movieguru

Anyone have a list of classic B&W sports movies, or post your favorites.

I just played recently watched "Pride of the Yankess" and played it for my employees as we're doing a fund drive for ALS research. Always liked this movie even though I'm not really into sports. I thought I'd look for similiar movies to watch like this one. Suggestions?

PopcornTreeCt

Too easy -- Raging Bull

Spottedfeather

I like Angels In The Outfield. You don't actually see the angels like in the version from the 90s that had Tony Danza and Christopher Lloyd, but it's a very well made sports movie.

arminius

Kill the Umpire

Solid Snake

I'm not sure I'd call it a sport movie.

gryffinmaster

I'm sure I could list a few others with a little more concentration, but my mind instantly gravitates to This Sporting Life.

movieguru

While it's B&W, I really wouldn't consider it from the classic B&W era. It came out in 1980 when most films would have been done in color. I have seen this movie though in a film class in college.

PopcornTreeCt

Well, I think it's a sport movie (not in the classical sense) but yeah definitely not from the classic B&W era.

dcrw6

The Most Dangerous Game.

rw2516

Rhubarb
It Happens Every Spring

movieguru

Is this the one from 1932 with Fay Ray? It looks like a horror/adventure film, but still could be interesting to watch.

dcrw6

Sorry, you caught me being a bit of a wiseass. It's about hunting men for sport, so if you count hunting as a sport, it totally qualifies.

movieguru

Yeah, I was wondering if it was serious or not, but i looked at a clip of it on youtube and it looks like it could be an interesting movie. They say that a lot of tv series episodes (like an episode of the Incredible Hulk) and some movies were based off of this movie.

movieguru

Anyone seen The Babe Ruth Story?

edstein

Remember the Titans

Ash Ketchum

THE JACKIE ROBINSON STORY (1950) in which Robinson plays himself.

THE JOE LOUIS STORY (1953) in which Coley Wallace, a dead ringer for Louis, plays the champion boxer--but actual fight footage of Louis from his various bouts is used extensively.

I'm a big fan of boxing movies from the golden age:
CITY FOR CONQUEST (1940) with James Cagney is a masterpiece.
BODY AND SOUL (1947) with John Garfield.
THE SET-UP (1949) with Robert Ryan.
THE HARDER THEY FALL (1956) with Humphrey Bogart as a fight promoter horrified at the way his client, a naive South American boxer brought to the U.S., is exploited by his management team. This was Bogart's last film.

Plus, there's PALOOKA (1934), based on the comic strip, and KID GALAHAD (1937), later remade with Elvis Presley.

Joe E. Brown, a comic actor at Warner Bros. in the 1930s made three very funny baseball movies:
ELMER THE GREAT (1933)
FIREMAN, SAVE MY CHILD (1934)
ALIBI IKE (1935), based on a story by Ring Lardner.
Brown was an athlete himself and did all of his own playing on the field in the film.

You might also want to check out JIM THORPE ALL-AMERICAN (1951), in which Burt Lancaster played the troubled American Indian athlete. I don't think I ever saw the whole thing, so I can't give you a recommendation just yet.


That's what I can come up with off the top of my head.

Solid Snake

Ash, that Bogie film...that really interests me. What's your take on it?

Ginwen

Fear Strikes Out.

Not my favorite but it's not bad.

Mondo Kane

Probably my most favorite Classic boxing movie. I loved the section(s) involving the "Assembly-line" of fighters.

Interesting that Coley Wallace also played Joe Louis (Again!) in Raging Bull.

davidh777

Maybe the thread title should have been "classic (pre-1960 or whatever) sports movies"? Don't really know why B&W matters that much since Raging Bull was my first thought as well.

Of course you can't just say "classic" because then people will interpret that all different ways: Hoosiers, Field of Dreams, etc.

obscurelabel

It's been decades since I've seen Go, Man, Go!, about the Harlem Globetrotters, one of only a few directing credits for cinematographer James Wong Howe. About the only thing I remember about it was being very impressed by Globetrotter Goose Tatum's ability to shoot lay-ins, one after another, without the ball touching the rim. This also features a very young Sidney Poitier.

Night and the City has so much about wrestling that it might qualify.

Knute Rockne, All American is one that I've never seen all the way through, but it's a notable football movie.

The Freshman is one of Harold Lloyd's best; not completely about sports, but football is a major part of the story.

movieguru

My thinking was Raging Bull was intentionally filmed in B&W; not for financial or technological reasons but artistic ones. It was filmed well into the era of color movies. So I don't really consider that a classic B&W era movie on par with Pride of the Yankees. They both came out in 2 very different times. I wouldn't look at Schindler's list and think of it as a classic B&W war movie. Also I would not put Unforgiven as being from the classic era of Westerns.

Paul1957

The Stratton Story (1949) with James Stewart, true story of pitcher Monty Stratton who tried to make a comeback after losing his leg in a hunting accident.

Boba Fett

Aside from the obvious RAGING BULL, I've always loved PAT & MIKE.

Ash Ketchum

It's a good drama, but the original author, Budd Schulberg (ON THE WATERFRONT), was displeased with some of the changes in it, particularly the ending.

Also, Bogie's character is based on a famous promoter/press agent named Harold Conrad, who's quite a fascinating character in his own right, as revealed by people who knew him and by his own writings, in a book I've read called "Dear Muffo," which has some hilarious anecdotes. Bogie plays the character as a typical liberal social crusader type, when Conrad was anything but and didn't take himself anywhere near as seriously as the film does.

But, I did find it an engrossing drama about how boxers are exploited and cheated of their earnings by management teams operating perfectly within legal bounds.