Lou Gehrig was one of the greatest baseball players of all time, and he was also a really nice guy, an upstanding and dependable husband that everyone could count on. That's the premise of this movie, which is a very respectful tribute to the great player who died from the disease that now carries his name, but it's also the problem. Gehrig is a sedate nice guy; he didn't get into trouble, cheat on his wife, or get in fights. He didn't gamble or throw games. He was an utterly ordinary guy who could play baseball better than just about everyone else in the world. Thus, there's really no drama, no source for tension, up until the fateful day when he realizes that he's lost a step, and subsequently learns that he is going to die.

Gary Cooper stars as Gehrig, and while I think he's a great actor who is capable of bringing great inner turmoil to the stoic characters he tended to play, I think he was unfortunately miscast. Cooper was 41 when he attempted to portray Gehrig from his college days up until the end of his baseball career. He's utterly out of place attempting to play a cautious new pledge at his fraternity; a scene when the gaunt Cooper attempts to woo a young woman who is obviously half his age at a party is particularly cringe-inducing. The film, too, is stodgy. This is the classic Hollywood where everybody faced the static camera and recited their lines.

The film is episodic, showing Gehrig as he matures and attempts to break the constrictive hold his mother (Elsa Janssen) has on him. She's a loving woman who wanted her son to become an engineer like his uncle. She scoffs at his obvious baseball talent, thinking that playing a game for a living is a silly waste of his obvious talent for engineering (we never get any idea that he was ever anything but a baseball player). Sports journalist Sam Blake (Walter Brennan) takes the young man under his wing and serves as his defender against cynic Hank Hanneman (Dan Duryea, in one of the only really entertaining parts in the film). When the Yankees come calling, Gehrig attempts to hide his new career from his mother, but she soon finds out when his name begins to appear in the paper.

Meanwhile, the awkward young man, who quickly earns the nickname "Tanglelegs" because he's clumsy, catches the eye of a young Chicago woman named Ellie (Teresa Wright, playing that blandly pretty nice girl she made a career of). We see him woo her, and there is some good-natured tension when she and his mother fight for control over him, using furniture and wallpaper as battlefields. Things work out, though, because this is the portrait of the kind of American hero people needed to see in 1942 when the film was released; indeed, the prologue makes it readily apparent that this film is a patriotic endeavor, celebrating a man whose heroism on the field complemented but did not overshadow the heroism of the men fighting in the war.

Early in the film, the most entrancing thing was Babe Ruth's appearance as himself. For viewers used to seeing only the grainy old footage that always looked sped up, showing him with his mincing swing and strange little waddling run, this film is a real treat, more of a historical artifact than anything else. Unfortunately, for a movie about one of the greatest baseball players in history, there's not a heck of a lot of baseball in it. We see Cooper swinging a bat a few times, which is an interesting story in itself. Cooper was right-handed while Gehrig was a lefty; to make him look right hitting, the filmmakers had uniforms with the lettering done backward, and Cooper hit right-handed and ran to third base; the film was then flipped over so it looked right.

The film only develops any real energy toward the end, when Gehrig starts to lose his step and finds out that he has an incurable disease. The recreation of Gehrig's famous final speech at Yankee Stadium had me on the verge of tears, and in a neat trick, I think that it's Cooper standing against a rear-projection screen that is showing Gehrig's actual speech; it's a nice touch, effectively putting him into the historical record. A good ending helps make up for what is a somewhat clunky movie.

The film was nominated for nine Oscars but failed to win any: Best Actor, Actress (Wright), Picture, Cinematography, Interior Decoration, Screenplay, Story, Sound, and Score.