The Pride of the Yankees (NR, 1942)

THE PRIDE OF THE YANKEES chronicles Gehrig's life from playing baseball in the streets of New York City to the Ivy League fields of Columbia University and finally, to the House that Ruth Built, Yankee Stadium. Gary Cooper plays the adult Gehrig with sweetness and determination as Gehrig struggles with his shyness around women and grapples with whether to pursue his own dream of becoming a baseball player or follow his immigrant mother's dream that he become an engineer. We see Gehrig woo Eleanor Twitchell (Teresa Wright), become a legend, and then struggle with a disease that hardly anyone had heard of.

What's so refreshing about The Pride of the Yankees is that Gehrig is a man to be idolized who is also a good boy -- a mama's boy, even -- a sweet man who, as reporter Sam Blake (Walter Brennan) says, "does his job and nothing else. He gets a lot of fun out of it and 50 million people get a lot of fun out of him, watching him do something better than anyone else ever did it before." In other words, this is a sports star we can be proud to have our kids emulate.

The story is well known by most baseball fans, but it's Cooper's compelling performance that makes the film memorable. Even viewers who aren't baseball fans will be wiping away tears in the final scenes. And for baseball fans, there's plenty of action on the diamond, recreating famous plays. Babe Ruth himself cameos in the film, playing the perfect bombastic foil to Cooper's shy and dignified Gehrig. There's a reason these men are legends.