Headin' Home

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

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.

Babe Ruth - in addition to being perhaps the greatest baseball player ever - had quite a little side-gig going in Hollywood films. He appeared in several - always as "Babe" (usually but not always as Babe Ruth, but always as "Babe.") "Headin' Home" was his first ever appearance in the movies. Yes, he plays "Babe" - a small town boy who makes it to the big time. Was he playing himself? No. The story of this Babe's life is nothing like the story of Babe Ruth's life, but it's still interesting and enjoyable to watch this silent movie.

This Babe grew up in the small town of Haverlock, fiercely devoted to his apparently single mother and his foster sister. The real Babe grew up in a Baltimore suburb until he was farmed out to an orphanage, after which he only rarely saw his family. So this is most definitely not a biography in any way, shape or form, although you get the definite impression that the producers wanted people to think it was a biography and that Babe Ruth was playing Babe Ruth instead of just plain Babe, since the opening shot of the Bambino has him in his Yankees cap.

But since this story bares absolutely no resemblance to Babe Ruth's real life, I'm not going to call it inaccurate; I'm going to assume it's fiction. As fiction, it's pleasant enough and it even tries to be funny, although jokes told on the title cards used in silent movies don't really work very well. It's most interesting for a look at a very young Babe Ruth - before he put on weight. He's pretty slim and trim in this. There's also a bit of politics mixed on that you have to watch for. This was made in 1920. Woodrow Wilson, until he suffered a stroke in late 1919, had been aggressively promoting Senate passage of the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I. I thought it interesting that, in a veiled sort of way, there was mention of the "14 points" - Wilson's plan that led to the Treaty - and to the League of Nations - Wilson's brainchild that Senate Republicans were fiercely opposed to. There's even a bit of a crazy dogcatcher who's clearly identified as a Republican. Was a political point in favour of Versailles being made? I don't know.

This is an enjoyable, fun movie. (7/0)

Boy howdy, if this isn't a trip through time, and maybe even more so than other works of the silent era. Porkpie hats galore; effusive intertitle representation of colloquial phrases, slang, and dialects that are practically another language one century later; self-mythologizing that makes T. E. Lawrence's exaggerations of his escapades look like a little white lie. And to top it all off, 'Headin' home' is a fictionalized biography that is presented as loose narrative fiction, with focus at times on tertiary figures who have nothing to do with the man himself! Very light "comedy," and very light "drama," are really nothing more than an excuse to give baseball legend Babe Ruth his own movie - and at times, it seems, to allow the folks writing the intertitles to let their imagination run wild, seemingly with the aid of several bottles of a favored alcohol beverage.

Neither Ruth, nor writers Arthur "Bugs" Baer or Earle Browne, nor director Lawrence C. Windom were a Buster Keaton or a Harold Lloyd, and this flick is no exemplar of humor or of this period in cinema. Anyone who isn't already enamored of silent films may not find anything here to change their mind. Be that as it may, it's modestly enjoyable on its own merits, and there are some small bits and pieces that are unexpectedly keen. The writers may have been imbibing a brew or five while penning the intertitles, but every now and again they slip in an especially witty line, such as a reference to the League of Nations and Woodrow Wilson's peace plan following World War I, or sly wordplay. Some scenes herein would fit neatly within a feature from a contemporary comedic icon, and for that matter - replace the central sports figure with any other actor, and at once the storytelling in 'Headin' home' would both be less noteworthy, but also right in line with most any picture of 1920. Granted, I think the story is a tad unfocused, and maybe even scattered; there are also instances where the contemporary references in the intertitles are so firmly cemented that a modern viewer can only make inferences as to the full meaning. All the same, these criticisms are no worse than can be said for what other writers have conjured.

In addition to old fashion and old language, it's striking to see depictions of period sports equipment and facilities. In every other capacity this title is well made, if unremarkable - some filmmakers were pushing the envelope and innovating in the medium, and others were happy just to have their fare sell tickets and entertain, and this is an example of the latter. It's all that it needs to be to provide a good time, though, and after all, that was the only earnest intent. It's no lightning bolt of genius, but it does actually earn a few laughs, and overall it's exactly the lighthearted fun that it wants to be. If one is a huge fan of baseball or of Babe Ruth then it will surely come more highly recommended, yet even for the casual viewer this is a splendid diversion for a quiet day. Don't go out of your way for 'Headin' home,' but if you do have the opportunity to watch, this is a fine movie that stands pretty solidly on its own feet even over one hundred years later. Not every winner needs to hit a home run, and this ably runs the bases all by itself.

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.