The potters herald. [volume] (East Liverpool, Ohio) 1899-1982, 1948-09-30
Labor Looks at Hollywood

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My seven year old son loves
baseball. l took him to see the
movie THE Babe Ruth Story; he
liked it.
When this motion picture was re-
leased, it was laughed at and sharp
ly criticized by both motion pic
ture critics and baseball writer's be-
cause of its general atmosphere of
unreality, its sentimentality, and
of the way it turned Babe Ruth in
to kind of unreal clown-hero.
Brief mention of a few episodes
in the picture can suggest its char
acter. There is one sequence of Babe
Ruth during spring training. Babe
hits a home run of record breaking
length. A father has brought a
crippled little boy to see Babe Ruth.
Babe, after hitting the homer,
passes by the boy, and says:
"Howya kid" The boy stands up.
In other words, Babes "Howya
kid" produces miracle. A paralyz-
ed boy is cured.
During batting pactice at Com
iskey Park in Chicago, Babe
smacks a ball foul and it hits the
beloved dog of freckled urchin.
The Babe is so stricken with guilt
that he grabs the dog and boy, and,
in spiked shoes and uniform, rushes
to hospital and gets a doctor to
perform an emergency operation on
the dog. Babe misses the days
game. This is made the occasion Of
a suspension Of the Babe by Man
ager Muller Higgins and the inn
position of five thousand dollar
fine on him.
During the world series of 1882,
father phones Ruth, and asks for
an autographed ball for his critic
ally i'll son. Babe Immediately visits
the sick boy in Gary, Indiana. When
Babe appears, the father-a simple
man and probably a workingman
becomes unbelievably fawning.
He could not have been more awed
if it were God instead of Babe Ruth
coming to see him. Briefly the
man j. obsequious.
Here we can see Hollywood glor-
flying itself, Again and again, the
Hollywood hero is treated as a
kindly deity, and simple people
fawn before him with obsequious
gratitude. This is, really, a pictor-
ialization of the publicity stories
which Hollywood press agents
send out. 1t is advertising, and it
helps to explain one Of the import
ant reasons for the kind of falsity
and sentimentality of with which
picture makers surround so many
heroes. They are advancing their
own interests.
When Babe Ruth is getting too
old to play any longer, he is pre-
sented as tho he might be stumble
bum. He can't even catch a fly
ball hit directly to him. He falls
down like an actor trying to catch
a baseball Ruth, in his declining
days as player, was not like this.
A more important point in this:
Ruth does not act for himself as
every human being does. He has no
real motivation of his own. He hits
home runs and does everything
else for the kiddies. 1t is a known
fact that the real Babe Ruth did
do many things for boys. But this
is different from motion picture
which makes clown out a real
person and then does not give him
his own motives, his own personal
ity, and his own weaknesses.
This is just false, totally false
And when we present people false
ly we do not truly glorify them
We take from them what is hu-
man in their nature. Hollywood
considers that criticisms such as
mine are highfalutin'. 1t argues
that it gives the people what they
want. And it, in effect, says that
the people want falsity.
/, for one, do not believe this.
And ! thought about it after | took
my own son to see this film and
learned that he liked it. But talk
ing to him and thinking of the film,
one point became clear. My own
boy, and many other boys, would
have liked picture about Babe
Ruth that was true and direct and