The Babe

For other uses, see Babe.

The Babe is a 1992 biographical film about the life of famed baseball player Babe Ruth.

Written by John Fusco, directed by Arthur Hiller.

There Was Only One.

Johnny Sylvester

• You are the best, you are the best there's ever been.

Harry Frazee

• Half of everything I own just went down the drain with the "Gladiators of Broadway."  The other half is in the pocket of The Sultan of Swat, and he wants a raise and his own suites during road games.

Dialogue

Helen Woodford Ruth: Let me tell you something. I'm not on the dark of it anymore. The only thing I don't understand now was why they ever let you out because you are incorrigible. [shocked at Helen's revelation, Babe Ruth loses his temper and shoves the food cart before flipping the bowl in her face] That's it, it's over.

Babe Ruth: Come on, kid. Don't say that. Let's have a rib and forget about this. You're right, I've been bad.

Helen Woodford Ruth: No! I am through, George!

Babe Ruth: Helen, give me a chance. We'll let waysides be waysides. Don't leave me like this, all right?

Helen Woodford Ruth: I am through with chances, George. I'm through with us. I'm taking Dorothy back to Boston and I'm filing for divorce.

Tagline

• There Was Only One.

Quotes about the film

• Apart from being a bad film in the first place, aside from being superficially written, aside from being shot with little sense of time or place, the movie portrays Babe Ruth as a man almost completely lacking in the ability to have, or to provide, happiness.  Spending these 115 minutes with the Babe is a little like being jammed into the window seat on a long-distance bus, next to a big guy with beer and cigars on his breath and nothing to talk about but his next meal and his last broad.
  • Roger Ebert, "The Babe," RogerEbert.com (17 April 1992).
• Less a biography than a baseball movie, "The Babe" is a muddy field of dreams fertilized with a whole lot of Bull Durham.  Loosely based on George Herman Ruth's life, this shallow, soap-operatic treatment makes the man fit the myth.  And bigger-than-life or not, he rattles around inside there like the prize in a Cracker Jack box.
  • Rita Kempley, "The Babe," Washington Post (17 April 1992).

Cast

• John Goodman – Babe Ruth
• Kelly McGillis – Claire Hodgson Ruth
• Trini Alvarado – Helen Woodford Ruth
• Bruce Boxleitner – Jumpin' Joe Dugan
• Peter Donat – Harry Frazee, Red Sox owner
• James Cromwell – Brother Mathias
• J.C. Quinn – Jack Dunn
• Joe Ragno – Miller Huggins
• Richard Tyson – Guy Bush
• Ralph Marrero – Ping Bodie
• Bob Swan – George Herman Ruth Sr.
• Bernard Kates – Colonel Jacob Ruppert
• Michael McGrady – Lou Gehrig
• Danny Goldring – Bill Carrigan
• Guy Barile – Johnny Torrio
• Bernie Gigliotti – Al Capone
• Ian McCabe – kid who fails math test
• W. Earl Brown – Herb Pennock
• Thom C. Simmons – Bill McKechnie
• Rick Reardon – Ernie Shore
• Randy Steinmeyer – Ty Cobb
• Wayne Messmer – Yankee Stadium announcer
• Larry Cedar – Forbes Field announcer
• Michael Kendall – Jack Warhop
• Harry Hutchinson – Tris Speaker
• Irma P. Hall – Fanny Baily
• Stephen Caffrey – Older Johnny

External links

• The Babe quotes at the Internet Movie Database
• The Babe at Allmovie