James Stewart talking behind the counter at his father’s hardware store while his dad chats with customer upon Stewart’s return from the second world war, Indiana, PA, 1945. From The Guardian at this link. | Peter Stackpole - LIFE magazine
Here’s your link for the movie! It’s from a Strange Site, but most internet security experts consider it pretty safe (for streaming; I wouldn’t try downloading). It has no commercials, so no sync issues! Sync issues are a pain on Movie Nights!
Start the show at 7:30!
This 1949 movie was inspired by a visit co-writer Douglas Morrow made to a California facility for soldiers with disabilities. Many of the soldiers were amputees. Morrow wanted to write a hopeful story about people with disabilities thriving despite their challenges, and he didn’t want it to be about the war. “Then,” wrote biographer Bob Thomas, “he remembered Monty Stratton.” That’s from
this SABR article about Chicago teams shown in the movies. (It also says the movie gets very insignificant details wrong, in that way SABR writers obsess over insignificant details.)
So, sorry, spoiler alert! But losing a limb is the first thing you’ll read on Stratton’s or the movie’s Wiki pages. Stratton lost a limb in a hunting accident, derailing a promising MLB career. (bWAR of 8.8 in his two seasons before the injury; he was only 26 when it happened.) Still, he had a good life afterwards, and got paid $100,000 for the movie rights, no small change in 1949! And he enjoyed hanging out on the set, although he was eager to get back to his wife/kid/farm.
You can read
The Sporting News’s coverage (most of it) of Stratton’s injury
at this site. You can see the prosthetic he used
at this site.
Oh, and he wasn’t the only player to attempt a comeback after losing a limb! BH-Baseball clued us into this story
with this comment on a recent thread:
From August 1 to August 5, 1945, the Washington Senators played a double-header five days in a row, and the Senators won 9 of those ten games. In their lone loss, the 2nd game on August 4th, the Red Sox scored 9 runs in the 4th inning to take an 11-2 lead. Washington brought in Bert Shepard to pitch, a WW2 veteran who’s right leg was amputated after his fighter plane had been shot down. (A fellow P.O.W. prisoner in Stalag 9, a Canadian doctor, created a prosthesis leg for Shepard).
In that lone MLB appearance, Shepard struck out the the first batter he faced to end the inning, and would pitch 5 more innings, giving up just one run on three hits, striking out two batters. He also drew a walk in one of his four plate appearances as a hitter. Shepard pitched and managed in the minor leagues the next ten years, and later won two U.S. amputee golf championships.
So Monty Stratton wasn’t the first.
Does James Stewart look like the real 6’6″ Stratton? You be the judge.
It’s close enough for me. And hey… you DO know Stewart’s the one on the right, don’t you?
(By the way, Stewart didn’t care for being called “Jimmy.” He went by James, Jim for some close friends. I’ll go by James or Jim, either’s fine, but if you call me Jimmy I’ll call you rude.)
This old TCM article says the stadiums shown in the movie included L.A.’s Wrigley Field (the chewing gum magnate William Wrigley owned the Cubs, the minor-league Los Angeles Angels, and a huge private island offshore from Los Angeles where rich people go for the weekend).
Also L.A.’s Gilmore Field, home of the minor-league Hollywood Stars; named after Arthur Gilmore, who bought land for a dairy farm in L.A.’s La Brea neighborhood in the late 1890’s. (Back then, the L.A. region was mostly rural.) One day, digging for water, Gilmore struck oil. This has never happened to me when planting vegetables, alas. The same oil deposit was what made the La Brea Tar Pits.
This site has some crappy details about Gilmore Field. It also, on
a different page, has some frustratingly-thin but intriguing links about old Twin Cities ballparks; might be worth looking into more about those, internet sleuths.
A slightly
less-old TCM article by Jay Sternberg says James Stewart worked his lanky butt off on this movie, talking to the real Stratton and practicing with MLB players to look like a real pitcher. It also says that Gregory Peck turned the role down, as did Van Johnson. You likely know who Gregory Peck is, and probably not who Van Johnson is. I can tell you: Van Johnson was an actor whose acting sucked.
Co-starring June Allyson, the very great Agnes Moorehead, and Frank Morgan, the “man behind the curtain” in 1939’s
The Wizard of Oz. Directed by one of MGM’s standard studio hands, Sam Wood — he did some of the Marx Brothers movies (which is to say he stayed out of their way and kept everything in focus) and the big hit
Pride of the Yankees with Gary Cooper as Lou Gehrig. Sadly, both Wood and Morgan would die just a few months after this came out, at ages 59 and 66 respectively.
Here’s your link again for the movie!
Click your clicks at 7:30!
Here’s the upcoming schedule:
March 6: Stop Making Sense (1984)
You may ask yourself: do we have some rock fans, here? We do. And this is one of the very best rock-concert movies. Featuring the Talking Heads and a totally badass touring band. Free on the Strange Site.
March 13: 42 (2013)
I wanna make sure we get this one in, because we started with
The Jackie Robinson Story. I might be outta town March 20. Free on the Strange Site.
March 20: Field of Dreams (1989)
So, if I’m outta town, I can trust all y’all to behave nicely to each other during this one, right? You’re all nice people. Most of ya. Free on the Strange Site.
No more time for suggestions this year… but, who knows, maybe we’ll give it a go next year, too? In any case,
show starts at 7:30!
