The Pride of the Yankess (DVD)

The Pride of the Yankees (1942) starring Gary Cooper, Teresa Wright, Babe Ruth, Walter Brennan. Cooper plays Lou Gehrig, one of the greatest baseball players ever to wear the Yankee uniform, who died in 1941 from ALS, the illness that ever after was known as Lou Gehrig's Disease. The movie follows Gehrig's career from the time he was a young boy until he graduated to the major leagues, on to his courting and marriage to Chicago heiress Eleanor Twitchell (Wright). At the height of his happiness, he starts to show symptoms of the disease that we, the audience, know will kill him. My main complaint about this film is that Cooper, though his acting is good, just doesn't move like an athlete -- but maybe that's asking too much, at least of a movie of this vintage. Cooper was over 40 when this movie was made, an age which Gehrig never reached. The finale, Gehrig's famous farewell speech in Yankee Stadium, is very effective. The captions are good. Grade: B