Gary Cooper's Genre-Defining Sports Movie With Babe Ruth Is Streaming For Free - SlashFilm (2025)

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In Sam Wood's Oscar darling "The Pride of the Yankees," Hollywood's golden retriever, Gary Cooper, plays Lou Gehrig, a famous first baseman for the New York Yankees from 1923 to 1939. Gehrig was considered one of the more powerful hitters of his generation, earning him the on-field nickname of The Iron Horse. Tragically, Gehrig's baseball career began to suffer in the late '30s because of a strange, undiagnosed illness. It would later be revealed to be amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. ALS ended up taking his life in 1941, and it is still known colloquially in the United States as Lou Gehrig's Disease.

"The Pride of the Yankees" follows Gehrig's life from his days at Columbia University through his retirement from the Yankees in 1939. It traces his rise to baseball fame, taking a job for the New York Yankees, a job he keeps secret from his ailing mother; she would prefer he be an engineer. He eventually befriends his hero, Babe Ruth (playing himself), and attracts the attention of his future wife, Eleanor (Teresa Wright). He becomes a star. One of the film's best-known sequences involves Gehrig, already a celebrity, visiting a sick child in the hospital. The young boy, Billy, makes Lou promise he'll hit two home runs in a single World Series game. Lou makes good on his promise. This story likely isn't true, but it's part of real-world baseball legend, embellished by "The Pride of the Yankees."

And then there's the tragic ending. Even if one hasn't seen "Yankees," one likely knows of Cooper's famously teary, heart-rending speech at the end when he announces his retirement due to illness. "Today," he said, "I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth." It was the film's final line, and one that echoed throughout cinema history.

"The Pride of the Yankees" is currently available to stream for free on the Roku Channel, on Hoopla, on Kanopy, and on Pluto TV.

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If the plot to "The Pride of the Yankees" sounds clichéd, it's only because every sports drama thereafter imitated it. The arc of "The Pride of the Yankees" was paralleled by every athlete biopic for decades after its 1942 release, and comedy films and sitcoms continued to borrow moments and speeches from "Yankees" well into the modern day. Long before this author even saw Wood's film, I saw spoofs of it on shows like "Mystery Science Theater 3000," "The Simpsons," and top-100 movie, "BASEketball." "The Pride of the Yankees" seeped so deep into the American mass consciousness, that one has to be reminded where the clichés started.

"Yankees" also came at a time when it was fashionable for mainstream Hollywood blockbusters to be as weepy and as melodramatic as possible. "The Pride of the Yankees" is emotional to the point of being syrupy, presenting Gehrig as a peerlessly pure hero who believes deeply in the unshakable American institution that is professional baseball. Gary Cooper, whose entire on-screen persona was based on a schoolboy-like, aw-shucks quality, brought a wholly artificial, Hollywood "innocence" to his performance that made many stone-hearted audiences melt. This is the type of movie that critics refer to when they talk about the Golden Age of Hollywood. A star-studded and wholly earnest drama, constructed to reinforce bold American myths and perpetuate sentimental stereotypes of "Great Man" exceptionalism.

"The Pride of the Yankees" was also huge hit, emerging as one of the top-10 highest grossing films of 1942. Sadly, it didn't make a lot of money for RKO thanks to an fee-heavy distribution deal the studio made with Samuel Goldwyn. RKO kept working with Goldwyn, however, because of the prestige attached to his name. It's likely that Goldwyn's name attracted the attention of Academy voters.

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"The Pride of the Yankees" was nominated for 11 Academy Awards that year, including Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Music, Best Special Effects, and two for Best Writing (back when "Original Story" and "Adapted Screenplay" were two different categories).The only Oscar it won, however, was for Best Editing (for Daniel Mandell). That was the year that William Wyler's "Mrs. Miniver" steamrolled through the Oscars, however, taking home six wins. "The Pride of the Yankees" was a hit, but "Mrs. Miniver" was a powerhouse, being only the second film in Academy history to be nominated in all four acting categories (it won two).

1942 was when the United States was embroiled in World War II, and many of the nominees dealt directly with either the very immediate war experience, or American patriotism in general. Also nominated for Best Picture that year were "49th Parallel," about Nazis trying to invade Canada, "The Pied Piper," about an old British man trying to reluctantly evacuate kids from a bombed-out France, "Wake Island," about soldiers fighting a Japanese invasion force, and "Yankee Doodle Dandy," a biopic of George M. Cohan, the author of multiple patriotic war songs. There was no way "Mrs. Miniver" wasn't going to win, given the tone of the country at the time; its anti-Nazi propaganda and pro-British citizen narrative was wholly inspiring. Winston Churchill once said, quite famously, that "Mrs. Miniver" did more for the English war effort than a flotilla of destroyers.

"The Pride of the Yankees," a tear-jerking baseball drama, didn't stand a chance. Still, it was recognized widely by the Academy, and its popularity has lingered in perpetuity. This is a great film to watch with your dad, or other baseball-loving family member. They've probably seen it already, but if you haven't, it'll be an experience you can share.