Most successful baseball movies involve fictional subjects. However, one of the earliest hits in the genre provided a biographical piece, or at least it purported to do so. 1942’s The Pride of the Yankees attempted to tell the tale of the great Lou Gehrig, the Hall of Fame first baseman whose career ended abruptly when he became afflicted with a fatal disease.

I state that Pride purported to tell Gehrig’s story for it seems clear that the movie only tangentially related to the facts of the ballplayer’s life. Released barely a year after Gehrig’s death, there was no way anyone would make a “warts and all” biography at that time. Heck, for all I know, maybe Gehrig possessed no warts to display. However, I can’t help but feel that Pride provided an awfully false and superficial look at his life.

The film starts during Lou’s childhood, when we see him as he attempts to play on a neighborhood team. After he finally gets in the game, we get a sense of his talent with a bat. The movie soon skips ahead to Lou’s college years at Columbia, and we watch adult Gehrig (Gary Cooper) as he struggles to pay his tuition. Despite his mother’s (Elsa Janssen) insistence that he avoid sports and become an engineer, Lou eventually gives in to pressure and becomes a star athlete.

Of course, he excels at baseball, and a newspaper columnist named Sam Blake (Walter Brennan) soon touts Gehrig’s talent to the world. Eventually the all-powerful Yankees come a-calling, and they eventually make him an offer he can’t refuse. Lou tries to come clean to his mama, but when he tells her he’s headed to the Yankees’ farm club in Hartford, she thinks he says he’s going to Harvard. Lou can’t bear to break her heart, so he enters into a complex ruse to hide the truth from her while he works his way through the minors.

Eventually, Lou does tell his mother the truth, and in time, she comes to accept his chosen profession. Along the way, rookie Lou meets the love of his life in Chicago. The daughter of a local tycoon, his initial encounter with Eleanor Twitchell (Teresa Wright) goes poorly; after he falls over some bats she calls him “Tanglefoot”. However, the pair soon connect and become fairly inseparable. Marriage follows not long after that, and we watch the young couple as Lou’s career continues to prosper.

Of course, we all know where this will go, and eventually Gehrig starts to falter at baseball. The last act of the film enters tragic territory. Lou takes himself out of a game when he realizes that he simply can’t perform anymore, and that ends his then-record streak of 2130 consecutive contests in which he played. The film concludes with the famous “luckiest man” speech Gehrig made in front of a packed house at Yankee Stadium on a day set aside to honor the legend.

Pride rarely focuses on Gehrig’s career, as it prefers to examine his personal life. That would be fine if the movie actually attempted any form of depth. Instead, his conflicts with his mother receive comic treatment, and his time with Eleanor offers a candy-colored romantic paradise. Gehrig never remotely comes across as a realistic character, and these scenes seem to exist for one reason alone: to make the tragedy of Gehrig’s end appear all the more heartbreaking. I guess the filmmakers felt that if the movie portrayed him as flawed in any way, we’d not care if he died. (For the record, Gehrig doesn’t die during the flick; though virtually every member of the crowd knows of his end, the movie concludes with Gehrig’s departure from the field after his speech.)

Admittedly, I didn’t expect anything harsh and realistic from Pride, but the film’s light touch really seemed weak. It portrayed the ballplayer as an unrealistically perfect icon, and the tone remained exceedingly puffy and light with no real exploration of his personality. The movie also seemed badly padded, as we encountered many extended - and pointless - sequences. Why did we see a very long dance sequence that involved a couple named Veloz and Yolanda? I have no clue - I guess audiences at the time simply dug that kind of stuff, even if it had no place in the film.

I’d like Pride a lot more if it focused more strongly on Gehrig’s career. Imagine that - a baseball movie with some baseball in it! Unfortunately, Pride just glossed over Lou’s successes in the most routine manner so we can quickly see more shtick with his wacky parents or watch him act lovey-dovey with Eleanor. Even when the movie did deal with baseball, it offered absurd moments like his alleged promise to a sick kid to hit two home runs in a World Series contest.

Pride even botched the movie’s only sure-fire moment, the concluding speech at Yankee Stadium. Gehrig’s real-life comments always stir emotions in listeners, but Pride couldn’t leave well enough alone. As Cooper delivers the original speech, we hear an announcer narrate everything he does! Why couldn’t they simply let the moment stand? These remarks ruined a moment that otherwise would have provided something of worth in this silly film.

I found The Pride of the Yankees to offer a major disappointment as a movie. While I didn’t anticipate a thoroughly factual examination of the life of Lou Gehrig, I expected something more than this lightly comic romantic piffle. The film focused on fantasy and couldn’t even deliver any good baseball moments. I’ll say this: it was cool to see Babe Ruth play himself. Otherwise, Pride failed to engage me.

The Pride of the Yankees appears in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1 on this single-sided, double-layered DVD; due to those dimensions, the image has not been enhanced for 16X9 televisions. Despite a mix of concerns, given the age of the material, I thought Pride provided a fairly solid picture.

Sharpness usually appeared positive. At times, the movie seemed a bit soft, especially during Cooper’s early scenes. It looked like the filmmakers used soft focus to try to hide the actor’s age as he portrayed the college-age Gehrig, but those weren’t the only scenes to come across as somewhat fuzzy. Still, most of the flick presented a reasonably crisp and well-defined image. Jagged edges and moiré effects created no concerns, but I did detect some fairly prominent edge enhancement at times.

If I consider that Pride came out more than 60 years ago, it presented a fairly clean picture. Light grain appeared on occasion, and I noticed some grit and speckles. However, the defects remained modest when I considered the age of the film. Black levels seemed fairly deep and dense, and contrast was fairly good. Shadow detail also showed pretty nice clarity Overall, however, I remained reasonably pleased with the picture of Pride despite these issues.

The monaural soundtrack of The Pride of the Yankees also seemed satisfying given the age of the material. Speech appeared reasonably natural and crisp, and I noticed no concerns related to edginess or intelligibility. Effects sounded somewhat thin, but they remained clean and acceptably accurate. Music showed limited dynamics but seemed fairly bright and lively. Other than a little background rumble at times, I noticed no flaws related to the source material; it sounded pretty clean. Although the audio of Pride lacked much range or warmth, it provided a fairly good experience for a mix of this era.

How did the picture and audio of this “Collector’s Edition” compare to those of the DVD release from 2002? I thought both seemed very similar. If any significant variations occurred, I didn’t discern them.

While the old disc included literally no extras, the CE throws in a few featurettes. The Making of The Pride of the Yankees goes for eight minutes, 18 seconds as it mixes movie clips, archival materials and interviews. We hear from producer’s son Samuel Goldwyn, Jr., film historian Richard Bann, and Iron Horse: Lou Gehrig in His Time author Ray Robinson. “Making” looks at how the story came to the screen, aspects of the era in which the film was created, casting and performances, and a few thoughts about the final product. We get a few interesting tidbits here such as how they made Gary Cooper look like a left-hander and Babe Ruth’s preparation for his cameo, but don’t expect much. Eight minutes doesn’t leave much time for details, and this program offers a cursory take on the movie at best.

For the six-minute and 17-second The Man Behind the Iron Horse, we find notes from Robinson. The biographer starts with a tale about a childhood meeting with Gehrig and then provides a few insights about the athlete. I really like Robinson’s personal anecdote, and he throws in a few decent thoughts about Gehrig’s life and career. Unfortunately, it’s just too brief to have much substance, though it works for what it is.

More about Gehrig comes via What He Left Behind. This four-minute and 57-second piece offers remarks from National Baseball Hall of Fame Vice President and Chief Curator Ted Spencer as he gives us a tour of some Gehrig memorabilia. This becomes an intriguing glimpse of Gehrig artifacts as well as some connected to the movie.

Always lasts six minutes, 10 seconds and features composer Irving Berlin’s daughter Mary Ellin Barrett and music historian Robert Kimball. This show looks at the tune performed in the film’s nightclub scene, with an emphasis on the life and work of composer Berlin. “Always” turns into a reasonably interesting examination of the song and its use in the flick.

Info about a life-threatening disorder comes to us with the five-minute and 51-second Lou Gehrig’s Disease: The Search For a Cure. It provides statements from ALS Association President/CEO Gary Leo, pitcher Curt Schilling, and his wife Shonda. We learn about how ALS affects those with it and attempts to eradicate the disease. Or attempts to raise money to eradicate it, that is, as we don’t get any info related to research and progress made to stop ALS. It’s essentially an ad to tout the ALS Association, and that’s fine; I certainly don’t begrudge such charitable efforts. Just don’t expect anything else.

Finally, Curt Schilling: A Legend on a Legend runs two minutes, 24 seconds. The Red Sox pitcher discusses Gehrig and why he admires Lou so much. Since so many athletes don’t recognize the names of much more recent predecessors, it’s refreshing that Schilling shows all that respect for someone who played decades before his birth. However, the program presents no substance and doesn’t really go anywhere.

As a life-long baseball fan, I badly wanted to like The Pride of the Yankees. Unfortunately, the film let me down in virtually every respect. A bland fictionalization of the ballplayer’s life, it offered a bland story that concentrated far too much on his personal affairs and couldn’t even make that material entertaining. The DVD offered generally positive picture and sound but provided absolutely no extras. Fans of Pride should be happy with this disc; even without any supplements, it reproduces the film fairly well and it comes with a very low list price. For others, however, I can’t recommend this dull piece of fantasy.

To rate this film visit the original review of THE PRIDE OF THE YANKEES