A Love Affair: The Eleanor and Lou Gehrig Story

A Love Affair: The Eleanor and Lou Gehrig Story (1978)

** (out of 4)

Made-for-TV film about how Eleanor (Blythe Danner) and Lou Gehrig (Edward Herrmann) met, fought and eventually fell in love. The film takes place as an elderly Eleanor is at Yankee Stadium telling her story to a reporter and this is when we flashback throughout her life. I was really disappointed by this film for a number of reasons but perhaps the biggest is the fact that they tried something different and didn't do anything with it. I say that because most movies would have had Lou as the #1 thing but this film actually makes him second and places the wife as the lead story. It would have been interesting seeing Lou's life from the eyes of his wife but this rarely happens. Instead the film deals with a lot of boring melodrama that never really adds up to anything and after a while you start to wish that Lou really was the main focus. I guess the point of the film was to show that the baseball great, known as the Iron Man, had a strong supporting character at home in his wife. The problem is that there are simply so many scenes that just come across flat, lifeless and without a bit of energy and after a while the entire thing becomes quite boring. I'd also question some of the directorial choices like the now legendary speech that Lou gave after being forced to retire. The way the speech is shown here was just a complete mistake and this wonderful, iconic moment is left without much passion or soul. Danner at least manages to deliver a strong performance, which is one plus going for the film. I also thought Ramon Bieri was pretty good as Babe Ruth and we got nice support from Jane Wyman as Eleanor's mother and Patricia Neal is very memorable as Gehrig's mother. Not for a second did I buy Herrmann in the role of Lou and this here was a major mistake with the picture.

I gave it 9 because no one believes 10. First touch: Lou comes home and makes love to his wife on the bathroom floor. Second touch: Lou defends his wife in German against his mother starting with, "Mutter," lay off. The Yankees were owned by Jacob Rupert. My Irish-German-American friend had a grandfather, last name Teufel (devil) who was a truck driver for Rupert Breweries. So, my friend was an ardent Yankees fan. Germans were mistreated in the 1920s because of the negative war propaganda. A kind of cancel culture thing. All the other good things have been said by other reviewers. I just liked it. And Blythe Danner, too.

I know of no two human lives that are more clearly "stories" than that of the two great Yankee teammates, Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. Most lives a litany of events, some of which are part of "stories" that cut diagonally across the life rather than encompassing it and driving it forward. Those stories do not emanate from or thus reveal the character of the person portrayed.

Ruth was an undisciplined man-child with a prodigious talent that enabled him to reinvent and save his sport and made him the symbol of his era, a time when America was emerging as a world power and breaking the bonds of its own traditions to create a more modern and exciting way of living. But he offended not only the traditionalists but the businessmen who controlled his sport- or used to until he came along. When age and his lifestyle began to catch to him, they disposed of him for all but ceremonial purposes. Meanwhile his age passed and the world grew more serious. He wound up lonely and depressed and became a cancer victim at the early age of 53.

Gehrig was a serious, dutiful momma's boy, also blessed with a prodigious talent that thrust him into where he most hated to be- the limelight. It's interesting that the worst year of his prime was the one year he didn't have either Ruth or DiMaggio as a teammate, 1935. He fared much better in their shadow. He was noted, by those who noted him, as a strong, reliable workhorse of a man and a player, someone you could count on. He was amazingly beset by a disease which robbed him of his strength, the very quality in him people most admired. And that in turn, thrust him directly into the lime light. People didn't think he could respond but he looked into his heart and said what was there and nobody ever forgot it.

How could you miss telling stories like that? But amazingly, Hollywood has always seemed to get Lou's story right and the Babe's wrong. Even though there were casting problems in all the movies made about them, the quality of "Pride of the Yankees" and of "A Love Affair: The Eleanor and Lou Gehrig Story" is superb on both counts. Meanwhile "The Babe Ruth Story" is one of the worst movies ever made and both the TV movie "Babe Ruth" and the film "The Babe" are deeply flawed.

"Pride of the Yankees" is old fashioned Hollywood sentiment but done by experts. I find Teresa Wright's alternate clowning and crying to be a little too much and I've heard all the stories about Gary Cooper's attempts to learn how to play baseball, (he was a cowboy and an artist but no ball-player). But he was a great actor and he got to the essence of the character beautifully. His delivery of the final speech is perfect, for which reason he was asked to repeat it to the troops over and over during his travels during WWII. I'll be loving it- always.

"A Love Affair" turns the story around a bit by concentrating more on Eleanor, (Blythe Danner), and giving some of the grittier details of their life, including Lou's feud with the Babe that ended on the day he gave his speech. Edward Herrmann is also a fine actor but he's hardly convincing as an athlete known for his impressive physique and his reading of the speech is more of an actor's oration. The film does not end with the speech, as it should have but takes up to Gehrig's actual death. Still, it's a compelling story.

"The Babe" is the "Gone With the Wind" of Babe Ruth movies, which isn't saying much. But is a good retelling of his life and Goodman enacts the part superbly. It ends at the right moment, with Ruth hitting his last three home runs in one game in Pittsburgh to stick it to those who were jeering him. But Goodman is twice the size Ruth ever was. The Babe, as old photos show, was about 200 pounds when his career started and worked his way up to perhaps 250 pounds when he quit. Goodman must have been a minimum of 350 pounds when he filmed this movie and sent the wrong message: that you can be a blimp and still be the greatest player in the sport, an image that baseball people really resent.

While casting is not the only problem, it could have been improved and that might have helped. Physically, someone like Dick Foran or Wayne Morris would have been a better match for Gehrig than Cooper but they wouldn't have given as good a performance. Kurt Russell, (who played some minor league ball), or Jeff Bridges would have been a much better choice for "A Love Story", than Hermann. That other "Reilly", Jackie Gleason, would have been a much better choice than Bendix for "The Babe Ruth Story", (especially if he had eaten the script). Maybe the best time to do a Ruth movie and do it right would have been after Roger Maris broke his record. Either Claude Akins, (my favorite choice of all), or Simon Oakland would have made excellent Ruths. Ramon Bieri was a good Ruth in "A Love Story". I'm not sure who would play him these days.

Of course the best performance as Babe Ruth was by the guy who played him in "Pride of the Yankees".

This film is a completely different and much more truthful look at the Lou Gehrig story than "Pride of the Yankees" and is told from the point of view of his wife, Eleanor. The 1978 NBC TV World Priemiere Movie was based on the 1976 Book "My Luke and I" by Eleanor Gehrig and Joseph Durso.

The time span covered is from just before the Gehrig's first meeting until Lou's death. This film is about husband and wife and their life in and around baseball in the thirties, not simply the Iron Horse story of the forties film.

I have viewed the movie several times and just recently acquired and read the book. The film is extremely true to the facts set forth in the book and sheds a different light on the relationships between Gehrig and his wife, his mother, and his teammate, Babe Ruth. Blythe Danner is excellent as usual while portraying Eleanor Gehrig at several different ages.

Just as Gary Cooper was physically miscast in "The Pride of the Yankees" so was Edward Herrmann in this film. However, they both did admirable jobs in getting the character of Gehrig right in so far as the goal of each film was concerned.

The other reviewer makes mention that Gehrig flourished in the shadow of others and uses his sub par (by Gehrig's standards only) 1935 season as an example. This is something that is his own surmise as it doesn't come up in either movie. However, in the book we learn that even after his triple crown winning performance in 1934 Gehrig went through a long salary dispute and threatened holdout with Jacob Ruppert, the Yankees tight-fisted owner. The dispute was over a $1,000 difference in salary with Lou eventually accepting $39,000 instead of $40,000. Eleanor states in the book that Lou was disheartened by his perceived unfair treatment at the hands of Ruppert.

Also, despite the fact that this movie does a much better job of realistically depicting the onset of the disease than the previous version, it doesn't have the time to go into the time-line and details. Gehrig was actually having sporadic and unexplained bouts of extreme pain, which started in 1935. Only his resolve, dedication to excellence and work ethic allowed him to continue to put up big numbers for a few more years.

The style of the film is a little different, as it makes frequent use of the flashback, in fact starting with Mrs. Gehrig talking to the writer, Durso, in present day Yankee stadium and telling her story to him there. We then have moments of fun as the Gehrigs meet, court, marry and enjoy life, interspersed with moments of grief as the disease begins to take its toll.

An interesting supporting cast, a beautiful musical theme and some tasteful directing make this one of the best small budget T.V. movies that I have ever seen. I highly recommend it.