Williams' "Evergreen."
Take my advice. If you have a daunting task facing you and you need to get pumped up, listen to "Gonna Fly Now." Works every time.
Actually, Conti probably should have been nominated for Best Original Score. But there is a limit for even an underdog's triumphs.
Myra Fleener (Barbara Hershey):You know, a basketball hero around here is treated like a god. How can he ever find out what he can really do? I don't want this to be the high point of his life. I've seen them, the real sad ones. They sit around the rest of their lives talking about the glory days when they were 17 years old.
Coach Dale (Gene Hackman):You know, most people would kill to be treated like a god, just for a few moments.
There were a few exceptions, but just about every kid I knew when I was growing up fantasized about being at bat in the bottom of the ninth of the seventh game of the World Series with the game on the line or diving into the end zone for the game–winning touchdown in the Super Bowl. I'm sure the scenario played out in every head when we played pickup games after school and on weekends.
"Hoosiers," which was in theaters on this day in 1986, appealed to that kind of fantasy — one that was equally improbable. It was about a small high school basketball team in Indiana rising from obscurity to win the state championship. But it was about more than that. It was about second chances.
I was once asked on a job application form to identify my favorite word and explain why it was my favorite. I immediately entered the word redemption. It has long been my favorite word. I couldn't say how long — since whenever I first realized that storybook lives in which people make steady uninterrupted climbs to the tops of their chosen professions are rare — but I can tell you why.
Life has a way of doing its thing and taking you along for the ride. Even if it is taking you in a totally different direction than the one you intended, your objection means nothing. As John Lennon wrote, "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."
That is where redemption comes in. Redemption is the assurance that, no matter what happens in your life, no matter how badly you may think you have screwed up, it need not be permanent, and just about everyone in "Hoosiers" seemed to be seeking redemption of one kind or another.
Redemption offers hope.
At first I thought it was kind of a "Rocky" sort of movie — you know, the underdog wins it all, defying all odds and naysayers — although I did not realize until recently that "Hoosiers" made its theatrical debut about a week before the 10th anniversary of the premiere of "Rocky."
But subsequent viewings have persuaded me that Hickory's climb to the top was really secondary. The story was about being given a second chance.
"I was a sportswriter once for a couple of years in downstate Illinois," Ebert wrote in his review of the movie. "I covered mostly high school sports, and if I were a sportswriter again, I'd want to cover them again. There is a passion to high school sports that transcends anything that comes afterward."
I had a similar experience. When I was fresh out of college, I too covered high school sports, mostly football (but not full time; I was a general assignment reporter so I wrote about a wide range of things, not just sports), and one of the schools I covered was probably as small as Hickory, the school that was featured in "Hoosiers," but I never had the experience of covering a high school team, large or small, that was on its way to a state title.
When I was in high school, though, the basketball team won the state championship, and that was very exciting but hardly unexpected. The out–of–the–blue quality of fictional Hickory's rise to the top was the kind of stuff dramatic movies are made of.
But, oh, those second chances — when a character in a movie makes the most of a second chance and wins redemption, that is what truly brings a lump to one's throat. That's true, audience–engaging drama. The viewers, reminded of the shortcomings in their own lives, always respond to a character successfully seeking redemption. It is the classic underdog, with or without a sports backdrop. And doesn't everyone feel like an underdog at least part of the time?
"Hoosiers" was mostly about a second chance for a fellow named Norman Dale (played by Gene Hackman), a gifted but volatile coach. His temper got him into trouble in the past, and he became an untouchable in the coaching world. The Hickory job was clearly his opportunity — perhaps his last — to get back in the game of life.
He struggled at first, prompting the mother of one of Hackman's faculty colleagues to observe, "Sun don't shine on the same dog's ass every day, but you ain't seen a ray of light since you got here."
"Hoosiers" was also about a second chance of sorts for the town drunk (Dennis Hopper), whose son was on the team and embarrassed by his father's public antics when under the influence. Hackman made the basketball–savvy Hopper his assistant — on the condition that he remain sober — which was a second chance for the fractured father–son relationship. Hopper received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor.
And there was a talented basketball player who, for his own reasons, had decided not to play. Like just about every place in Indiana, Hickory was basketball crazy, and there was a widespread belief that the team could do great things if this young man would play.
But the faculty member whose mother made that remark to Hackman had encouraged the young man to pursue things that would help him get out of the small town; she did not believe basketball could do that. This faculty member (Barbara Hershey) had her own issues and was, in her own way, seeking redemption, too.
As I say, just about everyone in Hickory was seeking redemption of one kind or another. And they all coalesced around the basketball team.
I have admired Hackman's work for a long time, and I will never understand why he wasn't nominated for Best Actor for his work in "Hoosiers."
But the movie received only two nominations — Hopper's for Best Supporting Actor and Best Original Score.
Niles (David Hyde Pierce):Do people really care this much about a basketball game?
Roz (Peri Gilpin):Are you kidding? This is Seattle; it rains nine months out of the year. We take our indoor sports very seriously.
Niles:Well, I know you always have.
The classic father–son bonding experience has something to do with sports.
Much of the time, it is the experience of playing catch — or some variation on that — in the yard. Fathers who aren't particularly athletically inclined may still bond with their sons over sports by watching games on TV — or, better still, at the ballpark.
My relationship with my father was one of the latter. He wasn't into playing catch, as I recall. We probably played catch a few times when I was a child, but it isn't a vivid memory for me. But I can remember watching football games with him on TV. In fact, it is something we still do to this day.
There are some fathers and sons who, for any number of reasons, don't bond over sports at all. The relationships that Frasier Crane (Kelsey Grammer) and Niles Crane (David Hyde Pierce) had with their father Martin (John Mahoney) were in that category. Martin loved sports, especially the local Seattle teams, but Niles and Frasier weren't interested in sports.
But in the episode of Frasier that aired on this night in 1996, "Head Game," Niles and Martin bonded over sports in an unexpected way.
The episode began with Frasier asking Niles to fill in for him on his radio show while he was away — ostensibly to attend a convention of radio psychiatrists (in reality, Grammer was checking in to the Betty Ford Center for substance abuse treatment).
Thus, Niles' presence on his brother's radio show was explained.
As Niles concluded his first day's program, Bulldog (Dan Butler) came in to do his show and told Niles and Roz (Peri Gilpin) that the guest on his show would be a player for Seattle's basketball team. The player had been capable of great things at one time but had hit a skid.
When they were introduced, the player recognized Niles as the psychiatrist he had just heard on the radio and sought some advice to help with his slump. They stepped out into the hallway where they could talk. Niles suggested a few mental exercises, but it was obvious that he was clueless about sports. Bulldog called him back to the studio. The amused player rubbed Niles' head as they parted.
That night the player broke out of his slump and hit a game–winning shot. In the postgame interview, he gave Niles the credit.
That made Niles a local hero — and perhaps nowhere was that more true than in Frasier's apartment, where both Martin and Daphne (Jane Leeves) carried on about his achievement.
At the radio station, everyone was patting him on the back and giving him a thumb's up. Roz had a bunch of faxes waiting for him praising him for helping Seattle's star player get back on track.
And the player sent over courtside tickets to that night's game. Niles took Martin and Daphne to the game, but the player seemed to have fallen back into his slump. He came to Niles for advice during a break in the action and confided that he had followed all of Niles' suggestions, but nothing worked. The only thing different was that he hadn't rubbed Niles' head as he had done in the radio studio. So he did, and then his luck changed.
Niles had a dilemma. He didn't feel right about taking credit for the player's turnaround when his psychiatric advice had nothing to do with it. He was simply, in his own words, "a rabbit's foot."
So he told Martin they would not go to games anymore. Martin didn't take that too well. He had just been bragging on the phone about how he was "living large" with courtside seats and VIP parking. Now it was taken away from him. He would be going to no more basketball games.
However, Niles did go to the arena to talk to the player.
It seemed that Niles had persuaded the player that he could not continue to be a good–luck charm.
But as the episode drew to a close, the audience knew the player was planning to cut some of Niles' hair, presumably to keep handy for those times when he lapsed back into a slump. The last thing the audience saw was the player holding some scissors behind his back.
I've heard that the episode was originally written for Grammer — but, as I say, he was elsewhere and the episode was used to showcase Niles instead.
Jake La Motta (Robert De Niro):She says he's pretty.
Joey LaMotta (Joe Pesci):Yeah, well, you make him ugly.
I like black–and–white movies. I know some people don't. I've noticed that younger people are often dismissive of black and white, but they deprive themselves of some truly great movies that way — classics, whether they came out in the '30s or on this day in 1980.
That was the day that Martin Scorsese's "Raging Bull," the story of boxer Jake LaMotta, premiered — and it seemed fitting to tell the tale in black and white, just as it seemed fitting 25 years later to tell the story of Edward R. Murrow and Joseph McCarthy in "Good Night, and Good Luck" in black and white.
Both movies were based on true stories that took place at a time when color was cost prohibitive, something you really only saw on movie screens, not the much smaller screen of the television set. And you certainly didn't see color in news footage of either LaMotta's fights or the Murrow–McCarthy clashes.
But "Raging Bull" wasn't really a boxing movie, and Roger Ebert came about as close as anyone has to explaining what it was really about. He wrote that it was "about a man with paralyzing jealousy and sexual insecurity, for whom being punished in the ring serves as confession, penance and absolution. It is no accident that the screenplay never concerns itself with fight strategy. For Jake LaMotta, what happens during a fight is controlled not by tactics but by his fears and drives."
LaMotta's obsessiveness with his wife (played by Cathy Moriarty), who was 15 when they met, told the story best.
LaMotta constantly worried that she would have relationships with other men. When she made an offhand remark about one of his opponents, saying he was "good–looking," LaMotta made a point of pounding the man into a pulp, then glaring at his wife in the crowd. She got the message.
It's one of those basic, primal urges in man, I guess, to stake out a territory and be jealous of anyone who posed a threat to it, whether that territory was land or livestock — or female. It may not be the sort of thing that can be changed, as deeply ingrained as it appears to be.
In modern man, much of that instinct is contained by various factors that didn't exist or were much less pronounced centuries ago, including professions, but some professions still urge those within them to utilize such instincts. One such profession is boxing, where violence is not just permitted but openly encouraged.
It really shouldn't surprise anyone when a professional fighter resorts to violence outside the ring. It is the only way many of them ever learned to resolve any kind of conflict.
The story was told in a kind of flashback style with the present day being an aging Jake LaMotta, past his boxing days and doing standup routines to support himself, followed by reflections on his life and career.
The movie followed a recurring theme that those familiar with Scorsese's work must have recognized. Again, Ebert may have described it best: "the inability of his characters to trust and relate with women."
"Jake has an ambivalence toward women that Freud famously named the 'Madonna–whore complex,'" Ebert observed. "For LaMotta, women are unapproachable, virginal ideals — until they are sullied by physical contact (with him), after which they become suspect."
Or, as Groucho Marx put it, "I wouldn't want to belong to any club that would have me as a member."
It isn't funny, though. Jake even went after his brother (Joe Pesci) in a jealous rage.
Ebert couldn't stop gushing about the movie. He wrote that it was "the most painful and heartrending portrait of jealousy in the cinema— an 'Othello' for our times. It's the best film I've seen about the low self–esteem, sexual inadequacy and fear that lead some men to abuse women. Boxing is the arena, not the subject. LaMotta was famous for refusing to be knocked down in the ring. There are scenes where he stands passively, his hands at his side, allowing himself to be hammered. We sense why he didn't go down. He hurt too much to allow the pain to stop."
"Raging Bull" tied with "The Elephant Man" for the most Oscar nominations at eight apiece. De Niro won Best Actor, and Thelma Schoonmaker received the Oscar for Best Film Editing, but "Ordinary People," in hindsight a rather routine drama, won Best Picture and Best Director.
There are probably some Oscar voters who regret those decisions now. Certainly the folks at the American Film Institute would go along with awarding those Oscars to Scorsese and his movie. AFI ranks "Raging Bull" #4 on the all–time greatest movies list. "Ordinary People" didn't make the Top 100.
"This is not about going back. This is about life being ahead of you, and you run at it! Because you never know how far you can run unless you run."
Penny Chenery (Diane Lane)
Even now, more than 40 years later, the story of Secretariat seems like the sort of thing that could only happen in Hollywood, a fairy tale.
It was inevitable, I suppose, that a movie would be made about it, and that movie began showing in theaters across the country on this day in 2010. It had all the elements of an epic, beating–the–odds kind of story, a real feel–good triumph — even though it wasn't quite as much of a rags–to–riches tale as it might have appeared on the silver screen.
That does not mean it was not dramatic.
While I am sure there were parts of it that were dramatized — in fact, I know there were — "Secretariat" was the kind of history movie that I like — one that is basically true to the facts. The facts of Secretariat's story certainly were dramatic enough.
Which is why I was sorry to see that the Disney studios thought it was necessary to whip up conflict that wasn't needed. In reality, Secretariat's chief rival was a horse called Sham, and the movie portrayed Sham's trainer unfavorably — and unfairly, according to no less an authority than jockey Ron Turcotte, who rode Secretariat to the 1973 Triple Crown.
"[Sham's trainer] Pancho [Martin] is a wonderful person, always was," Turcotte told the Albany (N.Y.) Times Union. "I loved him, he was great to me, and it hurt me to see the way he was portrayed."
Turcotte said John Malkovich's portrayal of Secretariat's trainer, Lucien Laurin, wasn't accurate, either. I don't think he had any complaints about Malkovich's acting, but Laurin was "a very conservative dresser," Turcotte said. He didn't wear the loud clothes that Malkovich wore in the movie.
Nor did Laurin play golf, as he was shown doing early in the movie. Turcotte said Laurin was a fisherman when he wasn't training horses.
While I'm on the topic of historical discrepancies, the movie made it seem that Sham beat Secretariat in the Wood Memorial, a Kentucky Derby prep race held two weeks before the Derby; in reality, though, a horse named Angle Light won the Wood Memorial. Sham finished second that day and Secretariat, who was found to have an abscess under his lip, finished third.
Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?
Actually, in spite of those shortcomings, I thought the movie was very good. I remember the real–life story of Secretariat's Triple Crown run being the subject of conversations in movie theater lines and at restaurants — everyone was talking about it, people knew Secretariat's name even if they didn't know anything else about horse racing — or sports, for that matter. But few knew the story of how Penny Chenery (played by Diane Lane in the movie) came to own Secretariat.
She won the rights to him on the toss of a coin, which she lost but wound up winning in the end because she got Secretariat, possibly the greatest racehorse who ever lived. But Chenery's personal story was just as inspiring as Secretariat's. Taking charge of her father's horse farm after her mother's death, Chenery found herself competing in an almost exclusively male business. She did so successfully with the help of Laurin and another horse owner and breeder played by Fred Thompson.
One of the things I have observed in my life is that the stories of legends are often glossed over to the point where observers think the subject must have lived a charmed life and never had to overcome anything en route to becoming the best at whatever he or she did. That usually isn't true, of course, and it certainly wasn't true of Secretariat.
Nor was it true of Penny Chenery. But both did overcome, and the movie told that story well.
In the current political climate, it is worth taking the time to remember women who truly were pioneers, not opportunists. Pioneers have to be tough, as the nation's first black president has been learning, and they aren't apt to win many popularity contests in their chosen fields — although history does tend to look favorably upon them.
It also did a pretty good job of re–creating the Triple Crown races that put Secretariat's name firmly in the annals of horse racing. The first and third races — the Kentucky Derby in early May and the Belmont in early June — showed Penny Chenery's reaction in the stands. The Preakness, in mid–May, showed her family watching on TV from their home.
The family was with Mrs. Chenery for the '73 Belmont, which has taken on a life of its own in the last four decades, largely because of the unexpected ease with which Secretariat won the third and final jewel of the 1973 Triple Crown.
On that day, Secretariat left the field in the dust and won by an astonishing 31 lengths.
As Lane and Malkovich watched the race, there was no suspense about the winner. All Malkovich could do was shout to the jockey, "Don't fall off!"
"Cinderella story, out of nowhere, former greenskeeper, now about to become the Masters champion. It looks like a mirac ... It's in the hole! It's in the hole!"
Carl (Bill Murray)
#92 on the American Film Institute's list of the Top 100 movie quotes of all time
I have friends who will tell you that "Caddyshack," which premiered 35 years ago today, was the greatest comedy ever made. I'm not one of those people. The first time I saw "Caddyshack," I got some chuckles out of it, but I figured that you had to be a golfer to really appreciate the humor — as haphazard as it was — and I still feel that way. I have never played a round of golf in my life.
Film critic Roger Ebert may have put it best. The movie, he wrote, "never finds a consistent comic note of its own, but it plays host to all sorts of approaches from its stars, who sometimes hardly seem to be occupying the same movie. There's Bill Murray's self–absorbed craziness, Chevy Chase's laid–back bemusement, and Ted Knight's apoplectic overplaying. And then there is Rodney Dangerfield, who wades into the movie and cleans up."
Dangerfield shook things up, all right.
But, even so, I found "Caddyshack" to be a disjointed tale with humorous scenes linked together by a story that really wasn't much of a story.
"The movie never really develops a plot, but maybe it doesn't want to," Ebert wrote. "Director Harold Ramis brings on his cast of characters and lets them loose at one another. There's a vague subplot about a college scholarship for the caddies, and another one about the judge's nubile niece, and continuing warfare waged by Murray against the gophers who are devastating the club."
Each of those subplots had its moments, but the movie never really united those elements behind a single story. As I said, golfers probably got a lot of the humor. Much of it escaped me — or came across as hopelessly juvenile.
"Maybe one of the movie's problems is that the central characters are never really involved in the same action," Ebert wrote. "Murray's off on his own, fighting gophers. Dangerfield arrives, devastates, exits. Knight is busy impressing the caddies, making vague promises about scholarships and launching boats. If they were somehow all drawn together into the same story, maybe we'd be carried along more confidently. But 'Caddyshack' feels more like a movie that was written rather loosely, so that when shooting began there was freedom, too much freedom, for it to wander off in all directions in search of comic inspiration."
It did have a kind of improvisational quality to it — sort of a "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" goes golfing (with some sailing on the side). Don't misunderstand. Improv can be good. Sometimes it can be very good. But I can't think of an example when it worked in the motion picture format.
The thing is that I liked all the stars — but in what I regarded as their own milieus. Ted Knight was great as Ted Baxter on the Mary Tyler Moore Show. Chevy Chase was funny on Saturday Night Live — which he had left a couple of years earlier and was replaced by Bill Murray, who struggled at first with a skeptical public but eventually endeared himself to viewers and found his niche on the show.
But I just never got carried away with "Caddyshack." I remember seeing it when it first hit the theaters — and laughing at the obvious points that tend to amuse young viewers. But much of it — like the Baby Ruth bar floating in the swimming pool — just didn't amuse me after I got past that stage in my life.
I'm not even sure I was amused by that the first time I saw it.
Mouth McGarry (Jack Warden):At this point, I'll even look at you.
General manager:He's a lefty.
Mouth McGarry:Lefty, schmefty. What's the difference? If he's got more than one arm and less than four, he's for us.
Twilight Zone is absolutely one of my favorite TV series of all time. But no series is perfect, and Twilight Zone certainly had its share of misfires. I have mentioned before how I always watch the Syfy Channel's semiannual Twilight Zone marathons on New Year's and the Fourth of July and how there are certain episodes I always make it a habit to watch, whenever they happen to be aired.
Likewise, there are episodes I avoid. Those are the episodes I loathed the first time I saw them. Oddly enough, those episodes often turn out to be the most popular among other Twilight Zone fans. (I've never been able to explain that. It's kind of like being in my own personal Twilight Zone episode.)
That seems to be the case with the episode that first aired on this date in 1960 — "The Mighty Casey," a title that was inspired by Ernest Thayer's 1888 poem "Casey at the Bat." Now, I will admit that I have always liked baseball — more when I was a boy than now, I suppose — but I just never warmed up to this episode.
Others did, though.
The tale was about a fictional down–and–out baseball team called the Hoboken Zephyrs that was so bad it had to call a single victory a streak. The story opened with the team holding tryouts — and drawing a pretty motley crew.
Jack Warden played the beleaguered manager. He was convinced there were no — ahem — diamonds in the rough.
And then an older man came to the dugout. Warden thought it was a joke — a middle–aged man angling for a role as a rookie pitcher? No, he was a scientist who wanted to introduce Warden to the pitching prospect, s somber–faced fellow named Casey. The older man was Casey's creator. Casey, you see, was a robot.
Warden sent him out to the mound to throw a few pitches. His fastball scorched the catcher's mitt.
His off–speed stuff bewildered batters who tried to hit it. Granted, they were Zephyrs — and wannabe Zephyrs. The real test would come when he faced legitimate big–league batters.
Warden figured he had nothing to lose — his club was already 31 games out of first place — so he put Casey on his roster.
And it really seemed to pay off. The mysterious Casey appeared unbeatable. He went on a shutout binge; he put together a real winning streak and had Warden dreaming of winning a pennant.
Then disaster struck. Casey got beaned in a game and was taken to the hospital for evaluation. While he was there, it was determined that he had no pulse, no heartbeat.
Baseball rules clearly state that a lineup must be made up of nine men — and Casey didn't qualify, but his creator said he could give Casey a heart if that was what was necessary to earn the designation of human.
And that's what he did.
But, when Casey rejoined the club, there was a problem. The addition of a heart had given him something he had never had before — compassion.
It was obvious right away that something was different. He was smiling.
And when he took the mound, it was crystal clear that something was different. His pitches didn't baffle hitters. They were connecting — and frequently, spraying hits everywhere and driving in runs in bunches.
In the locker room, the scientist and Casey tried to explain to the manager that he no longer had the killer instinct that had served him so well before.
Casey said the scientist had urged him to go into social work, and that was what he was going to do. "I want to help people," he said as he left the locker room.
And the Zephyrs were back where they had been before Casey came along.
The scientist left Casey's blueprints with the manager — and it was strongly implied that those blueprints eventually were used to create a pitching staff that enjoyed great success.
As I say, I just never really cared for this episode. There were times during its run that Twilight Zone dabbled in stories about robots, and I never really liked them.
"Some day you'll learn that greatness is only the seizing of opportunity — clutching with your bare hands 'til the knuckles show white."
Mi Taylor (Mickey Rooney)
Mickey Rooney (who died last spring) got top billing in "National Velvet," which premiered 70 years ago today.
But Elizabeth Taylor is the one who really made it the children's classic it became.
Before I saw it, I assumed from the title that the movie was about a horse named National Velvet — but that was not the way it was. Velvet was the name of Taylor's character, and the National part came from the Grand National steeplechase for which she trained the horse (who was known as "The Pie," short for "The Pirate," a name he acquired from a previous owner).
Rooney was in his 20s and a veteran of dozens of movies when "National Velvet" hit the theaters. Taylor, who was 12 years old, had been in only four, and two were uncredited (her most recent credited appearance had been in the first of the Lassie movies, "Lassie Come Home").
Even more of a newcomer was 19–year–old Angela Lansbury, who made her movie debut in "Gaslight" seven months earlier. Lansbury's role was small, like the roles of the other members of the family (including Anne Revere and Donald Crisp, who starred as the parents). They were mostly there as filler; by and large, it was a two–person show.
As attractive as Lansbury was as a young woman, I have often heard it said that Taylor was a great beauty even as a girl. The term woman–child seems like an exaggeration for most, but it might be appropriate for Taylor — for it almost seems as if she went from being an infant to being a woman overnight — with nothing in between.
I once saw a clip of an interview with a producer who was in the business in the 1930s and 1940s. He said Taylor was more beautiful at the age of 7 than most women ever are at any age.
Mr. Hallam (Arthur Shields):So you're to win the gelding, are you, Velvet?
Velvet:Oh, of course, I'm to win.
Mr. Hallam:There are ways of arranging it, aren't there? And your father's a clever man ...
Velvet:Oh, I didn't bother him, Mr. Hallam. I just arranged it with God.
Some people would argue about that, I guess, but there is no disputing the fact that Taylor was a very beautiful woman — and stunning as a girl.
And she played a resourceful character.
Rooney's character believed himself to be a coward because he wouldn't ride horses — he was a jockey at one time, but he caused an accident that led to the death of another jockey.
Anyway, for reasons that are best left to individual viewers to discover, the horse had no jockey the night before the Grand National, and Rooney tried to muster up enough courage to ride him — but Taylor decided she wanted to ride. She told Rooney to cut her hair so she would look more like a boy.
And he did.
I've seen a few horse racing sequences in the movies — some were good, some were not.
I was disappointed in the racing sequence in "Seabiscuit." I was more impressed with the sequences in "Secretariat," but, as in real life, the 1973 Belmont lacked suspense.
The sequence in "National Velvet" holds up well, even 70 years later, but if I was going to compare it to anything, I wouldn't compare it to another racing sequence. I would compare it to the fight scenes in the original "Rocky."
Both movies were mentioned in the American Film Institute's list of the top 100 inspiring movies. ("Rocky" was #4; "National Velvet" was #24.) "Seabiscuit" was on that list, but, inexplicably, "Secretariat" was not.
It's a heart–pounding, pulse–racing experience, all the more impressive because it was done with the limitations of 1940s technology.
While her screen time was limited, Revere won Best Supporting Actress, one of two Oscars won by "National Velvet" — Robert Kern's editing was the other.
"I guess some mistakes you never stop paying for."
Roy Hobbs (Robert Redford)
I don't know if "The Natural" was particularly inspirational. Its subject matter, after all, was probably the kind of thing that most kids have been fantasizing about forever — being the best at something.
Sometimes those dreams come true. More often, they do not.
I thought of my own boyhood dreams when I saw "The Natural" not long after it premiered 30 years ago today. I wasn't very athletic when I was younger, but I fantasized about it. Who wouldn't? When you're an awkward teenager, any scenario in which your buddies hoist you on their shoulders and parade you around in triumph — and all the girls want to be with you — is as valuable as one of Walter Mitty's daydreams.
(Come to think of it, Mitty's heroic fantasies usually ended unhappily, just short of achieving his goals.)
When I see "The Natural" now, I am more inclined to think of Roy Hobbs' perseverance, his dedication to his dream, his desire to follow that rainbow wherever it led — even though he had been, to use his own word, "sidetracked."
I guess he summed up his heart's desire when he was talking about how differently his life had been than he had expected. If he had begun his major–league career when most players do, in their 20s, he speculated that he could have rewritten the record book. "And then when I walked down the street people would've looked and they would've said, 'There goes Roy Hobbs, the best there ever was in this game.' "
It's corny, I know, but sometimes you need some corn. What happened to Roy Hobbs is the kind of thing that can happen to people in any walk of life, especially when they get blindsided by something beyond their control. It's worse for an athlete, I suppose, because an athlete's window of opportunity is so brief. People in non–athletic walks of life can afford to be more patient; the clock ticks loudly for a sidetracked athlete.
Roy wasn't bitter. He was a little wistful at times, but it just made him more determined to make the most of the time he had left.
Apparently, movie critic Roger Ebert wasn't impressed.
"Why didn't they make a baseball picture?" Ebert wanted to know. "Why did 'The Natural' have to be turned into idolatry on behalf of Robert Redford?"
That wasn't the way I saw it then, nor is it the way I see it now.
But Ebert felt that audiences knew too much about Hobbs' character and not enough about the other people on screen. "I'd love to get to know Pop Fisher (Wilford Brimley), the cynical, old team manager," Ebert wrote. "Robert Duvall, as the evil sportswriter, Max Mercy, has had his part cut so badly that we only know he's evil because he practically tells us. Richard Farnsworth, as a kindly coach, has a smile that's more genuine than anything else in the movie. But you have to look quick."
There were some things about Hobbs that we didn't know — like where he had been for 16 or 17 years
OK, it's a Robert Redford movie. I didn't have a problem with that. His was the bankable name in 1984, even though his star was falling while Glenn Close's was rising. (In case you never saw the movie before, Close was Redford's childhood sweetheart in the movie.)
Redford was the reason why people paid to see that movie. And pay they did. "The Natural," which was made for $28 million, took in nearly $48 million at the box office.
I've seen many movies that were focused on a single character — seemingly to the exclusion of everything else. I thought "The Natural" handled that better than most. It had a pretty good story. Most such movies do not. And, unlike Ebert, I had no quarrel over the amount of screen time everyone else got.
The young Roy Hobbs ran into problems with a mysterious woman (played by Barbara Hershey) he met on a train. In a sense, isn't that every man's story? Well, not every man, I suppose, but many a young man has fallen from grace because of a pretty face.
And Roy Hobbs fell hard. He dropped out of sight for years, finally resurfacing as an older man trying to break in with a struggling baseball team.
He didn't know all the intrigue behind the scenes. He didn't know that Pop Fisher, minority team owner in addition to being its manager, had made a deal with the principal owner. If the team won the pennant, Pop got the team. If the team didn't win the pennant, the principal owner got all of Pop's shares. Winner take all.
Hobbs' arrival complicated things. The team was well on its way to losing the pennant, but Hobbs turned things around to the point where the principal owner had to bribe him to play badly. He wouldn't do it, promising to "hit away."
I think this is where Ebert really objected. Redford, apparently bleeding and in pain from his stomach injury, hit the dramatic home run that won the pennant — and ran around the bases amid a shower of sparks from the stadium light fixture he blasted with his mighty shot. OK, it was a little over the top.
It was "cheap and phony," Ebert wrote.
"Either he hits the homer and then dies, or his bleeding was just a false alarm," Ebert explained. "If the bleeding was a false alarm, then everything else in the movie was false, too."
Yes, except that this is the movies, not real life. A lot of things happen in the movies that are implausible in real life.
I admit, Ebert had a point when he observed that Close was "the childhood sweetheart who doesn't hear from Roy after an accident changes the course of his life. Then she turns up years later, and when she stands up in the bleachers she is surrounded by blinding light ... In the few moments she's allowed alone with Roy, she strikes us as complicated, tender, and forgiving. But even the crucial fact of her life — that she has borne this man's son — is used as a plot gimmick."
OK, Close did have a kind of beatific look on her face when she was around Redford later in the movie. I didn't really notice it when they played young lovers, but it was noticeable when they were reunited roughly 20 years later.
See, I was a child of the Nixon years. Pat Nixon always had that kind of look on her face.
Are there things about the movie that I would have done differently? Sure, but it was what it was. And, for what it was, I thought it was good. Maybe better than good.
It belonged on a list of the best sports movies. There are sports movies that I like more — the ones that deal with actual events and people (like "Eight Men Out" and "Miracle") are my favorites — but the fictional ones can be pretty good, too, and "The Natural" told a pretty good story.
I got my bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Arkansas, and I got my master's degree in journalism from the University of North Texas. Most of my adult life has been dedicated to writing and editing in one form or another. Most recently I have taught writing (news and developmental) as an adjunct journalism professor at Richland College, where I advise the student newspaper staff. Go, Thunderducks!
