The Pride of St. Louis

This is the story of Jerome 'Dizzy' Dean, Hall of Fame pitcher of the St. Louis Cardinals. An injury caused early retirement, a bout with drinking and gambling; but his down home manner led to another career...baseball radio/tv announcing.

Dan Dailey is kind of ho-hum in his attempts at Dean's hayseed mannerisms. Richard Crenna plays Paul Dean, Dizzy's brother, who also pitched for the Cardinals.

Very little actual baseball action, but the movie is interesting and fun to watch. All little boys that have an interest in baseball should watch this along with PRIDE of THE YANKEES and the BABE RUTH STORY.

Also in the cast are Richard Hylton, Joanne Dru, Stuart Randall and Hugh Sanders. Remember to take a good whack and don't forget to slud into second.

Dan Dailey gives a sincere and colorful performance as the great Dizzy Dean. His handling of the character is very true to life and captures the flavor of Dean's background and limited education. The film of course centers around Dizzy Deans rise to fame and his sudden trip to the sidelines with an injury he chose to ignore, much to his regret. His wife is splendidly portrayed by Joanna Dru who gives a very down to earth quality to the woman who loved and supported the ballplayer who rose to a "dizzying height" so quickly. The portrayal of Dizzy's later career as a sportscaster is honest and unflinching, reflecting his troubles which stemmed from his poor education and his colorful language both on and off the air. Dizzy was quite a character and Daily has breathed life into his story with admirable skill. If you enjoyed this film, I recommend the comedy "Kid from Left Field" (1953) wherein Daily plays a down and out has-been ballplayer idolized by his young son (Billy Chapin). Daily again fleshes out a ballplayer in a completely satisfying manner. I heartily recommend Pride of St. Louis to baseball fans everywhere.

Ok, so this is not as good as Pride of the Yankees; just like the Cardinals are not as great as the Yankee franchise. But as far as the National League goes, the Cardinals are the best of the bunch.; better than the Giants, Dodgers, or Cubs. They have more World Series rings to prove it, too. This film is very close to Pride of the Yankees in several ways. Gehrig caught a bad break with his terrible disease, and Dean had a magnificent career cut short by a stroke of horrible luck from a line drive to the most pivotal part of a pitcher's body, the big toe. Simply put, if you land the wrong way on your foot and toe, the arm will quickly go to pot. At least Gehrig got to play fifteen years with the Yankees before his unfortunate end. The injury to Dean happened just a few years into his career. The acting in this film is very good; as are all the supporting cast members and especially the dialogue. Dean' s rebirth and affirmation as the best color man in baseball history is readily apparent in the film. Only Phil Rizzuto came close as an unforgettable color announcer. A must see film for every baseball fan.

"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.

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.