ARROWTOWN PICTURES

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 4670, 14 December 1944, Page 3

ARROWTOWN PICTURES

“PRIDE OF THE YANKEES’’ SHOWING SATURDAY A great romance and a great drama which made up the inspiring career of the late Lou Gerig, American baseball idol, form the basis of Samuel Goldwyn’s newest production "The Pride of the Yankees” in which Gary Cooper stars as the famous athlete. Giving film patrons a vivid and authentic portrait of Gehrig’s life and his accomplishments, the offering deals chiefly with the man himself and uses the baseball scene merely as a background to the unfolding of the unusual story. How Gehrig, the son of an easy-go-ing janitor, and an ambitious mother, had to set aside his dreams of a baseball career during his boyhood and his college days, only to turn to the game he loved when circumstances permitted, constitutes the early sequences of the film. His subsequent brilliant years with the Yankees, his love affair with the girl who became Mrs Gehrig and spurred him on to new triumphs, and his final tragic abandonment of the game when an incurable paralysis overtook him, all make for absorbing drama of a unique kind. Sam Wood directed the RKO-Radio release, and Teresa Wright plays the loyal Eleanor Gehrig. Babe Ruth, Walter Brennan, Dan Duryea, Virginia Gilmore, Bill Dickey, "Bob” Meusel and other noted figures of the film and baseball worlds have important parts in the offering. The dancing Vcloz Yolanda and Bay Noble and his orchestra figure in a spectacular production number.