The Pride of the Yankees

The Pride of the Yankees is a 1942 American film about the legendary New York Yankees first baseman Lou Gehrig, who died only one year before its release, at age 37, from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), which later became known to the lay public as "Lou Gehrig's disease".
 * Directed by Sam Wood. Written by Jo Swerling and Herman J. Mankiewicz, based on a story by Paul Gallico.

It's the Great American Story!taglines

Lou Gehrig

 * All the arguing in the world can't change the decision of the umpire.


 * People have to live their own lives. Nobody can live it for you. Nobody could have made a baseball player out of Uncle Otto, and nobody can make anything but a baseball player out of me.


 * [in his farewell speech at Yankees Stadium] People all say that I've had a bad break. But today ... Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.
 * Note: the bolded portion is ranked #38 in the American Film Institute's list of the top 100 movie quotations in American cinema.

Eleanor Gehrig

 * Lou Gehrig, I could learn to like you.

Dialogue

 * Pop Gehrig: But Louie, suppose she finds out? What about me?
 * Lou Gehrig: Protect yourself in the clinches, Pop!
 * Pop Gehrig: What about mail? Suppose Mama writes you?
 * Lou Gehrig: She'll write the letters, but you mail them.
 * Pop Gehrig: What about the money you will be sending me? How will I explain that?
 * Lou Gehrig: Tell her you've got a job.
 * Pop Gehrig: Job! Who... me?
 * Lou Gehrig: You!
 * Pop Gehrig: Louie, wait! What kind of a job?
 * Lou Gehrig: That's up to you.
 * Pop Gehrig: [Thinks for a moment and comes up with the perfect job] Politics!


 * Hank Hanneman: That Gehrig's the chump of all time. Falling for a gag like that.
 * Sam Blake: Aw, he doesn't know about a gag.
 * Hank Hanneman: Yeah? What does he know about, Mr. Bones?
 * Sam Blake: Baseball.
 * Hank Hanneman: He knows... I'll tell ya somethin'. A guy like that is a detriment to any sport. He's a boob with a batting eye. He wakes up, brushes his teeth, hikes out to the ballpark, hits the ball, hikes back to the hotel room, reads the funny papers, gargles and goes to bed. That's personality, hm?
 * Sam Blake: The best.
 * Hank Hanneman: A real hero.
 * Sam Blake: Let me tell you about heroes, Hank. I've covered a lot of 'em, and I'm saying Gehrig is the best of 'em. No front-page scandals, no daffy excitements, no horn-piping in the spotlight...
 * Hank Hanneman: No nothing.
 * Sam Blake: ...but a guy who does his job and nothing else. He lives for his job. He gets a lot of fun out of it. And fifty million other people get a lot of fun out of him, watching him do something better than anybody else ever did it before.
 * Hank Hanneman: You'd be right, Sam, if all baseball fans were as big boobs as Gehrig.
 * Sam Blake: They are. The same kinda boobs as Gehrig. [beat] Only without a batting eye. That's why I'm putting my money on Gehrig.


 * Lou Gehrig: [about his failing health] Is it three strikes, Doc?
 * Clinic doctor: You want it straight?
 * Lou Gehrig: Sure, straight.
 * Clinic doctor: It's three strikes.

Taglines

 * It's the Great American Story!


 * The Crowd Worshipped Him... One Woman Understood Him!


 * Intimate and thrilling drama of a hero of the headlines... the girl who had his love and shared his life, but dared not question his one secret!

Cast

 * Gary Cooper - Lou Gehrig
 * Teresa Wright - Eleanor Twitchell Gehrig
 * Babe Ruth - himself
 * Walter Brennan - Sam Blake
 * Dan Duryea - Hank Hanneman
 * Elsa Janssen - Mom Gehrig
 * Ludwig Stössel - Pop Gehrig
 * Virginia Gilmore - Myra
 * Bill Dickey - himself
 * Ernie Adams - Miller Huggins
 * Pierre Watkin - Mr. Twitchell


 * Harry Harvey - Joe McCarthy
 * Robert W. Meusel - himself
 * Mark Koenig - himself
 * Bill Stern - himself
 * Addison Richards - Coach
 * Hardie Albright - Van Tuyl
 * Edward Fielding - Clinic doctor
 * George Lessey - Mayor of New Rochelle
 * Edgar Barrier - Hospital doctor
 * Douglas Croft - Lou Gehrig as a boy