Playing Yourself in the movies
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- DirectorLawrence C. WindomStarsBabe RuthRuth TaylorWilliam SheerThe "true story" of baseball great Babe Ruth; Ruth plays himself.
- DirectorLeigh JasonStarsDouglas CorriganPaul KellyRobert ArmstrongThis is the story of the historic 1938 flight of Douglas 'Wrong Way' Corrigan who starred as himself in this film, which chronicled his infamous flight. On July 17, 1938, he loaded 320 gallons of gasoline (40 hours' worth) into the tiny, single engine plane. While expressing his intent to fly west to Long Beach, CA, he flew out of Floyd Bennett Field heading east over the Atlantic. Instrumentation in the plane included two compasses (both malfunctioned) and a turn-and-bank indicator. The cabin door was held shut with baling wire. Nearly 29 hours later, he landed in Baldonnel near Dublin. He forever claimed to be surprised at arriving in Ireland rather than California. He returned to the US as a hero, with a ticker tape parade in New York and received numerous medals and awards.
- DirectorTed WildeStarsBabe RuthAnna Q. NilssonLouise FazendaBabe Dugan, star player of the Angels baseball team, chews tobacco and gets his uniform dirtier than any of his teammates. Vernie, the laundress who cleans his uniform every week, becomes concerned over his untidiness. Later, Babe accidentally strikes Vernie with a ball during a game and calls her to apologize. Meanwhile, his pal, Peewee, falls in love with Vernie's friend, Georgia. On an outing to an amusement park, a roller coaster throws Vernie into Babe's arms. Soon they are engaged and Vernie plans to reform him. Tensions rise when the team presents the couple with a set of hand-decorated spittoons, and a lovers' quarrel ensues. However, Babe takes the reform idea seriously, despite its negative effect on his game. At a crucial moment in the ninth inning, Vernie relents and throws him a plug of tobacco, prompting the revitalized Babe to hit a home run.
- DirectorTed WildeStarsHarold LloydAnn ChristyBert WoodruffHarold "Speedy" Swift, a fan of Babe Ruth and the New York Yankees, saves from extinction the city's last horse-drawn trolley, operated by his girlfriend's grandfather.
- DirectorBenjamin StoloffStarsBabe RuthBobby NewmanBabe Ruth plays ball with some kids.
- DirectorBenjamin StoloffStarsBabe RuthFranklin PangbornA boy in a small country school is bored with his prissy teacher's monotonous lessons, and dreams that his idol, Babe Ruth steps in to invite all the boys out to play a round of sandlot baseball. Even the teacher joins in, and Ruth shows them some of his big-league pitching techniques.
- DirectorLou BreslowStarsBabe Ruth
- DirectorBenjamin StoloffStarsBabe RuthBabe Ruth comes to visit a boys orphanage. The headmaster of the orphanage asks him to umpire a game the boys will play, which Babe consents to do. As Babe is umpiring behind the catcher, one of the players, Freddy, strikes out with the bases loaded, and his team loses the game. His teammates berate Freddy for striking out. Freddy leaves the field and starts crying. Babe encourages Freddy and offers to take Freddy to the ball park and teach him how to hit a baseball. At the park, Babe shows Freddy how to bunt. Then he shows Freddy about choke hitters and swing hitters. Then Freddy hits the balls pretty well. The next day, Babe is back watching another game with the same boys playing and someone else is umpiring. It comes to Freddy's turn at bat and the kid who is managing the team doesn't want Freddy to bat because he doesn't think Freddy can hit the ball. Freddy insists that he take his turn at bat. Freddy comes up to the plate and hits a home-run. His teammates, including the kid managing the team, cheer Freddy for hitting a home-run. Babe walks back to his car and finds that it's full of kids. He gets the kids out of his car and tells them he'll be back for another game.
- DirectorLou BreslowStarsBabe RuthClaire Merritt HodgsonMadalynne FieldAfter talking to a young coed in the stands at a game, Ruth agrees to go out to her girls college to give some instruction to their ball team. He does so and when their big game takes place, he's there to coach. When Madelynne comes to bat, Ruth trades places with her to make the winning hit, but the subterfuge is exposed, and he's chased off the pitch, escaping on the back of a car.
- DirectorRoy MackStarsBabe RuthZez ConfreyByron GayBabe Ruth returns from hunting to a cabin shared with musicians Zez Confrey and Byron Gay where he regales them with stories. With Babe's help, they write a song about baseball which then debuts on a radio show.
- DirectorSam WoodStarsGary CooperTeresa WrightBabe RuthThe story of the life and career of famed baseball player Lou Gehrig.
- DirectorCharles BartonStarsTom HarmonAnita LouiseForest EvashevskiTom Harmon (ol' # 98 for the Michigan Wolverines, husband of actress Elyse Knox and father of Mark Harmon and Kelly Harmon) took a back seat to no one on the football field (except the Minnesota Gophers) or, later, in the broadcast booth, but, on film, he managed to find himself in two of the all-time bad sports movies..."The Spirit of West Point" and "Harmon of Michigan." The latter, if it had been a true-life biography of Tom Harmon, might have made a passable film but after a short prologue, narrated by sports writer Bill Henry who is not the same as actor William Henry, that semi-recaps Harmon's football-playing days at the University of Michigan, it quickly develops into a mess that indicates the director and writers used the technical adviser, Coach Jeff Cravath, only to put plays on the blackboard. Once Harmon,(supposedly playing himself but the character he plays here has more character flaws than the law allows), graduates from Michigan, he marries his college sweetheart Peggy Adams (Anita Louise), turns up his nose at the prospect of playing professional football---a poor-paying and not-that-well respected job in 1941---and starts a vagabond tour of coaching tank-water colleges. Authenicity went out the window when the narration ended, as did any kind of time tracking, as everything that follows seems to happen in a single football season. Tom takes an assistant coach job at a cow-pasture college under Jimmy Wayburn (William Hall) and lasts one day before Wayburn fires him. Then he signs to play for a College All-Star team doing exhibition games against pro teams, but his team-mates, hacked because Tom gets star billing, lay down on him and he gets smacked down hard on every play. One of the leaders willing to let Harmon get slaughtered is old Michigan teammate Forrest Evashevski (playing himself), a life-long friend in real life and Godfather to Mark Harmon and a long-time respected coach at the University of Iowa. Harmon wins the game by himself, but decides this isn't his cup of tea. He hangs around the house a few weeks, then gets a job as an assistant under old-time coach Pop Branch at a college that has three buildings on campus and a football stadium seating 100,000 fans. He helps Pop win a few games (still ticking along in what appears to be the same fall football season), but the alumni at Webster College are tired of losing, fire their coach and hire Harmon away from Pop. Harmon takes over the Webster team in mid-season and becomes the all-time example of a hard-ass coach willing to win at any cost, including installing a screen-pass play that depends on an illegal blocking scheme---the Flying Wedge---to make it work. His Webster team begins to thump their opponents by large scores, usually leaving the other team battered and bloodied by the use of the illegal blocking scheme. They win four or five games which, based on the writers time scheme, would have them playing 20 games a season in what was then a nine-and-ten game season. Plus, the press and other coaches around and about, are up in arms about Harmon's tactics, but the jerks refereeing the games evidently haven't read the rule book nor the newspapers and throw no penalty flags against his team. Well, one referee does once, but he never officiated nor had lunch in that town again. It, by any reasonable calendar must now be July of the next year in a season that should have ended in December, and hard-case Harmon's team is going up against Pop's team (where Harmon coached earlier in this never-ending season) and Pop drops by and tells Tom he ain't all that fond of Tom's coaching methods, but Tom poo-pahs him off, and then sends his team out and they gleefully dismantle Pop's fair-playing team by 109-0. But Webster's quarterback Freddie Davis (Stanley Brown) suffers a concussion running a play Harmon calls just to run up the score even higher---Harmon evidently didn't read the script because nobody using their own name would want this character perceived as Himself---and it's nip-and-tuck whether Freddie will get out of the hospital alive. It gets even stickier when Freddie parents drop their hospital vigil long enough to tell Tom they are right proud that he is Freddie's coach. Say what? Tom sees the light and reverts back to the good old boy he started out as.
- DirectorAlfred E. GreenStarsJackie RobinsonRuby DeeMinor WatsonBiography of Jackie Robinson, the first black major league baseball player in the 20th century. Traces his career in the negro leagues and the major leagues. Restored in original Black and White.
- DirectorFrancis D. LyonStarsElroy 'Crazylegs' HirschLloyd NolanJoan VohsThe story of the life and career of football star Elroy "Crazylegs" Hirsch (who plays himself).
- DirectorFrancis D. LyonStarsBob MathiasWard BondMelba MathiasCalifornia school boy and Stanford University student Bob Mathias was the first man to win two Olympic Gold Medals in the Decathlon in the 1948 and 1952 Olympics. The film begins with him as a 17-year-old schoolboy in Tulare, California where his high school track coach, played by Ward Bond, encourages him to train for the Olympics, with the Dacathlon in mind. His story, far from over, ends here with his victory in the 1952 Olympics and with Mathias in the U.S. Marine Corps. He and his wife, Melba, play themselves in one of the few movie bios that doesn't play fast and loose with the facts, especially in a bio with the subject playing himself.
- DirectorEdward J. LaksoStarsDarren McGavinKathie BrowneNoah Beery Jr.Race car driver Richard Petty stars in his own b-movie bio.
- DirectorTom GriesMonte HellmanStarsMuhammad AliErnest BorgnineJohn MarleyMuhammad Ali plays himself in a reconstruction of the events that brought him to fame.
- DirectorCorey AllenStarsAnn JillianTony Lo BiancoViveca LindforsAnn Jillian finds out she has cancer and the movie shows how she deals with that (the hospital treatments and impact on her life).
- DirectorArthur PennStarsArlo GuthriePatricia QuinnJames BroderickA cinematic adaption of Arlo Guthrie's classic story-song.
- DirectorJesse HibbsStarsAudie MurphyMarshall ThompsonCharles DrakeThe true WWII story of Audie Murphy, the most decorated soldier in U.S. history. Based on the autobiography of Audie Murphy who stars as himself in the film.
- DirectorAlfred E. GreenStarsTommy DorseyJimmy DorseyJanet BlairThe Dorsey Brothers bandleaders' lives traced from childhood music insisting father to fame rise eventual split furthering careers propelling with their music.
- DirectorBilly WilderStarsDean MartinKim NovakRay WalstonJealous piano teacher Orville Spooner sends his beautiful wife, Zelda, away for the night while he tries to sell a song to famous nightclub singer Dino, who is stranded in town.
- DirectorRichard LesterStarsJohn LennonPaul McCartneyGeorge HarrisonOver two "typical" days in the life of The Beatles, the boys struggle to keep themselves and Sir Paul McCartney's mischievous grandfather in check while preparing for a live TV performance.
- DirectorRichard LesterStarsJohn LennonPaul McCartneyGeorge HarrisonSir Ringo Starr finds himself the human sacrifice target of a cult, and his fellow members of The Beatles must try to protect him from it.
- DirectorChuck BarrisStarsChuck BarrisRobin AltmanBrian O'MullinA week in the life of "The Gong Show" host and creator Chuck Barris who lives through a series of outrageous competitors, stressful situations, a nervous breakdown and other comical characters involved in his life and work on the TV show.