The Pride of the Yankees(1942).

The Pride of the Yankees(1942). Biographical film directed by Sam Wood about the New York Yankees baseball player, first baseman Lou Gehrig, who had his career cut short at 37 years of age when he was stricken with the fatal disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (later known as "Lou Gehrig's Disease"). The film was released the year after Gehrig's death. Cast: Gary Cooper, Teresa Wright and Walter Brennan. Yankee teammates Babe Ruth, Bob Meusel, Mark Koenig, and Bill Dickey play themselves, as does sportscaster Bill Stern.

Columbia University student Lou Gehrig's, mother wants him to become an engineer, but.. Lou Gehrig has a gift for playing baseball. Sportswriter Sam Blake has a scout come out to see him play ball. Gehrig receives a contract offer from the New York Yankees. Lou Gehrig and his father decides to keep this a secret from his mother.

Gehrig wins over his teammates, and before long he is joining them in playing pranks on Ruth.

After a game in which he trips, he meets Eleanor Twitchell, who calls him a "Tanglefoot." It is not long before they fall in love and Lou and Ellie make plans to marry. The news, does not sit well with Gehrig's over baring mother. However, Lou finally stands up to her and marries Eleanor.

The Yankees start winning championships and all is going well for Gehrig. He hits two home runs in a single game as a promise to a sick boy in a hospital.(does that remind you of a Seinfeld episode?). But.. then without warning, Gehrig, baseball's "Iron Horse" begins to feel that somethings wrong.

Gehrig keeps on playing, keeping his illness a secret. But he is not the player he once was and one day he takes himself out of the game.

After an examination, a doctor tells Gehrig that he only has a short time to live.

In celebration at Yankee Stadium in his honor, Gehrig announces to his fans, saying that he has always felt like "the luckiest man on the face of the Earth."

I thought this was a wonderful inspirational movie and a nice way to remember Lou Gehrig.

Teresa Wright's first performance was in the stage play, Life with Father. It was there that she was discovered by a talent scout hired by Samuel Goldwyn to find a young actress for the role of Bette Davis' daughter in the film, The Little Foxes (1941). Which was the film that she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. The following year, she was nominated again, this time for Best Actress for The Pride of the Yankees, that same year, she won Best Supporting Actress as the daughter-in-law of Greer Garson's character in Mrs. Miniver. No other actor has ever has received an Oscar nomination for each of their first three films.

Please click here to read Teresa Wright's bio.

Teresa Wright.

Teresa Wright's first performance was in the stage play, Life with Father. It was there that she was discovered by a talent scout hired by Samuel Goldwyn to find a young actress for the role of Bette Davis' daughter in the film,  The Little Foxes (1941). Which was the film that she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. The following year, she was nominated again, this time for Best Actress for The Pride of the Yankees, that same year, she won Best Supporting Actress as the daughter-in-law of Greer Garson's character in Mrs. Miniver. No other actor has ever has received an Oscar nomination for each of their first three films.

In 1943, Wright was loaned out by Goldwyn for the Universal film Shadow of a Doubt, directed by Alfred Hitchcock. She played an innocent young woman who discovers that her beloved uncle, played by Joseph Cotten, is a serial murderer.


Other notable films include The Best Years of Our Lives (1946),  a story about servicemen returning home after World War II, and The Men (1950), another story about war veterans.

After 1959, she worked mostly in television and on the stage. She was nominated for Emmy Awards in 1957 for The Miracle Worker and in 1960 for , White Story. She was in the 1975 Broadway revival of Death of a Salesman and the 1980 revival of Morning's at Seven, for which she won a Drama Desk Award as a member of the Outstanding Ensemble Performance.

Her later movie performances include, Somewhere in Time (1980) and The Rainmaker (1997), directed by Francis Ford Coppola.

Fun Fact: Her husband, Niven Busch, originally wrote Duel in the Sun (1946) for her to play the lead, as a departure from her girl-next-door roles. But pregnancy forced her to drop out, and Jennifer Jones got the lead.

Today TCM is Featuring Teresa Wright Films listed below:
The Best Years Of Our Lives
Mrs. Miniver
The Little Foxes

Enchantment (1948) is a romantic film starring David Niven and Teresa Wright. It was directed by Irving Reis. It was based on the novel Take Three Tenses by Rumer Godden.

Casanova Brown (1944) film starring Gary Cooper, Teresa Wright, and Frank Morgan. The film was written by Thomas Mitchell (the actor), Floyd Dell, and Nunnally Johnson, and directed by Sam Wood.

Great Dramas this month on Noir and Chick Flicks - The Best Years Of Our Lives (1946)

I mentioned to Dawn that we would concentrate on dramas during this month here on Noir and Chick Flicks. She agreed and I figured we would focus on some of the classic great dramas of all time. Dramas that focused on family life, married life, dramas dealing with important issues such as race, women's rights, medical dramas, prison dramas, etc. We could go on and on. But since November is a time of being thankful, I wanted to showcase some dramas that are very emotional and tug at the heart and make you think. So I hope everyone will enjoy this month here on Noir & Chick Flicks. And I decided to kick things off with the 1946 classic film The Best Years of Our Lives, which I recently wrote about on my blog, All Good Things.

This is one of my favorite films of all time, sitting right there nestled in my top 10. The story in this film centers on three returning WW Two veterans after the war has ended. Frederic March is Al Stephenson, who returns to his loving wife Milly (a magnificent performance by Myrna Loy), his two children Peggy (a terrific Teresa Wright) and Rob (Michael Hall). Al returns to an influential banking position, but finds it hard to reconcile his loyalties to ex-servicemen with new commercial realities. He has several scenes where he copes by drinking heavily. Dana Andrews is Fred Derry, an ordinary working man who finds it difficult to hold down a job or pick up the threads of his marriage with Virginia Mayo. He ends up falling for Peggy, and Peggy lets her mom know that she doesn't mind busting up the marriage to be with Fred. I was like, heck yeah, go for it Peggy. That's when I fell in love with Teresa Wright at that exact moment. And the last soldier is Homer Parrish (played by real life amputee Harold Russell) who unsure that his fiancée's (Cathy O'Donnell) feelings are still those of love and not those of pity. Each of these three men face a different crisis in their lives and try to cope and come through it emotionally sound. This movie is awesome. I can't find any faults with it. From the top notch cast to the expert direction by William Wyler to the epic music score by Hugo Friedhofer and the gorgeous cinematography by Gregg Toland. The Best Years of Our Lives is one of the best films ever made.

Facts about the film:

In 1946 this became the most successful film at the box office since Gone with the Wind (1939) which was released 7 years earlier.


For his performance as Homer Parrish, Harold Russell became the only actor to win two Academy Awards for the same role.


Myrna Loy receives top billing as she was the most successful female star at the time.

William Wyler, who served as a major in the Army Air Force during World War II, incorporated his own wartime experiences into The Best Years of Our Lives. Just as Fred Derry did in the movie, Wyler flew in B-17s in combat over Germany, although rather than being a bombardier, as Derry was, he filmed footage for documentary films. Additionally, Wyler modeled the reunion of Al and Milly, in which they first see each other at opposite ends of a long hallway, on his own homecoming to his wife, Talli.


This is the first film role for which Cathy O'Donnell, in the role of Wilma Cameron, receives screen credit. Her film debut was in Wonder Man (1945) as an uncredited extra in a nightclub scene.


In 1946 this became the most successful film at the box office since Gone with the Wind (1939) which was released 7 years earlier.


In 2007, the American Film Institute ranked this as the #37 Greatest Movie of All Time.

Happy Birthday Teresa Wright (1918 - 2005)

Happy Birthday to Teresa Wright, my all time movie crush. I absolutely adore her. She was an amazing actress. My favorite films of hers are The Little Foxes (1941), Mrs. Miniver (1942), Shadow of a Doubt (1943), The Best Years Of Our Lives (1946) and The Pride of the Yankess (1942). A very talented and beautiful woman, who should have got more praise than she did. And she was always in Oscar-worthy form -- the only performer ever to be nominated for Oscars for her first three films, The Little Foxes, Mrs. Miniver, and Pride of the Yankees. How's that for amazing?