Headin' Home

For anyone wanting to find out about the real life Babe Ruth, this "true story" should be avoided at all costs! Created in 1920, this film purports to be about the Bambino and his rise to fame, but frankly almost none of it bears any similarity to the slugger. In the film, he's a small town boy who is shy and unassuming. In real life, he grew up in the "rustic small town" of Baltimore, Maryland and was a bit of a juvenile delinquent--but I guess this image makes for a rather unappealing film! Now the fact that they played so fast and loose with the facts wasn't totally awful--after all, many of our heroes of times past have an aura of fiction about them. But the fiction they created is so schmaltzy and saccharine that it becomes almost laughable. Babe does practically everything in the film but walk on water and heal the sick! The fact that many at the time believed this is what is so amazing about this film. The only truth in the film is that the writers describe his as ugly--something I am surprised Ruth allowed. I guess he wasn't too hung up about his looks.

Speaking of looks, Babe is quite young in the film--and rather trim after his first season with the Yankees. Oddly, though, he'd been a very famous pitcher with the Red Sox but this is never alluded to in the film--but his prowess with the bat sure is. In fact, in the movie he made the bat himself--something reminiscent of Robert Redford's character in THE NATURAL.

Now I am sure you gather that the historical aspects of this film are dubious, at best. As for the entertainment value and quality of the film, it's not bad--especially for 1920. While people today will most likely laugh at the silly and over-the-top plot, the audience of 1920 ate it up and the film was well-produced and kept my interest.

Overall, I give it a 7 as entertainment and a 1 for historical accuracy!

Babe Ruth comes from a hick town and gets involved in a lot of situations. He ends up as a baseball player.

Whoever came up with this idea should have been hit with a baseball bat. An iconic sports figure, one of the most famous of all time, is reduced to a guy growing up in the sticks, rescuing his kid sister's dog from the pound, breaking up a romance between his girl and a louse, and playing very little baseball. This might be suitable for a Charles Ray film, but not a larger-than-life sports legend. Dull in the extreme, I kept dozing off.

I tried to amuse myself by comparing scenes to other films. For instance, Babe is constantly shown whittling a piece of wood to make a bat, like Joe Don Baker in "Walking Tall."

Then, in an exhibition game in his hometown (in which he inexplicably plays for the visiting team), he breaks a bat. His kid sister then hands him his homemade bat, and he hits a homerun, like Robert Redford in "The Natural" (which of course featured Joe Don Baker as "The Whammer," a Babe Ruth knockoff).

After Ruth hits the homerun (again, for the visiting team), the townspeople chase him all over the place - like a Benny Hill sketch (absent Joe Don Baker).

The beginning of Ruth's career, as a pitcher with the Boston Red Sox, is completely ignored. We see very little footage of him playing for the Yankees, and those scenes are just thrown in without any context. Apparently, the filmmakers thought we'd be more interested in Ruth's life pre-baseball, most of which was made up. Big mistake.

It's rare professional athletes play themselves in numerous films. Baseball's Herman Ruth was that rare exception, portraying himself in ten movies, the first in September 1920's "Headin' Home." The fictional biography of Babe's upbringing and how he broke into professional baseball was filmed during his first season with New York Yankees after the Boston Red Sox sold him for cash in the 1919-1920 off season.

Ruth's ambitions for a lucrative movie career while still playing baseball was a factor in him going to New York. In the tail end of the 1919 season, the Sox outfielder signed a $10,000 contract to appear in film, twice the salary he made in Boston that year. After the season, he traveled to Hollywood. However, the producers soon realized how lousy an actor he was after viewing some screen tests and withdrew the contract. But realizing the easy money that could be made in front of a camera versus playing a physically grueling season for much less encouraged him to demand more money from Boston.

That threat unnerved the Sox owners; hence the payoff of $100,000 they received from the Yankees for the Babe, beginning 'The Curse of the Bambino' for Boston. During the summer 1920 season, when Ruth was breaking home run records, movie moguls realized the potential box office hit this baseball superstar could achieve no matter how bad his acting was. With a $15,000 down payment and $35,000 paid if it was a success, the Babe appeared in his first movie in August in nearby Haverstraw, New York, while he was recovering from an injury to his hand (a bug-bite flared up requiring surgery).

The script detailing his boyhood and how he broke into professional baseball is pure bunk. But the 25-year-old Ruth played himself capably. The few minutes seen in the movie capturing rare footage of him playing baseball at such a young age, both playacting on the diamond as well as clips of him in a Yankee uniform, heightens the interest in "Headin' Home." The movie bombed at the theaters, however, negating the final payment. But the film did serve as an inspiration to Robert Redford's 1984 'The Natural,' where his young Roy Hobbs makes a bat out of a tree just as Ruth did in the movie.

Appearing on the big screen must have motivated Ruth the remainder of the season. He ended up hitting 54 home runs, shattering baseball and his previous record of 29.

This film which purports to chronicle the childhood of the Babe is almost entirely a fabrication....he didn't grow up in some small town....he grew up near the waterfront docks of Baltimore,MD for the first few years of his life where his father owned and ran a saloon that catered to a very rough crowd.Young George was largely unsupervised most of the time and was continually getting into one scrape or another...as a result George Sr had him enrolled in the St. Mary's Industrial School for boys and pretty much stayed out of young George's life from then on...I'm sure this film's version made for better publicity for the up and coming Babe as well as for the Yankees...Colonel Ruppert was very mindful of his team's public image and making a film about the real version of Babe's young life at that time would have had a lot of negative consequences

The movie hardly makes sense. However, its redeeming value is seeing a young Babe Ruth and the historical footage of the Polo Grounds as it appeared in 1920. The highlight is seeing Ruth at bat in a real game -- the pitcher winds and throws and the Babe swings and hits the ball, and then runs the bases. Terrific stuff. Early in the film Babe takes a turn on the mound. Before he gained fame as a hitter he was an outstanding major league pitcher. The scene involves a sandlot game. I'm not sure Babe gave it his actual windup, but it looked good and professional. The view of the Polo Grounds stands shows the largely male crowd in derby and straw hats. The closing shot was taken from the clubhouse area, which was in back of centerfield. It's too bad all this happens at the very end of the picture.