History Film / ThePrideOfTheYankees

A 1942 {{biopic}} dramatizing the life of New York Yankees great Creator/LouGehrig, ''The Pride of the Yankees'' was directed by Sam Wood and stars Creator/GaryCooper as Gehrig, with a supporting cast including Creator/TeresaWright, Walter Brennan, Dan Duryea, and Creator/BabeRuth {{as himself}}.

The film starts with Gehrig as a boy in New York City, a child of immigrant parents who want him to go to Columbia University and become an engineer. Lou's mother is dismayed when his feats on the Columbia baseball team draw the attention of the New York Yankees, who wind up pulling Lou away from his studies to play baseball.

Lou quickly becomes a huge big-league star, but the film pays more attention to his romance with and marriage to the stylish, feisty Eleanor Twitchell (Wright). Theirs is an ideal, loving marriage, as Lou racks up award after award, playing over 2,000 consecutive baseball games for the Yankees--until he is struck by a terminal illness, amytrophic lateral sclerosis, which afterwards would be popularly known as "Lou Gehrig's disease". A dying Gehrig has to retire from baseball, and the film ends with his iconic farewell speech to the fans in Yankee Stadium.

* VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory: Like most other biopics of the era, there wasn't a lot of worry about staying true to the facts. A couple of examples: in RealLife, Gehrig played in 34 games scattered over three seasons before his famous streak started on June 1, 1925. The streak did ''not'' start when Gehrig entered the lineup in place of Wally Pipp, but with a pinch-hitting appearance. And the sequence where Gehrig hits two home runs in a game of the 1928 World Series to inspire a little boy is all fictional--Gehrig did hit two homers in Game 3 but nothing else about how the game is shown in the movie is true. There wasn't any "Billy", either, and the scene seems to be loosely inspired by a real-life incident in which Ruth promised to hit a home run for a sick child in the 1926 World Series, and followed through. In real life, no one knew Gehrig was dying during his "luckiest man on Earth" speech; he had kept the seriousness of his sickness a secret, and the public wasn't aware of the deadliness of ALS (only 10% of sufferers survived past two years.)

A 1942 {{biopic}} dramatizing the life of New York Yankees great Lou Gehrig, ''The Pride of the Yankees'' was directed by Sam Wood and stars Creator/GaryCooper as Gehrig, with a supporting cast including Creator/TeresaWright, Walter Brennan, Dan Duryea, and Creator/BabeRuth {{as himself}}.

* TheXOfY

Lou becomes a huge big-league star, but the film pays more attention to his romance with and marriage to the stylish, feisty Eleanor Twitchell (Wright). Theirs is an ideal, loving marriage, as Lou racks up award after award, playing over 2,000 consecutive baseball games for the Yankees--until he is struck by a terminal illness, amytrophic lateral sclerosis, which afterwards would be popularly known as "Lou Gehrig's disease". A dying Gehrig has to retire from baseball, and the film ends with his iconic farewell speech to the fans in Yankee Stadium.

A 1942 {{biopic}} dramatizing the life of New York Yankees great Lou Gehrig, ''The Pride of the Yankees'' was directed by Sam Wood and stars Creator/GaryCooper as Gehrig, along with Creator/TeresaWright, Walter Brennan, and Creator/BabeRuth {{as himself}}.

A 1942 {{biopic}} dramatizing the life of New York Yankees great Lou Gehrig, ''The Pride of the Yankees'' was directed by Sam Wood and stars Creator/GaryCooper as Gehrig, along with Creator/TeresaWright, Walter Brennan, Dan Duryea, and Creator/BabeRuth {{as himself}}.

''The Pride of the Yankees'' is a 1942 {{biopic}} dramatizing the life of New York Yankees great Lou Gehrig. It was directed by Sam Wood and stars Creator/GaryCooper as Gehrig, along with Creator/TeresaWright, Walter Brennan, and Creator/BabeRuth {{as himself}}.

* EurekaMoment: At the AmusementPark scene, Gehrig sees a man consistently winning the high striker came despite being small and not especially strong. The man explains how he uses his wrists to generate more speed and power in the mallet. Gehrig uses this to generate more power in his swing and his home run rate skyrockets.

* InformedAbility: Gary Cooper had never played baseball in his life, wasn't all that athletic despite being tall and handsome, and was especially bad at trying to bat left-handed like Lou Gehrig did. Contemporary sources reported that the studio filmed Cooper batting righty and then reversed the film. Careful analysis has since determined that except for one quick shot of Gehrig playing minor-league ball, this was not done, and Cooper is in fact batting left-handed in the movie. It is however true that Cooper looks terribly unconvincing when taking lefty swings. See TalentDouble below.

* TalentDouble: Cooper's stand-in, major leaguer Babe Herman, was used for scenes where Cooper had to throw the ball lefty.