On July 4, 1939, Gehrig delivered what has been called "baseball's
Gettysburg Address" at Yankee Stadium. There is, for now, no known,
intact film of Gehrig's speech, but instead, just a swatch of the
newsreel footage has survived, incorporating his opening and
closing remarks: "For the past two weeks you have been reading
about the bad break I got. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest
man on the face of this earth," the last line, of course, having
become one of the most famous, invoked, and inspiring, ever,
anywhere. The New York Times account, the following day, called it
"one of the most touching scenes ever witnessed on a ball field",
that made even hard-boiled reporters "swallow hard." The scene and
the story would likely have been largely lost to history,
altogether, were it not for the film, Pride of the Yankees, best
known for Gary Cooper, as the dying Lou Gehrig, movingly describing
himself as "the luckiest man on the face of the earth," even as his
body was being ravaged by the disease that was soon named after
him. Here, now, in Pride of the Yankees and the Legend of Lou
Gehrig by Richard Sandomir, New York Times sports columnist, is,
for the first time, the full story behind the pioneering, seminal
movie. Filled with larger than life characters and unexpected
facts, Pride of the Yankees shows us how Samuel Goldwyn had no
desire to making a baseball film but he was persuaded to make a
quick deal with Lou's widow, Eleanor, not long after Gehrig had
passed; Hollywood icon Cooper had zero knowledge of baseball and
had to be taught to play; unknown parts of the screen treatment and
screenplay that will be written about for the first time; and dishy
letters to Eleanor from Christy Walsh, the pioneering business
manager who represented the Gehrigs, from the Los Angeles set.
Nostalgic, breezy and fun, Pride of the Yankees captures a lost
time in film and sports history.
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