Richard Sandomir

The New York times award-winning sports columnist shares the behind-the-scenes story of how the classic film "Pride of the Yankees" came to be created.

Lou Gehrig, Gary Cooper, and the making of a classic

The pride of the Yankees

"I CONSIDER MYSELF THE LUCKIEST MAN ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH." On July 4, 1939, baseball great Lou Gehrig delivered what has been called "baseball's Gettysburg Address" at Yankee Stadium and gave a speech that included the phrase that would become legendary. He died two years later and his fiery widow, Eleanor, wanted nothing more than to keep his memory alive. With her forceful will, she and the irascible producer Samuel Goldwyn quickly agreed to make a film based on Gehrig's life, The Pride of the Yankees. Goldwyn didn't understand -- or care about -- baseball. For him this film was the emotional story of a quiet, modest hero who married a spirited woman who was the love of his life, and, after a storied career, gave a short speech that transformed his legacy. With the world at war and soldiers dying on foreign soil, it was the kind of movie America needed. Using original scrips, letters, memos, and other rare documents, Richard Sandomir tells the behind-the-scenes story of how a classic was born. There was the so-called Scarlett O'Hara-like search to find the actor to play Gehrig; the stunning revelations Elanor made to the scriptwriter Paul Gallico about her life with Lou; the intensive training Cooper underwent to learn how to catch, throw, and hit a baseball for the first time; and the story of two now-legendary Hollywood actors in Gary Cooper and Teresa Wright whose nuanced performances endowed the Gehrigs with upstanding dignity and cemented the baseball icon's legend. Sandomir writes with great insight and aplomb, painting a fascinating portrait of a bygone Hollywood era, a mourning widow with a dream, and the shadow a legend cast on one of the greatest sports films of all time.

Lou Gehrig, Gary Cooper, and the Making of a Classic

The Pride of the Yankees

Men with Less Hair - and the Women Who Love Them

The Joy of Baldness

Mark Reiter

Edited by Mark Reiter and Richard Sandomir, and featuring contributions from experts on everything from breakfast cereal and movie gunfights to First Ladies and bald guys, The Final Four of Everything celebrates everything that's great, surprising, or silly in America, using the foolproof method of bracketology to determine what we love or hate-and why. As certain to make you laugh as it will start friendly arguments, The Final Four of Everything is the perfect book for know-it-alls, know-a-littles, and anyone with an opinion on celebrity mugshots, literary heroes, sports nicknames, or bacon. Bracketology is a unique way of organizing information that dates back to the rise of the knockout (or single elimination) tournament, perhaps in medieval times. Its origins are not precisely known, but there was genius in the first bracket design that hasn't changed much over the years. You, of course, may be familiar with the bracket format via the NCAA basketball tournament pairings each March. If you've ever watched ESPN or participated in a March Madness office pool, you know what a bracket looks like. The Final Four of Everything takes the idea one step further, and applies the knockout format to every category BUT basketball. In areas where taste, judgment, and hard-earned wisdom really matter, we've set out to determine, truly, the Final Four of Everything.

The Final Four of Everything

Nigel Holmes

Every March, the NCAA men's basketball tournament blankets newspapers and the Internet, and attracts millions of television viewers over the course of three weeks. Will a perennial favorite like Duke win? Or will it be a dark horse like Gonzaga? The phenomenon known as March Madness galvanizes a nation of viewers as few other sports events can. The reason? Bracketology. America eagerly watches as 64 teams become 32, then 16, then 8, then 4, then 2, and finally #1. Now it's time to use the same rigorous method for everything that really matters in culture, people, history, the arts and more. In The Enlightened Bracketologist the editors have organized the world's most haunting and maddeningly subjective questions into a scheme of binary pairings that finally reveal what is truly the best in its class: La Tache or Chateau Latour? (1) Barry Bonds or Terrell Owens? (2) "Vissi d'arte" or "Dove Sono"? (3) OJ verdict or JFK assassination? (4) "Top of the world, Ma" or "Nobody's perfect"? (5) Two by two, The Enlightened Bracketologist pits our cultural mainstays against each other; only the finest survive. Every double-page spread of this book will contain a series of brackets compiled by experts and celebrities, with text call-outs that highlight the reason why one competitor moves on and another doesn't. Already committed are Elvis Costello on popular songs; David Bouley on cookbooks; Leon Fleisher on piano music; Reneé Fleming on opera arias; Henry Beard on French phrases; Joseph Ward on wine.

Richard Sandomir

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