The Pride of the Yankees: Lou Gehrig, Gary Cooper, and the Making of a Classic Audiobook (Free)

‘I CONSIDER MYSELF THE LUCKIEST MAN ON THE FACIAL SKIN OF THE EARTH.’

On July 4, 1939, baseball great Lou Gehrig delivered what continues to be called ‘baseball’s Gettysburg Address’ at Yankee Stadium and gave a talk that included the expression that could become famous. He died 2 yrs later and his fiery widow, Eleanor, needed only to keep his storage alive. With her forceful will, she as well as the irascible producer Samuel Goldwyn quickly agreed to make a film predicated on Gehrig’s lifestyle, The Satisfaction about The Satisfaction from the Yankees: Lou Gehrig, Gary Cooper, and the Making of a Classic from the Yankees. Goldwyn didn’t understand–or treatment about–baseball. For him this film was the psychological story of the quiet, modest hero who married a spirited woman who was simply the like of his life, and, after a storied profession, gave a brief speech that transformed his legacy. Using the globe at war and soldiers dying on international soil, it was the type of movie America required.

Using original scrips, characters, memos, and various other rare documents, Richard Sandomir tells the behind-the-scenes tale of what sort of classic was born. There was the so-called Scarlett O’Hara-like search to get the actor to try out Gehrig; the beautiful revelations Elanor made to the scriptwriter Paul Gallico about her existence with Lou; the interval training Cooper underwent to understand how to capture, throw, and strike a football for the very first time; and the story of two now-legendary Hollywood actors in Gary Cooper and Teresa Wright whose nuanced shows endowed the Gehrigs with upstanding dignity and cemented the football icon’s legend.

Sandomir writes with great understanding and aplomb, painting a fascinating portrait of the bygone Hollywood era, a mourning widow with a dream, as well as the darkness a legend cast using one of the greatest sports films ever.