Over 75 years since his death in 1948, George Herman “Babe” Ruth is to this day recognized pretty much everywhere as the greatest player in baseball history. Many of the records the slugger known as “The Sultan of Swat” set in his 22-year career have since been eclipsed. To even casual or non-sports fans, though, the name “Babe Ruth” is still synonymous with diamond glory.
That’s all well and good, but of course this is a movie blog. And as such, we have to pose the question “How was Babe Ruth as an actor?” Yes, I said actor. Along with the countless shots of him in newsreels and sports highlight footage, the Bambino appeared in no less than 10 feature films and short subjects from 1920 to 1941. In all 10 Ruth either played himself or a character based on his life story. Let’s run down the lineup in chronological order:
Headin’ Home (1920) – Babe’s big-screen debut came in this silent drama, made during his first season with the New York Yankees after his contract was sold by Harry Frazee, the short-sighted, know-nothing owner of the Boston Red Sox (sorry, the wound is still a little raw). While watching him in action at New York’s Polo Grounds (this was three years before Yankee Stadium was built), an old fan recounts the story of Ruth’s boyhood and rise to fame. Did you know that Babe grew up in a small town named Haverlock with his doing mother and a precocious foster sister named Pigtails? No one did. It’s not true. Ruth spent part of his youth in his family’s Baltimore bar before his parents, tired of George’s troublemaking ways, shipped him off to a Catholic orphanage/reform school where he lived until he was 19.
Anyway, Movie Babe is sweet on a local girl who is being pursued by the local ballclub’s star pitcher. Babe’s only option is to join a rival squad to beat them, but doing so puts him in danger of being attacked by a lynch mob (!). The melodrama in this maudlin tale is nearly as thick as the pancake makeup that Ruth wears during the game scenes. Fun Fact: The film’s producers promised to pay their homer-hitting star $50,000 but came up short; Ruth sued them but only received half.
Babe Comes Home (1927) – Popeye had his spinach, and in this apparently lost silent film the Babe had his…chewing tobacco? Made the same year that the Bambino walloped a then-record 60 home runs for the Yanks, this First National drama saw Ruth playing “Babe” Dugan, a happy-go-lucky star for the Angels ball team whose fondness for chaw and for muddying his uniform rouses the ire of Vernie (Anna Q. Nilsson), his laundry girl. before you can say “opposites attract” the two are married and Vernie sets out to reform her Angel with the dirty uniform. Dugan tries to live up to his wife’s expectations, but his on-field play suffers. Luckily, Vernie relents and tosses him a wad of tobacco, just in time for him to slam a game-winning home run. I wonder how many kids, after seeing Babe Comes Home, ran out and got some chaw for themselves?
Speedy (1928) – One year after Babe Comes Home, Ruth made a much more favorable–if briefer–impression on moviegoers with his cameo turn in this Harold Lloyd silent gem. Newly hired as a New York City cab driver, baseball fan “Speedy” Swift (Lloyd) is thrilled when none other than the Bambino gets into his taxi. Eager to get his passenger to Yankee Stadium by game time, Speedy manages to terrify Ruth with several near-collisions before arriving in the Bronx. “If I ever want to commit suicide I’ll call you,” Babe tells him, but still offers Harold a ticket to the game. Fun Fact: Ruth’s “Murderer’s Row” teammate, Lou Gehrig, can be seen at Yankee Stadium walking on the other side of the cab and sticking his tongue out at the camera.
Play Ball with Babe Ruth (1932) – In 1932 Ruth signed with Universal Pictures to star in a series of shorts produced by his agent, sportswriter Christy Walsh. Each of the one-reel films– Slide, Babe, Slide; Just Pals; Perfect Control; Fancy Curves; and Over the Fence–featured the Babe, as himself, meeting some would-be ballplayers (usually neighborhood kids) and teaching them an aspect of the game. From stopping a train ride to join in a sandlot game to visiting an orphanage to popping up in a bored schoolboy’s daydream, the stories bring out Ruth’s genuine love for children (no doubt inspired by his own hardscrabble youth). One interesting aspect in Perfect Control comes when the school team’s pitcher just happens to be black, an irony in a time when the pro leagues were still segregated. The most unusual of the shorts has to be Fancy Curves, where Ruth mentors an all-girls squad and even dons a wig to pose as one of the more “zaftig” players. Of course, his ruse is revealed once he smacks a home run.
Home Run on the Keys (1937) – What baseball fan wouldn’t have wanted to go on a hunting trip to a cabin in the woods with the Babe? Well, that’s what happens to radio commentator Byron Gay and songwriter Zez Confrey in this Warner Bros./Vitaphone musical short. Babe reminisces about hitting his “called shot” homer in the 1932 World Series while staring into a roaring fireplace, then helps Confrey devise the title tune and sings it–well, performs it, anyway–on a radio broadcast.
The Pride of the Yankees (1942) – Released the year after the legendary Lou Gehrig passed away from ALS at 37, this moving biopic starred Gary Cooper as the iconic “Iron Horse” and Teresa Wright as his devoted wife Elanor. Several real-life Yankees–Bill Dickey, Mark Koenig, and Bob Meusel–appeared as themselves, but the one audiences wanted most to see was Babe Ruth. Since retiring as a player in 1935, Ruth had a brief tenure as a Brooklyn Dodgers coach in 1938, returning to the Bronx on July 4, 1939, to join in a special tribute to his ailing teammate. This film offered fans a chance to witness Ruth as they remembered him, and the Babe acquits himself nicely in his scenes, with his gravelly voice and jovial demeanor on full display. Just six short years later the man remembered on his Baseball Hall of Fame plaque as the “greatest drawing in [the] history of baseball” would himself pass away from cancer at 53.
Naturally, the above list doesn’t count a trio of Ruthian biodramas. These were 1948’s The Babe Ruth Story, starring William Bendix (himself a Yankees batboy in the early 1920s) in the title role; the 1991 made-for-TV movie Babe Ruth with Stephen Lang; or 1992’s The Babe, with John Goodman as Ruth. There was also a dream sequence appearance by Art LeFleur as Ruth in the 1994 family baseball comedy The Sandlot, and Joe Don Baker played “The Whammer,” a diamond star clearly based on the Babe, in 1984’s The Natural.