Wednesday, July 24 @ 7:30 PM / NEIU — The Auditorium at NEIU — 3701 W Bryn Mawr Ave
Tickets: $10 at the door
THE JACKIE ROBINSON STORY
Directed by Alfred E. Green • 1950
By January 1950, Jackie Robinson had already made history as the first Black major league baseball player, been named Rookie of the Year in 1947, and been designated National League MVP in 1949. In the interim between his third and fourth season playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers, Robinson took a detour to California. Hollywood had been contemplating a Robinson biopic for a few years, but the industry instinct to kowtow to Southern exhibitors and to concoct imaginary white mentors for the ballplayer meant that a major studio could not and would not do Robinson’s story justice. Instead, Robinson wound up playing himself in a low-budget independent picture, financed largely by the employees of the fledgling Eagle-Lion Films. (Hardly lavish by Poverty Row standards, the production nevertheless paid Robinson almost 50% more than his Dodgers salary the previous year, and cast up-and-coming American Negro Theatre actress Ruby Dee as his wife Rachel.) Directed by the veteran journeyman Alfred E. Green, who cut his teeth on cheap, quick Warner Bros. pre-Code films like Baby Face, The Jackie Robinson Story offered an inspirational, rat-a-tat dramatic re-enactment of key moments from Robinson’s life, from his childhood in Pasadena and his student days at UCLA to his service in the Army and his time in the Negro Leagues. The film was warmly received, with Bosley Crowther of the New York Times praising it as “a frank and familiar pursual of the old pluck-and-luck routine, with the hero smacking a grand-slam off Jim Crow in the ninth.” (KW)
77 min • Eagle-Lion Films • 35mm from Library of Congress
Preceded by: “Sports Parade: Daredevils on Wheels” (Charles L. Tedford, 1949) – 10 min – 35mm
NEXT UP: Medium Cool on Monday, July 29 at the Music Box
