Baseball and American Culture
April 3–30, 2006

Baseball is neither a metaphor for life nor the quintessential emblem of American culture. And while film has often been employed to place baseball in the larger context of American character, it too cannot be the last word in interpreting the sport for America and the world. But the marriage of baseball and film has produced some wonderful moments. This retrospective attempts to explore the baseball movie and how it has defined the way Americans view the game and their own relationship—in terms of class, race, and gender in particular—to the great American pastime. In addition, as much of the currency of cinema lies in mythmaking, this series presents some truly fantastic characters, from the real-life Babe Ruth to a figment of Bernard Malamud’s imagination.

Organized by Dr. Carl E. Prince, former chairman of the History Department at New York University and author of Brooklyn’s Dodgers: The Bums, The Borough, and the Best of Baseball; and Charles Silver, Associate Curator, Department of Film and Media. Thanks to Sony Pictures Entertainment, MCA/ Universal, Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., Spike TV, and Dr. Andrew Cooper.

Bang the Drum Slowly. 1973. USA. Directed by John Hancock. Screenplay by Mark Harris, based on his novel. With Michael Moriarity, Robert De Niro, Vincent Gardenia. This study of the relationship between two very dissimilar ballplayers—played by two remarkable young stars—raises issues of masculinity and gender long before their vogue in academic and political discourse. 97 min.
Monday, April 3, 6:00 (introduced by Dr. Carl E. Prince). T2; Saturday, April 15, 6:00 (followed by short film Before the Game, introduced by director Scott Mlyn). T1

A Biographical Doubleheader:
Headin’ Home. 1920. USA. Supervised by R.A. (Raoul) Walsh. Directed by Lawrence Windom. With George Herman (Babe) Ruth, Ruth Taylor, William Sheer. The Babe’s first film is an apocryphal biography, transporting him from his urban Baltimore roots to pastoral upstate New York. The movie was made shortly after the infamous, curse-creating deal that sent him from the Red Sox to the Yankees. This is the premiere of the Museum’s 35mm restoration of a long-unavailable film. Silent, with piano accompaniment by Stuart Oderman. Approx. 50 min.
The Jackie Robinson Story. 1950. USA. Directed by Alfred Green. Screenplay by Arthur Mann, Lawrence Taylor. With Jackie Robinson, Ruby Dee, Louise Beavers. Robinson, playing himself, is surprisingly effective in this depiction of his early life and struggles to reach the Dodgers. Though modest in scope, the film seems to anticipate the star’s major role in transforming not just baseball, but America itself. 76 min.
Monday, April 3, 8:00 (introduced by Dr. Carl E. Prince and Dr. David Levering Lewis, winner of two Pulitzer prizes for his biography of W. E. B. Du Bois); Sunday, April 16, 1:00 (introduced by Prince). T1

The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg. 2000. USA. Directed by Aviva Kempner. This award-winning documentary explores the impact of American anti-Semitism on the career of this great Jewish player. 95 min.
Wednesday, April 5, 6:00 (introduced by the filmmaker). T2

The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings. 1976. USA. Directed by John Badham. Screenplay by Hal Barwood, Matthew Robbins, based on the novel by William Brashler. With Billy Dee Williams, James Earl Jones, Richard Pryor. A lightly comic look at the legendary Negro League, with homages to Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson. The character played by the recently deceased Richard Pryor raises troubling issues of baseball’s wobbly color line—even before the team of Robinson and Rickey obliterated it. 110 min.
Wednesday, April 5, 8:00. T2; Wednesday, April 19, 6:00. T1

Bull Durham. 1988. USA. Written and directed by Ron Shelton. With Kevin Costner, Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins. This highly entertaining romantic comedy deals deftly with gender stereotypes, magnifying the flaws in the macho male character within the context of both love and baseball. 108 min.
Friday, April 7, 8:30; Saturday, April 15, 8:30. T1

A League of Their Own. 1992. USA. Directed by Penny Marshall. Screenplay by Lowell Ganz, Babaloo Mandel. With Tom Hanks, Geena Davis, Madonna. This very funny account of the real-life women’s baseball league—necessitated by a dearth of men during the Second World War—is also a wry look at the objectification of women in prefeminist American culture. 128 min.
Sunday, April 9, 5:30 (T2); Sunday, April 30, 2:00 (T1)

Cobb. 1994. USA. Written and directed by Ron Shelton. With Tommy Lee Jones, Robert Wuhl, Lolita Davidovich. Jones is brilliant as Ty Cobb, as spectacular a hitter as he was a mean-spirited, racist S.O.B., Cobb shows how the maggoty underbelly of America could cohabit with the national pastime. 128 min.
Monday, April 10, 8:30; Sunday, April 30, 5:00. T1

Field of Dreams. 1989. USA. Directed by Phil Alden Robinson.  Screenplay by Robinson, based on the novella by W.P. Kinsella. With Kevin Costner, Amy Madigan, Ray Liotta. Robinson’s script skillfully evokes Shoeless Joe Jackson’s working-class roots as the basis of a modern myth with some magical touches only possible in cinema. 106 min.
Wednesday, April 12, 6:00 (introduced by Dr. Carl E. Prince); Sunday, April 16, 5:45. T1

Eight Men Out. 1988. USA. Directed by John Sayles. Screen-play by Sayles, based on the book by Eliot Asinof. With John Cusack, David Strathairn, D.B. Sweeney, Charlie Sheen. Sayles’s painstaking reconstruction of the Black Sox Scandal emphasizes the working-class roots of its tragically befuddled heroes and also uses "Shoeless" Joe Jackson as emblematic of an age. 119 min.
Friday, April 14, 8:30; Monday, April 17, 8:15. T1

Viva Baseball. 2005. USA. Directed by Dan Klores. This powerful documentary explores the long and successful struggle to open the game to Latino players of many nationalities. 97 min.
Thursday, April 13, 6:00 (introduced by the filmmaker); Sunday, April 23, 1:00. T1

The Natural. 1984. USA. Directed by Barry Levinson. Screen-play by Roger Towne, Phil Dusenberry, based on the novel by Bernard Malamud. With Robert Redford, Robert Duvall, Glenn Close. In this loose adaptation of Malamud’s novel, gender issues and fantasy loom large in one of the most "cinematic" of baseball movies. 134 min.
Friday, April 21, 8:30; Wednesday, April 26, 8:00. T1

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