Wow! Such a good movie.

Thanks for the memories!

Pretty Good

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

I'm a sucker for corny old movies, especially when they involve baseball. My only problem here, was that Babe Ruth was not obese when he began his career with the Red Sox. He was barrel chested and strong as an ox and didn't gain all that weight until the end of the '20's, beginning of the '30's! They make him look like a hot dog eating pig as a young man. Remember, this young man hit more home runs in 1920, than any other TEAM in the American League!

I gave up long ago looking for accuracy in sports biopics (or any biopics for that matter), so I approached this film with the same expectation. John Goodman was a good choice to play the legendary Ruth in both mannerism and appearance, but as many reviewers have noted, he was obviously a lot heavier and decidedly unathletic in any scene that takes place on a ball field. I certainly wouldn't go to the bank on many of his off field exploits as depicted here either. For me, the repeated instances of flatulence that the film makers thought was a good idea simply appeal to the lowest common denominator factor they mistakenly think they have to cater to. As expected, the fabled Ruth exploits of hitting two home runs for the sick boy in the hospital and the 1932 'called shot' against the Chicago Cubs are depicted, but even those events that have become part of baseball legend are somewhat inconclusive in history. If you're a baseball fan, believe what you will. For a better straightforward accounting of the Sultan of Swat, I would direct you to the 1998 HBO documentary simply titled "Babe Ruth". Though it's much too short at one hour to encompass all aspects of Ruth's storied life, it does manage to adequately address the highlights of a career that would have to be invented if most of it wasn't actually true. As far as "The Babe" goes, it's entertaining in it's own way, but for the most part, it's banana oil.

My wife watched this film with me for the first time after I had seen it a couple of times. She had some good questions, including what the Babe did after his retirement from Baseball in 1935 up to his death in 1948. The end credits mention he never managed in Baseball. I really find it hard to believe that someone in Major League Baseball, if not the Yankees, would not have hired the Babe to manage. The film seemed to display an overall sentiment that Baseball was not very kind to Ruth. The attitude of the owner of the club in their meeting toward the end of the movie is unbelievable. How could he have turned against someone who probably helped make him wealthy? You would think he would have offered him something in the organization if he truly did not believe he was management material.Anyway, I thought the film was adequate and probably captured the spirit of the man he was on and off the field. John Goodman did a good job in his leading role. Although he did seem overweight, in some of the scenes he bore a striking resemblance to the Babe in the photos and film I have seen.

I know of no two human lives that are more clearly "stories" than that of the two great Yankee teammates, Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. Most lives a litany of events, some of which are part of "stories" that cut diagonally across the life rather than encompassing it and driving it forward. Those stories do not emanate from or thus reveal the character of the person portrayed.Ruth was an undisciplined man-child with a prodigious talent that enabled him to reinvent and save his sport and made him the symbol of his era, a time when America was emerging as a world power and breaking the bonds of its own traditions to create a more modern and exciting way of living. But he offended not only the traditionalists but the businessmen who controlled his sport- or used to until he came along. When age and his lifestyle began to catch to him, they disposed of him for all but ceremonial purposes. Meanwhile his age passed and the world grew more serious. He wound up lonely and depressed and became a cancer victim at the early age of 53.Gehrig was a serious, dutiful momma's boy, also blessed with a prodigious talent that thrust him into where he most hated to be- the limelight. It's interesting that the worst year of his prime was the one year he didn't have either Ruth or DiMaggio as a teammate, 1935. He fared much better in their shadow. He was noted, by those who noted him, as a strong, reliable workhorse of a man and a player, someone you could count on. He was amazingly beset by a disease which robbed him of his strength, the very quality in him people most admired. And that in turn, thrust him directly into the lime light. People didn't think he could respond but he looked into his heart and said what was there and nobody ever forgot it.How could you miss telling stories like that? But amazingly, Hollywood has always seemed to get Lou's story right and the Babe's wrong. Even though there were casting problems in all the movies made about them, the quality of "Pride of the Yankees" and of "A Love Affair: The Eleanor and Lou Gehrig Story" is superb on both counts. Meanwhile "The Babe Ruth Story" is one of the worst movies ever made and both the TV movie "Babe Ruth" and the film "The Babe" are deeply flawed."Pride of the Yankees" is old fashioned Hollywood sentiment but done by experts. I find Teresa Wright's alternate clowning and crying to be a little too much and I've heard all the stories about Gary Cooper's attempts to learn how to play baseball, (he was a cowboy and an artist but no ball-player). But he was a great actor and he got to the essence of the character beautifully. His delivery of the final speech is perfect, for which reason he was asked to repeat it to the troops over and over during his travels during WWII. I'll be loving it- always."The Babe Ruth Story" casts a stumpy, potato-faced introvert, William Bendix, as the big, moon-faced extrovert, Babe Ruth. It's a competent "B" movie version of his life for the first half. It might have just been a disappointing follow-up to "Pride of the Yankees" if they'd left it at that but about halfway through the script suddenly delves into science fiction and turns Ruth into a maker of medical miracles, with one ridiculous scene after another. He is, however, unable to save himself in the end, or even the film.All I saw of "Babe Ruth" was a few scenes but once I saw Stephen Lang wearing what appeared to be a plastic mask, which tried but failed to make him resemble Ruth, I wanted no part of it."The Babe" is the "Gone With the Wind" of Babe Ruth movies, which isn't saying much. But is a good retelling of his life and Goodman enacts the part superbly. It ends at the right moment, with Ruth hitting his last three home runs in one game in Pittsburgh to stick it to those who were jeering him. But Goodman is twice the size Ruth ever was. The Babe, as old photos show, was about 200 pounds when his career started and worked his way up to perhaps 250 pounds when he quit. Goodman must have been a minimum of 350 pounds when he filmed this movie and sent the wrong message: that you can be a blimp and still be the greatest player in the sport, an image that baseball people really resent.While casting is not the only problem, it could have been improved and that might have helped. Physically, someone like Dick Foran or Wayne Morris would have been a better match for Gehrig than Cooper but they wouldn't have given as good a performance. Kurt Russell, (who played some minor league ball), or Jeff Bridges would have been a much better choice for "A Love Story", than Hermann. That other "Reilly", Jackie Gleason, would have been a much better choice than Bendix for "The Babe Ruth Story", (especially if he had eaten the script). Maybe the best time to do a Ruth movie and do it right would have been after Roger Maris broke his record. Either Claude Akins, (my favorite choice of all), or Simon Oakland would have made excellent Ruths. Ramon Bieri was a good Ruth in "A Love Story". I'm not sure who would play him these days.Of course the best performance as Babe Ruth was by the guy who played him in "Pride of the Yankees".