There is this widespread belief that Gary Cooper only had one expression. It's a bloody lie. At times he could look slightly puzzled, at others slightly determined, and at still others slightly shy. And all that is aside from the blank expression that constituted 90 percent of any given performance.
What Cooper had going for him was a combination of good looks and a kind of everyman quality. He was always lanky and slightly awkward. And he seemed to be the likable, honest guy that he was in real life. He could never have played a mustachioed villain, the kind of role that, say, Gregory Peck essayed in "The Boys From Brazil." He wasn't capable of that kind of joke.
He's at his best here as Lou Gehrig, a German boy from the Bronx who switches from engineering at Columbia University to the New York Yankees and plays in more than two thousand games over fourteen years before being overcome by a disorder now known as "Lou Gehrig's Disease." Supporting players are stock. There is the dominant but loving German mother, the frustrated janitor father, the chirpy and beautiful young wife (Teresa Wright), the loyal sidekick (Walter Brennan), the cynical cad of a hostile reporter (Dan Duryea), and the sympathetic team mates, some played by real Yankees Babe Ruth and Bill Dickey.
The structure of the film is utterly standard. Young man torn between goals indulges in Funktionslust and finds his bliss. But it deviates from the familiar stereotype in one crucial way. Ordinarily, the hero becomes a great success and is felled by his inner demons -- alcoholism or egotism or drugs or physical trauma or the death of a loved one -- before overcoming them and regaining his pride and stature with the help of a loving wife or staunch friend.
The writers couldn't follow the usual script because this is a true story (roughly) and because the dice of the gods are loaded. Gehrig died of his disease. The climax couldn't have been his resurrection, so it had to be the farewell speech he gave before tens of thousands of adoring fans at Yankee Stadium. It's quoted verbatim and moving in its simplicity, its everyday quality.
The facts in the case haven't prevented the writers from sticking as close as possible to the template. When Gehrig finally asks to be relieved of his turn at bat, he and Brennan see specialists at the Scripps Institute. The doctor with the bad news hems and haws. Cooper sets his jaw and says, "I'm a man who likes to know his batting average. Give it to me straight, doc. Is it three strikes?" If an ordinary high school kid of the period, a baseball fan, could write screenplays, that's the kind of dialog he would write.
It's not a bad movie, in the sense that it's not insulting in any way. It's just that it all seems about as real as a fairy tale from Mother Goose. Gehrig was quite a fellow, and it would be nice to see a biography of his real life and career.
What Cooper had going for him was a combination of good looks and a kind of everyman quality. He was always lanky and slightly awkward. And he seemed to be the likable, honest guy that he was in real life. He could never have played a mustachioed villain, the kind of role that, say, Gregory Peck essayed in "The Boys From Brazil." He wasn't capable of that kind of joke.
He's at his best here as Lou Gehrig, a German boy from the Bronx who switches from engineering at Columbia University to the New York Yankees and plays in more than two thousand games over fourteen years before being overcome by a disorder now known as "Lou Gehrig's Disease." Supporting players are stock. There is the dominant but loving German mother, the frustrated janitor father, the chirpy and beautiful young wife (Teresa Wright), the loyal sidekick (Walter Brennan), the cynical cad of a hostile reporter (Dan Duryea), and the sympathetic team mates, some played by real Yankees Babe Ruth and Bill Dickey.
The structure of the film is utterly standard. Young man torn between goals indulges in Funktionslust and finds his bliss. But it deviates from the familiar stereotype in one crucial way. Ordinarily, the hero becomes a great success and is felled by his inner demons -- alcoholism or egotism or drugs or physical trauma or the death of a loved one -- before overcoming them and regaining his pride and stature with the help of a loving wife or staunch friend.
The writers couldn't follow the usual script because this is a true story (roughly) and because the dice of the gods are loaded. Gehrig died of his disease. The climax couldn't have been his resurrection, so it had to be the farewell speech he gave before tens of thousands of adoring fans at Yankee Stadium. It's quoted verbatim and moving in its simplicity, its everyday quality.
The facts in the case haven't prevented the writers from sticking as close as possible to the template. When Gehrig finally asks to be relieved of his turn at bat, he and Brennan see specialists at the Scripps Institute. The doctor with the bad news hems and haws. Cooper sets his jaw and says, "I'm a man who likes to know his batting average. Give it to me straight, doc. Is it three strikes?" If an ordinary high school kid of the period, a baseball fan, could write screenplays, that's the kind of dialog he would write.
It's not a bad movie, in the sense that it's not insulting in any way. It's just that it all seems about as real as a fairy tale from Mother Goose. Gehrig was quite a fellow, and it would be nice to see a biography of his real life and career.