The Pride of St. Louis

In a sport that prizes quirkiness and treasures it's characters, one of the greatest of them from the 1930s was pitcher Dizzy Dean. He was so colorful a personality he was probably elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame on the strength of that as opposed to his pitching statistics. After all part of the Dean story is that early end to his career.

In the Pride of St. Louis Dan Dailey successfully captures the character of Dizzy Dean, at least the Dean I remember. I'm not old enough to remember him pitching, but I do remember him broadcasting Baseball Game of the Week during the 1960s. For that's part of the Dean story as well, being a pioneer broadcaster on radio and later television. Now that announcers are in the Hall of Fame, there's no question Dizzy belongs there.

Jerome Herman Dean was one of a tribe of sharecropper's kids who had very little schooling, but an amazing talent for throwing a baseball at blinding speed. In fact he had a younger brother Paul Dean who was a pretty good pitcher himself.

Richard Crenna plays Paul in this film and it's one of his earliest film roles. Paul Dean in real life was a quiet retiring sort who's career was also cut short by injuries. Because of that Crenna isn't given much to work with. During the Dean heyday, sportswriters tried to pin the nickname of Daffy on Paul, but it never took.

Joanne Dru, taking a break from playing, western gals in gingham dresses and corsets is first rate as the wise, patient, and understanding Patricia Nash who met and married Dizzy while he was playing for Houston in the Texas League.

In the 1937 All Star Game Dizzy started for the National League. Facing Cleveland's Earl Averill, Dean was hit on the foot by a line drive smack at him. Refusing to listen to medical advice, Dean came back to pitch too early. He'd broken a big toe and put too much of a strain on his arm. He was never the same pitcher and his refusal to accept that is part of the story.

Had he had a career of say ten to fifteen years who knows what pitching statistics he might have rolled up. Dean was the next to last pitcher to win 30 games in 1934 and after Denny McLain(who was something of a character himself)did it 1968 it hasn't been done since.

Dean went into broadcasting and while he was not the first former player to go into the broadcast booth, his colorful game descriptions made him an instant hit. He started broadcasting for the other St. Louis team, the Browns, and the Browns were a pretty miserable team with not much to cheer about. Dean became a star attraction there.

Of course part of the Dean story is the trouble he got into because of his lack of education and his colorful way of expressing himself on the air. That's part of the story I won't go into, but in the film it's handled with tact and humility and your eyes might moisten if you tend to the sentimental.

A fine baseball film, a real tribute to an American success story.

Pride of St. Louis, The (1952)

*** (out of 4)

Pretty good bio-pic about Jerome "Dizzy" Dean (Dan Dailey), a redneck who rose through the minors at a quick pace to end up with the St. Louis Cardinals and for a time be one of the greatest pitchers in the lead. After being injured during the All-Star game, Dizzy's career quickly fell apart and his personal life grew more issues as he was unable to accept that his career was over. It seems after the success of PRIDE OF THE YANKEES, just about every major personality in baseball eventually got their own movie and this one here has quite a few negatives but the wonderful performance by Dailey makes it worth sitting through. I think the biggest problem is that a lot of the subject matter is obviously sugar-coated as there are times where it seems Dizzy is going through some extremely dark issues with his attitude and some of his habits yet this are downplayed. I'm not sure if they were originally shown more but they decided to tone them down to be more kid friendly but it's just way too obvious at certain parts of the film. Another weak aspect is that the movie doesn't seem to know what they want to tell us about Dizzy as the film bounces around quite a bit and at times has a hard time on what part of the story it wants to focus on. With that said, there's still some very entertaining moments here including a couple very touching ones. One such moment happens when Dizzy meets a crippled man and starts up a relationship with him. Another moment happens towards the end of the picture when Dizzy gets a job as a radio broadcaster but a certain teachers group starts to complain about his language. Since he was uneducated he used a lot of words he shouldn't and this leads to a very good ending. The main reason to watch this thing is for the performance of Dailey who really takes this character and makes it his own. The way he handles the "redneck" language is very good but the biggest thing is that he brings this wonderful personality to life and really makes you feel as if you're watching the real man. He also handles the baseball scenes fairly well and in the end he's extremely memorable in the role. Joanne Dru also delivers as his wife and Richard Crenna is fun as the brother. The screenplay got an Oscar-nomination and while I didn't care for the way it handled parts of the story, there's no denying that the dialogue is terrific. The way it captures Dean's language made for some great fun and especially in the early scenes as the pitcher constantly gets ahead of himself no matter what he's doing. This certainly isn't the greatest baseball movie ever made but for fans of the sport it's a must-see thanks in large part to the main performance.

I remember "Ol Diz" broadcasting those Saturday games with partner Pee Wee Reese, the former Dodger and teammate of Jackie Robinson. It was so much fun to listen to him butcher the English language (for example, "He slud into third base). But we forget that he was a great pitcher for the notorious St. Louis Cardinals. He was known for being a bit hard to control, doing things his own way. He also had a reputation for being a bit less than intellectual. The famous story after he was struck by a lie drive, led with the headline, "Doctors Examine Dean's Head. Find Nothing." This is a charming little movie with a good performance by Dan Dailey. The title is much like the great Lou Gehrig's tribute, "The Pride of the Yankees." Obviously, this one didn't gain the foothold that that one did, but then Dean wasn't the tragic figure Lou was. This is a nice movie with a quirky guy making it big. Dean will always be one of my favorites and I'm glad there is a movie about him.

"Pride of St. Louis" is aptly named, as like "Pride of the Yankees", the film was written by the great screenwriter, Herman Mankiewicz. However, despite this, I kept questioning throughout the film how much of this was fact and how much was fancy. Well, according to Wikipedia, which I quote above, it is REASONABLY close to the facts! In other words, it's kind of his life...kind of not! This, along with the odd casting of 37 year-old Dan Dailey (who looked older, incidentally) took me out of the film and led me to believe I was watching a lot of fiction!

Now doing a film about the career of Jerome 'Dizzy' Dean is a bit unusual because the man only had five good years in the major leagues until he was injured and apparently washed up. The same was true of his brother, Paul 'Daffy' Dean...though his career was even shorter. Overall, it's an enjoyable film but if you want to learn about the real Dean, you might want to keep looking elsewhere.

Dan Dailey is a bright spot in this otherwise run of the mill baseball movie that could have been so much better. Like most films that deal with baseball, you don't get the idea that you are seeing anything close to realistic play on the field. If you love baseball as I do, try Pride of the Yankees, with Gary Cooper. In it many of the Yankee players actually were seen on the filed including the great Babe Ruth.