If you're a baseball fan, you're bound to come across the name of Dizzy Dean at some point. His playing days were a couple of decades before my time and I never got a chance to see him, so it was cool to catch this film about his playing days with the St. Louis Cardinals and later, the Chicago Cubs. I don't know a whole lot about the man so I'm wary if the characterization by Dan Dailey was on the mark or not, or whether the picture took a lot of poetic license in telling the story. But for what you have, it's an entertaining movie.
There were two scenes that were impressively done that I'm still thinking about. In each one, Dean's brother Paul (Richard Crenna) and later Dizzy himself are hit by a struck pitch directly back to the mound as sizzling line drives. Both times it looked very real and not a camera trick, and I had to wonder how the film makers pulled it off. It's probably something simple but I don't think I've ever seen anything like it.
You have to hand it to Dizzy though. His home spun ways of talking and carrying on certainly made him a fan favorite, which carried on to the broadcast booth once he finally came to terms with his playing days being over. Joanne Dru appeared ideal for the part of Mrs. Dizzy Dean, her warm and understanding temperament seemed almost too perfect and I'm sure there was more to the relationship than what's shown on screen.
On the face of it, it seems like the title of the film was meant to convey a similar idea that "The Pride of the Yankees" did for Lou Gherig a decade earlier. Comparing them as players would be a futile exercise since Dean was a pitcher and Gherig played outfield and was a tremendous batter. But if Dan Dailey's characterization of Jerome Herman Dean in the picture is close to the mark, he would have been a pretty good guy in anyone's book. No wonder the neighborhood kids would ask for him to come out and play.
There were two scenes that were impressively done that I'm still thinking about. In each one, Dean's brother Paul (Richard Crenna) and later Dizzy himself are hit by a struck pitch directly back to the mound as sizzling line drives. Both times it looked very real and not a camera trick, and I had to wonder how the film makers pulled it off. It's probably something simple but I don't think I've ever seen anything like it.
You have to hand it to Dizzy though. His home spun ways of talking and carrying on certainly made him a fan favorite, which carried on to the broadcast booth once he finally came to terms with his playing days being over. Joanne Dru appeared ideal for the part of Mrs. Dizzy Dean, her warm and understanding temperament seemed almost too perfect and I'm sure there was more to the relationship than what's shown on screen.
On the face of it, it seems like the title of the film was meant to convey a similar idea that "The Pride of the Yankees" did for Lou Gherig a decade earlier. Comparing them as players would be a futile exercise since Dean was a pitcher and Gherig played outfield and was a tremendous batter. But if Dan Dailey's characterization of Jerome Herman Dean in the picture is close to the mark, he would have been a pretty good guy in anyone's book. No wonder the neighborhood kids would ask for him to come out and play.