Stone’s first challenge was extremely important; a financial windfall from Hollywood was at stake for the Robinsons. Stone had to get Jack out of his contract with the small New York publisher, Greenberg, that had brought out Jackie Robinson: My Own Story (written by Wendell Smith) in 1948. At issue now were the movie rights, because a motion picture of Jack’s life was being planned in Hollywood. “It was a terrible deal,” Stone recalled of the Greenberg contract, “just unfortunate from Jack’s point of view. He had signed away everything for just about nothing.” Stone settled the matter to Jack’s advantage, and the new movie deal went forward.
The Hollywood story was complicated. Two years earlier, Lawrence Taylor, a screenwriter and baseball fan captivated by Jack’s rookie exploits, had written a movie script about his life. Taylor quickly discovered that not one studio would agree to make a picture with a black leading man. “Two of the big studios were interested,” Taylor said, “if the story could be changed to show a white man teaching Robinson to be a great ball player. Of course, that was out of the question.” Then, as a result of Jack’s HUAC appearance and his 1949 MVP season, and with Hollywood taking a decidedly liberal turn following films like Gentleman’s Agreement (about anti-Semitism) and Home of the Brave (about blacks), Taylor at last had an interested producer. After several urgent telephone calls to investors, William J. Heineman of the Eagle-Lion studio found money for the project. Unfortunately, he found only $300,000, which would make The Jackie Robinson Story a low-budget movie. It also had to be a quickie, shot in about a month, to be ready to open early in the baseball season.
Brokered by Martin Stone, the deal called for Heineman to pay Jack $50,000 in two installments, from which Jack agreed to give Taylor and a collaborator, Louis Pollock, a total of $20,000. Also, Jack would receive fifteen percent of the net profits, out of which he would give the writers one-third. In addition, Jack would portray himself. Gary Cooper had been the doomed Lou Gehrig, and William Bendix had played Babe Ruth, but in this rare movie about an athlete still in his prime, Jack would play himself. At this point, Rickey stepped in—and almost killed the project. Reading the script, he became so enraged by its distortions that he flung it across the room. Recognizing the potential importance of the movie to his own reputation, Rickey assigned his assistant Arthur Mann to watch over it. Mann, aware of Jack’s book with Greenberg, then decided to write his own biography of Robinson. Although “this might sound like ‘muscling in,’ ” he wrote Rickey in November 1949, the draft of Mann’s book would be the legal basis for fighting any claims by Greenberg or anyone else about infringement of copyright.
Once the deal was set, Rickey sent his private plane to bring Clay Hopper, Clyde Sukeforth, and Burt Shotton to Brooklyn to help with the script. In January, just before the start of shooting, Mann reached Hollywood with Rickey’s final orders about the movie. Its basic structure was set. It would follow Jack’s life chronologically, more or less, but would have its grand climax in his appearance before HUAC in Washington. Baseball would be integral to the story, and Robinson at its center, but ultimately it would be about the triumph of democracy and of Americans of goodwill, including both Robinson and Rickey.
On February 3, Jack flew to Los Angeles to begin shooting. Reporting to the set, he met the director, Alfred Green, whose work included the highly successful movie The Jolson Story; the producer, Mort Briskin; the dialogue director, Ross Hunter, with whom Jack would work closely; and his fellow actors, including the beautiful and talented Ruby Dee, who would play Rachel. On every side, Jack heard the same advice: as an actor, be yourself. But the tight schedule made for a harried atmosphere on the set. “It took all of one day just to get him to relax,” Hunter recalled. After talking on the telephone to Rachel in New York three times one day, Jack made a decision—she had to join him, to see him through this unusual challenge. Soon she was on a plane to Los Angeles.
Once Rachel was at Jack’s side, everything went far more easily for him. “Jackie made a tremendous impression on everyone,” according to Mann. Being a movie star did not make him temperamental; his sole demand had nothing to do with his own part. “He was a loyal guy,” the producer Mort Briskin recalled. “He insisted, demanded” that some of his Pasadena and UCLA friends, including Kenny Washington, be written into the script. “Making the picture meant more to him the opening of doors, rather than the money.” He kept his composure even when Al Green put the company on a day-and-night shooting schedule; Jack also put up calmly with the seemingly endless repetition required by the moviemakers. “The way they had me running bases, stealing second, running from first to third over and over again,” he told a reporter, “I never had any spring training in which I worked any harder.” But once over his nervousness, he showed a certain ease as an actor. “I simply explained what we wanted,” Green recalled, “and he did it with all the feeling we asked.” John Barrymore Jr., visiting the set, laughed at a suggestion that he give Robinson acting tips. “Are you kidding?” he asked. “He could teach me!”
Ruby Dee, playing Rachel, found Jack friendly but tense; most likely, he was flustered by their physical closeness as actors, and had no professional and little personal experience with other women to fall back on. “In one scene, I was to massage his back,” she said. “So I put my hands on him and he jerked his head back over his shoulder and glared at me, and I realized my hands were so cold!” A magazine writer noticed Jack’s clear embarrassment one day when, during “a mildly romantic scene” with Dee, Rachel strolled onto the set. Dee had an easier time with Rachel. Married to Ossie Davis, and even then pregnant with her own daughter, Dee was thrilled to be allowed to hold the infant Sharon. But she had one lasting regret: she had made Rachel too passive on the screen. “The moment I talked with her,” Dee said, “I had the feeling I wasn’t doing her justice. She was a much more outgoing person than I was portraying. She was twinkly-eyed, and I remember feeling, Gee, I wish I had known her before I took this part. She was a stronger woman than I portrayed. I had listened to too many directors about not undercutting the star. I hadn’t imagined Rachel as she really was.”
On the last day, Jack made it a point to thank in person everyone on the set. Workers inured to the vanity of stars were astonished to see him climb a catwalk to shake hands with an assistant electrician. Then, late for training camp, he hurried to catch a flight to Florida.
Opening on May 16 in New York, The Jackie Robinson Story was successful both at the box office and, within its limited scope as a low-budget film biography of a sports hero, with the critics. If its cheap production values disappointed some viewers, its patriotic theme (underscored by its repetitious use of the anthem “America the Beautiful”) charmed many more— although the Daily Worker, affronted especially by its ending with Jack’s HUAC testimony, found the movie “patronizing and offensive.” Almost everyone agreed that Jack’s acting was a pleasant surprise. As the influential columnist Louella Parsons put it: “Surprisingly, Jackie Robinson is just perfect playing himself. He has dignity and sympathy without ever being maudlin.” The reviewer Bosley Crowther noted the hackneyed nature of the “pluck-and-luck” genre to which the movie belongs, but found elements of distinction: “Here the simple story of Mr. Robinson’s trail-blazing career is reenacted with manifest fidelity and conspicuous dramatic restraint. And Mr. Robinson, commandeering that rare thing of playing himself in the picture’s leading role, displays a calm assurance and composure that might be envied by many a Hollywood star.”
The Jackie Robinson Story proved to be one of the more successful sports movies of the era, although the response at the box office was uneven and unpredictable. In Manhattan and even in Brooklyn, as well as in large cities such as Baltimore, Boston, and Washington, ticket sales fell well below expectations. But in Detroit and Chicago, in California and in Canada, and in many smaller midwestern towns, long lines formed to buy tickets. In the often mysterious way of Hollywood accounting, Jack made little additional money from the movie. However
, almost fifty years later it had become both a period piece from Hollywood’s darker days and a fascinating memento of a genuine American hero portraying himself on the silver screen.
IN VERO BEACH, the 1950 Dodgers were supremely confident. Burt Shotton, usually reticent, declared flatly that “we are going to win the pennant—and the World Series, too. We have more good ball players than anybody in baseball, so why shouldn’t we?” Jack shared this confidence. He also started training with a plan designed to prevent his usual exhaustion near the end of the season. “I’m not going to steal bases merely to steal,” he confided to a writer. “I will engage only in a minimum of pre-game practice, just enough to keep in shape.” He would “run hard and be aggressive, but only when the game demands hard base running.” This announcement was a mistake. A writer soon suggested that “Robinson’s recently accumulated wealth has robbed him of his incentive”; he was no longer “the hungry player he used to be.”
The snide reference had something to do with Jack’s new salary. On January 26, after rumors swirled about a trade of Robinson to the Boston Braves, Rickey made him the highest-paid Dodger ever. His 1950 contract called for $35,000, surpassing that of even the team captain, Pee Wee Reese. “Of course,” Rickey declared, “in the case of Robinson, drawing power must be considered. I’m sure that other players are intelligent enough to realize that, and not be resentful.”
Diligently Jack worked once again in camp on his hitting with George Sisler, whose spring tutoring had helped make 1949 a memorable season for Robinson. “Jackie is a better hitter right now than he ever was,” Sisler commented. “He’s just learning to hit.” Then, still a little overweight but in good condition, Jack joined his teammates as they broke camp and headed north on their exhibition tour. Now, unlike in 1949, the presence of black players—Robinson, Newcombe, Campanella, and Bankhead—created little anxiety. The Klan leader, Samuel Green, who had caused trouble in 1949, was dead. Raw resistance to black players was simply fading; in Atlanta, a huge, congenial crowd filled the stands to watch Newcombe pitch against a Crackers team managed by Dixie Walker.
Returning to Ebbets Field, the Dodgers found themselves installed as heavy favorites to win the pennant. Early in the season they looked good; through May and June, they stayed atop the league. Their main strengths were superb defense and hitting; Hodges, Snider, and Campanella excelled in home-run power, and Robinson, Furillo, and Snider each batted over .300. But a shaky, immature pitching staff, despite solid performances by Preacher Roe and Newcombe, kept Brooklyn shackled. Steadily, Philadelphia’s brilliant young team, dubbed the “Whiz Kids,” including Richie Ashburn, Del Ennis, Robin Roberts, Curt Simmons, and Jim Konstanty, took command of the pennant race. In September, the Phillies enjoyed an apparently insurmountable nine-game lead over the Dodgers. But Brooklyn, making a gallant late charge, won twelve of their next fifteen games as the Phillies dropped eight of their next eleven.
The last day of the season found the pennant still undecided, as Brooklyn faced Philadelphia in Ebbets Field, with Newcombe pitching against Roberts. In the bottom of the ninth, with the score tied, the Dodgers’ Cal Abrams was thrown out trying to score from second in a memorable coaching blunder. Robinson then came to the plate with one out and runners on second and third. The Phillies, both unwilling to challenge him and hoping for the double play, decided to walk Jack; he watched helplessly as first Furillo, then Hodges, failed to drive in a run. The Phillies won on a home run off Newcombe by Dick Sisler, George Sisler’s son, to secure their first pennant in thirty-five years.
For Jack, the season was a special disappointment because he had fallen short of the heights of his 1949 MVP season. As a hitter, he had gotten off to the best start of his career. When he continued to dominate through May, June, and July (with his batting average at one point reaching .380, well ahead of his main rival, Stan Musial), he seemed destined to win the National League batting title for a second consecutive year. (He would then have been the first player to do so since Rogers Hornsby in 1925.) But once again he wilted in August, when his average was a paltry .188 over twenty-eight games to make for his worst hitting slump as a Dodger. Musial, a hero even in Ebbets Field, breezed past Robinson to win his fourth batting crown (with .346).
In the end, despite his disappointment, Jack batted an excellent .328 overall. Nor had his value to Brooklyn lessened. As the Dodger coach Jake Pitler put it in June: “He’s the indispensable man. When he hits we win. When he doesn’t, we just don’t look the same.” Once again, Jack had the most doubles on the club, and his home-run total was on a par with past years. He drove in far fewer runs (81, compared to 124) than in 1949, but only because he had fewer opportunities to do so. Summarizing Jack’s season at the plate, the team statistician, Allan Roth, noted his “consistency against all types of pitching and under all conditions, his ability to hit to left and to right depending upon how he is being pitched to, and his proven ability in the clutch”; Roth concluded that Robinson was “the best all-around hitter on the club.” And Jack showed again and again how much winning meant to him. On July 6, when he failed to make the lineup because of injuries, he missed his first game in more than two years, or since June 2, 1948.
In other ways, he had weakened. On the bases, Jack had grown timid. In past seasons he had attempted an average of 41 steals; in 1950 he tried only 18 times (and was safe 12 times). If only to experts, his fielding also seemed in decline. Spectacular on double plays with Pee Wee Reese, and committing only eleven errors over the season, Jack was growing slower. His range moving to his right had shrunk—it was “definitely unsatisfactory,” in Roth’s opinion.
However, Jack had other reasons to be unhappy with the season. Stepping out more assertively as a player, he found himself again and again in controversies he could never win. Only passivity, even obsequiousness, could keep him exempt from criticism when he faced whites; almost any assertiveness was bound to be seen as a step out of line. But for Robinson, the statute of limitations in his 1945 pact with Rickey had certainly run out by this time. He was now on his own, and was a changed man.
On the Dodgers, Jack’s conduct began to be compared unfavorably with Campanella’s. Already seen as the finest catcher in baseball, except perhaps for the Yankees’ Yogi Berra, Campanella played one way and lived another. Dominant behind the plate, he seldom challenged white men outside this sphere, and in general deferred to Jim Crow. His easygoing manner won him friends; their white teammates respected Jack and Roy, but also loved Campanella. Bubbling with enthusiasm, a quick-witted jokester, and fairly simple in his pleasures, Campanella knew his place and kept it. Harold Parrott would recall an evening in Florida when he took food out to Campanella and a seething Robinson from a roadside restaurant that would not serve them, even as their white teammates ate inside. “Let’s not have no trouble, Jackie,” Campy said, according to Parrott. “This is the onliest thing we can do right now, ’lessen we want to go back to them crummy Negro leagues.” More than once, when Robinson complained of ethnic slurs hurled at him, Campanella denied hearing anything. When Jack one day asked Clyde Sukeforth, whom he trusted, if Sukeforth thought he was getting big-headed, Campanella broke in with some advice: “Better go easy, Jackie. Those buses in the minors aren’t like the 20th Century or these big league air-cooled trains.”
Campanella had his run-ins with umpires, but never dreamed of taking these disputes as far as Jack was prepared to go. In 1950, and the years to come, Jack battled with umpires over matters not simply of judgment but of ethics, in his growing belief that the umpires, all white, were abusing their power in order to put him in his place. Perhaps the worst incident of 1950 came during a game on July 2 at Shibe Park in Philadelphia. In the second inning, as Robinson walked testily away after taking a called third strike, the umpire, Jocko Conlan, suddenly piped up: “That strike was right down the middle.” When Jack turned to face him, Conlan repeated the remark. Robinson then said something sharp to Conlan, who threw him out of the game. Jac
k exploded with a firestorm of abuse. Sure that Conlan and others were baiting him, Robinson wanted Ford Frick, the league president, to crack down on them. “Frick has given these guys too much power,” he told the press. “Something’s going to have to be done about it.” Sukeforth supported Jack’s position. “There is no question in my mind that the umpires are picking on Robinson,” he declared. Sure, Jack liked to heckle—but “if Robinson were somebody else, no umpire would pay any attention.”
Almost certainly, Jack’s growing reputation as a troublemaker was behind his omission from the United Press news service’s all-star team that year, when the Giants’ Eddie Stanky was chosen at second base. Jack’s superiority to Stanky in 1950 was clear: in batting average (.328 to Stanky’s .300), hits (170 to 158), home runs (14 to 8), runs batted in (81 to 51), and stolen bases (12 to 9); nor was Stanky the superior fielder. And Stanky, called “the Brat,” was no less aggressive than Robinson; in fact, his rage to win had led Leo Durocher to utter his celebrated dictum “Nice guys finish last.” But a double standard existed and persisted. What was feisty charm in a white player was often perceived as viciousness in a black, whose presence stirred conscious and subconscious reactions that only the most sensitive white observers recognized.
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