9.17XXX JUF News.Indd 64 8/24/17 1:00 PM
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ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT band’s legacy. article about the National Base- mous photographs of the team’s Sandomir, a Queens, N.Y., na- ball Hall of Fame once consid- legendary players. tive who is Jewish, didn’t visit ering a proposal to reinter on its She halted at one. 64 Chicago to research Eleanor’s Cooperstown, N.Y., grounds the “I couldn’t tell if it was my fa- early life because so much mate- cremated remains of Gehrig and ther or Lou Gehrig. They didn’t rial is available in her 1976 mem- other inductees. look alike, but they did look oir, My Luke and I, he said. San- “Part of the point of the book alike,” she said. “How wonderful domir’s book notes that her father, was simply that we know so that my father was a vehicle for Frank, owned real estate and was much about Lou from the movie, people to continue to remember a concessionaire in the Chicago because there’s so little else to go someone as great as Lou Gehrig.” Park District whose businesses on. The newsreels are incomplete. Janis said Cooper “loved base- had failed by the time Eleanor and When you see videos pop up, it’s ball,” and she remembers attend- Lou met in about 1931, although usually of [teammate] Babe Ruth, ing minor league games with her the film depicts the couple first not Lou Gehrig,” he said. parents at Hollywood’s Gilmore meeting during Frank Twitchell’s Perhaps Sandomir’s key rev- Field. In the book, Sandomir prosperous period. elation is that Gehrig’s “lucki- writes that he closely examined Many books have been written est man” speech has been lost to the film’s baseball scenes and on Gehrig’s Hall of Fame career history, with only partial audio could debunk the myth that they as the New York Yankees’ first and video recordings surviving were shot in reverse to account baseman who slugged 493 home and with newspaper accounts for Cooper’s being right-handed, runs and set a record of 2,130 varying in transcribing the ex- whereas Gehrig was a lefty. consecutive games played that Yankee’s words. Drawing from An exquisite double-irony stood for 56 years and earned him those sources and from Elea- Sandomir’s Pride reveals is this: the moniker Iron Horse, but this is nor’s recollection to Goldwyn of The New Yorker’s Niven Busch the first book about the film. the speech’s wording, Sandomir Jr. wrote an unflattering profile relates in 17 sentences and fewer of Gehrig in 1929, yet in 1941 Gehrig’s speech, “remains than 300 words how he thinks he successfully persuaded Gold- unmatched as a piece Gehrig’s remarks went, a ver- wyn, by then his boss in Holly- of athletic oratory nearly sion different than what Cooper wood, to make a film on the re- The luckiest author tells spoke on-screen. cently deceased ballplayer after eight decades later and Trying to ascertain the precise showing Goldwyn a newsreel of story of iconic Gehrig movie remains a significant wording “was frustrating, but it Gehrig’s retirement ceremony element of his was fun,” Sandomir said. that prompted Goldwyn to cry. He bought a DVD of the black- soulful legacy.” Gehrig’s speech, delivered in (Goldwyn, a Polish-Jewish im- By HILLEL KUTTLER and-white movie and ultimately an on-field ceremony between migrant who knew nothing about watched it start-to-finish about games of a July 4, 1939, double- baseball, framed Pride as a love 30 times, plus 100 times more to The poignancy of the Geh- header, “remains unmatched as story.) And shortly after Pride AS HE WATCHED The Pride of the examine specific scenes minutely. rigs’ relationship being cut short a piece of athletic oratory nearly finished filming, Busch married Yankees more than a decade ago, Just before this summer’s 75th by the disease “is really what eight decades later and remains Teresa Wright, who would earn Richard Sandomir was struck anniversary of the film’s release, resonates with people,” eminent a significant element of his soul- an Academy Award nomination anew by the film’s climactic Sandomir published his third broadcaster Bob Costas told JUF ful legacy,” Sandomir writes. for playing Eleanor Gehrig. scene of Gary Cooper, playing book, The Pride of the Yankees: News. “It’s the circumstances of Still, he continues, so powerful Journalist Griffin Miller said the ailing baseball star Lou Geh- Lou Gehrig, Gary Cooper, and his death, and the movie, that was the film’s depiction of it that that Sandomir, her husband, ea- rig, proclaiming himself to be the Making of a Classic (Hatchette make Gehrig an enduring part of “Cooper’s rendition has become gerly shared tidbits uncovered “the luckiest man on the face of Books)—an in-depth look at how baseball history.” the de facto version of record, re- during his research—like learn- the Earth.” America’s first serious, sports- Costas added: “It was a great placing Gehrig’s original. … Has ing through Eleanor’s letters to Like millions of viewers since themed movie came to the screen. movie in its time, and it’s a great any other rendering of a historic Goldwyn that she wasn’t as sweet the film’s release, Sandomir While the film’s central char- movie still because people view it speech ever become so closely as Wright portrayed her to be. wondered how Gehrig could’ve acter is Gehrig, the book’s is his through not just the story it tells, identified with the actor?” “This book,” Miller said of San- felt fortunate after being forced wife, Chicago native Eleanor but when the story was told.” Cooper’s daughter, Maria domir, “was a labor of love.” n to retire due to the progressive Twitchell Gehrig. Plumbing the Sandomir was well positioned Cooper Janis, was similarly muscle paralysis that would kill archives of the film’s producer to undertake the project, having struck. In a separate interview, Hillel Kuttler is an editor and him in 1941. Samuel Goldwyn and the files spent a quarter-century covering Janis said that while walking writer. His feature articles on The remarks “just sort of built of Eleanor’s lawyer George the sports media and the business along a corridor in Yankee Sta- history’s role in contemporary on me,” Sandomir explained by Pollack, Sandomir details her of sports for The New York Times dium last year for an event bene- people’s lives have appeared phone, so he began research- hands-on role in shaping the before shifting last December fiting research into amyotrophic in The New York Times, The ing newspaper reports of Geh- script, correcting factual errors, to the newspaper’s obituaries lateral sclerosis (the disease that Washington Post, and The Wall rig’s Yankee Stadium speech. and preserving her late hus- desk. He recently wrote a Times killed Gehrig), she passed enor- Street Journal. 64 JUF News 9.17XXX JUF News.indd 64 8/24/17 1:00 PM.