Book Analysis: "Friday Night Lights" & "Dare Me"

Friday Night Lights: A Town, A Team, And A Dream (2004) by H.G. Bissinger and Dare Me (2012) by Megan Abbott are similarly themed books, revolving around the professional sports milieu and the enthusiasts associated with it, both sharing a distinctively American thrill connected to the High School experience. While Dare Me establishes the more arresting plot and scenarios, Friday Night Lights is mostly based on true events and real characters (specifically about the Permian High School Panthers football team from Odessa, in the 1988 season).

Dare Me relocates the teen angst motif onto a squad of cheerleaders, presenting two central protagonists: Beth Cassidy (the captain and ‘top girl’) and her ‘fidus Achates’/best friend Addy Hanlon. Megan Abbott develops a very dark portrait of female friendship (loosely inspired by the 1988′s cult classic Heathers) and how their adolescent bonds will be tested and strained by a fiercely competitive environment. To complicate matters, Colette French becomes the new High School Coach in charge of the squad, soon exerting crippling pressure over the cheerleaders in order to transform them into adroit warriors. Beth is dethroned off her leadership by Colette and left alone to her own vengeful devices, whilst Addy ascends to the category of Coach’s protegeé.

On the other hand, Friday Night Lights examines the simple lives of Odessa’s citizens, focusing on the growth of local businesses and leisure spots in the area. This is a more elemental, testosterone-fueled territory, where authoritative male figures are invariably encircled by obsessive football fans and blind worshippers of the most prominent players. Following a similar pattern to End Zone (2011) by Don DeLillo, Bissinger’s chronicle is a veritable character study and exploration of ‘fandom as pathology’ (according to media scholar Joli Jensen), culminating with the whole town exhibiting every chronic symptom and the townsfolk feeling a surge of atavic eroticism linked to their team’s victory.

In the midst of this suffocating Texan atmosphere surrounding Dillon (a fictitious small town based on boom-bust Odessa), filled with religious fervor around the Friday Night’s game, an oddly distant Coach appears — played by Billy Bob Thornton in the 2004′s film version (directed by Peter Berg) and more iconically by Kyle Chandler in the FNL TV show (2006-2011). Connie Britton played the Coach’s dutiful wife in both big & small screen versions.

Bissinger’s recollection of memoirs is highly evocative, as well as a cautionary documentary of the intolerant attitudes within secluded communities, exposing a critical envisagement of the limiting scope from obsolete American dreams reliant on a rotary system of injured drop-outs and failed star players – [In Odessa] “they only have two things: football and oil, and there ain’t no more oil.”

Kyle Chandler as Eric Taylor reflects on our collective yearning for fair play and honor, asserting his moral superiority in an unequivocally earnest fashion and creating a hearty image of genuine masculinity. A startling progression (if logical) by a prodigious performer who previously had played a baseball hero in Homefront TV show (1991–1993), Kyle Chandler won an Emmy in 2011 for one of the most honest on-screen portrayals: a stern Coach whose system of values brings our impulses of nobility to light.

On the contrary, in Dare Me, the men introduced in the story are mere pawns whose only function is to trigger female reactions or serve as a diffuse patriarchal background. Colette French represents the foreign taboo intruding on the cliqué of typically American ‘chiclet-toothed aloof goddesses’, using her sophisticated disingenuousness to seduce Addy and the rest of cheerleaders who fall prey inescapably to Colette’s Amazonian magnetism. It’s suggested throughout a string of personal incidents that the primal reference for a teenage girl is another woman whom the young admirer perceives as superior, so that indefinite attraction toward her heroine (whether platonic or sexual) will help shape up her ideals and provoke life-changing decisions: “Coach gave it all to us. We never had it before her. So can you blame me for wanting to keep it? To fight for it, to the end? She was the one who showed me all the dark wonders of the life I’d only seen flickering from the corner of my eye. Did I ever feel anything at all until she showed me what feeling meant?,” Addy anticipates in the beginning of the novel.

The way Abbott contrasts Beth’s resilient exhaustion against Coach French’s nascent madness is sheer mastery, highlighting a crisis of the feminine identity symbolized in the rupture from the toxic team-mates that were once proclaimed as role models. Dare Me signals the trappings of idol-worshipping, covering thorny issues like mental projection or addiction, and could stand for a sort of intellectual recension of Friday Night Lights. At one point, Natalie Portman was rumored to be in talks to play the icy Coach French, although a film version of Dare Me is still in the air and possibly another actress would be optioned for the lead character. Someone like Rooney Mara or Amy Adams would be perfect for such a demanding role.

Article first published as Book Review: ‘Friday Night Lights’ by H.G. Bissinger and ‘Dare Me’ by Megan Abbott on Blogcritics.

Win 'The Wolf of Wall Street' special Blu-Ray

GIVEAWAY: Win 'The Wolf of Wall Street' Blu-ray Signed by Leonardo DiCaprio. In addition, fans can win a Happy Hour Kit from director Martin Scorsese's Oscar-nominated dramatic comedy. Paramount Home Media Distribution released The Wolf of Wall Street on Blu-ray Combo Pack and DVD yesterday, giving fans a chance to relive this Oscar-nominated dramatic comedy from director Martin Scorsese, or watch it for the very first time. We have the perfect giveaway lined up in conjunction with this release, which will help you get the party started with a copy of the Blu-ray and a Happy Hour Kit. These prizes will be gone quicker than Leonardo DiCaprio can drop an F-bomb, so don't miss out on this opportunity to win big from The Wolf of Wall Street. Leonardo DiCaprio delivers "the best performance of his career" (Claudia Puig, USA Today) and earned a Golden Globe for his portrayal of a young stockbroker hungry for a life of non-stop thrills, where corruption is king and more is never enough. Based on an outrageous true story of American excess, The Wolf of Wall Street features a "razor-sharp" (Claudia Puig, USA Today) script by Terence Winter and "wild, exhilarating performances" (Richard Brody, NewYorker.com) from Academy Award nominee Jonah Hill, Matthew McConaughey, Kyle Chandler, Rob Reiner, Jean Dujardin and Margot Robbie.

• Special Features: Feature film in high definition
• The Wolf Pack - Martin Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill and other cast and crew discuss the incredible journey of making the film. Follow them as they reveal the real story behind Jordan Belfort's rise to power and how they depicted his world of lavish excess, perseverance and ultimately betrayal. Source: www.movieweb.com

KC: "My biggest goals when I came out to Los Angeles were to be married and have a family, and be able to afford to live as an actor. That's what I do now. And little by little, I keep working with these people. I'm not going to question it. I don't know what I'm going to do next, and I don't care. Everything just keeps going. Like my pop used to say, "Just listen to your gut." That's what I do. In for the long haul; the rest is all just trappings." Source: www.aintitcool.com

"Five Came Back: Five Legendary Film Directors and the Second World War" extracts

George Stevens's responsibilities as president of the Screen Directors Guild were considerable, and he was also under contract to make two more pictures for Columbia, which greeted any sign of wavering on his part by warning him that if he went off to war, his career would stall just when it was on the ascent. But Stevens felt increasingly consumed by a sense of duty, and resolved to work off his Columbia deal as quickly as he could manage.

Immediately after finishing 'Woman of the Year,' he began preparing 'The Talk of the Town,' a high-minded comedy-drama that was designed to give Columbia exactly the kind of semisophisticated, vaguely political, somewhat romantic crowd-pleaser it had sought since Capra left the studio. Stevens brought a light touch to the story of a prison escapee (Cary Grant) framed for arson and the Supreme Court nominee (Ronald Colman) who attempts to exonerate him. But during production, he retreated into himself more than ever, taking hours between scenes to contemplate each setup and driving his cast and crew half-mad with his impassive mien and stony silences.

Although critics applauded the results—the film became Stevens’s first Best Picture nominee—many of them noted that he was working in a vein that had already been well mined by Capra, a similarity that was only underscored by his use of the costar (Jean Arthur) and screenwriter (Sidney Buchman) of 'Mr. Smith Goes to Washington'. 'The Talk of the Town' was Stevens’s first attempt to go “a bit thicker” —it makes a political statement, but the statement is about the horror of lynch-mob rule and vigilante hysteria, which had been a favorite Hollywood subject since the mid-1930s and was by 1942 a relatively safe way for a film to be topical. Nelson Poynter, the young, progressive deputy of the BMP, praised Talk for dramatizing “one of the basic things we are fighting for —a decent social contract.”

Unable to decide whether Jean Arthur’s character should end up with the firebrand played by Grant or the older, more professorial Colman, Stevens put the question to moviegoers, wondering whether they would prefer a man of action or a man of intellect. The audience chose Grant, but for reasons Stevens hadn’t anticipated. “While there are men of draft age on the screen, the girls should marry them,” read a typical comment card. “Later on the mature men will have it all to themselves.” Another viewer, rooting for Colman, wrote, “Send Grant off to war without Arthur to stay true to life.” It was the beginning of the era of the 4-F movie hero—three years during which, if a young man appeared on screen in a contemporary film set in the United States, moviegoers wanted to know why he wasn’t in uniform.

The Talk of the Town had just opened when Stevens ran into Capra on the lot, and by then he had made up his mind. His agent, Charles Feldman, tried one last time to scare him out of leaving. “You go in, this war will last seven years, or five years —you’re finished as far as the films are concerned, if nothing worse happens to you,” he told his client.

Richard Gaines, director George Stevens and Jean Arthur between takes of 'The More the Merrier' (1943)

Stevens was undeterred. He informed a resigned Harry Cohn that his next picture for Columbia, a romantic comedy called 'The More the Merrier' in which he planned to reteam Grant and Arthur, would be his last. [Joel McCrea replaced Cary Grant] Stevens's active duty would begin just days after he finished work in the editing room. “The war was on... I wanted to be in the war,” he said later. “It’s hard to get a fifty-yard-line seat like that.” World War II was no longer a shock; it was an ongoing fact of life with no end in sight. Any hopes that an American victory would be swift had evaporated with daily headlines about fresh casualties and new combat zones in the Pacific. Over the summer, U.S. planes had flown their first, tentative missions over France, and the army would soon begin Operation Torch, opening a new front with its first major deployment of ground troops in North Africa. As summer turned to fall, nobody in Hollywood was calling the war an “adventure” any longer.


William Wyler and George Stevens came back to London at the end of October 1943, just as Huston and Capra were leaving. Wyler’s return was tense and urgent—the result of a summons by cable from Eighth Air Force commander General Eaker. In late August, the crew of the 'Memphis Belle' had finally ended its national rallying tour and arrived in Los Angeles to work on the picture. Wyler saw their visit as an occasion to honor their achievement, and as a treat, he threw them a welcoming party, asking each crewman in advance which Hollywood star he most wanted to meet.

Nobody turned down his invitation—by then, the ten flyers, the youngest of whom was only nineteen, were celebrities in their own right, and for an evening they happily chatted and flirted with Veronica Lake, HedyLamarr, Olivia de Havilland, and Dinah Shore. Wyler may have been in no hurry to finish the film, but he wasn’t lingering in Hollywood because of any eagerness to return to the movie business. When Sam Goldwyn asked him if he was ready to come home yet —studios and producers were increasingly anxious to get their top-tier talent back in the fold— Wyler told him he intended to stay in the war for the duration. Goldwyn then asked him to sign a punitive amendment to his contract which stipulated that he was to resume work in Hollywood within sixty days of his discharge and gave Goldwyn the right to terminate their deal. -"Five Came Back: Five Legendary Film Directors and the Second World War" (2014) by Mark Harris

Mad Men's Ending, Movie Stars' Masculinity

How to End ‘Mad Men’? Matthew Weiner Gives Final Season Sneak Peek - One positive development during the writing process has been the presence of legendary Chinatown screenwriter Robert Towne, who joined Weiner’s team as a “sage advisor” late last year. “It’s like running a baseball team and someone says Babe Ruth wants to come one day a week and show people how to hit,” Weiner said. “He makes me work harder because I’m always trying to impress him. All of us are. You also know that if Robert Towne likes what you’re doing, then it’s probably good.” Weiner couldn't help but sounding a little sad when discussing the end of a series he's spent the last seven years of his life obsessing over.

“It’s hard for me not to imagine these characters anymore,” he said. “The loss is something I can’t really think about.” Source: www.thedailybeast.com

On whether the late ‘60s era is more challenging to portray: A lot of reasons that I started the show in 1960 was because it was so much the height of the ‘50s. I felt that there was a sort of constricted social environment based on manners that we’ve watched disintegrate and erode throughout the decade. The weirdest thing about getting to the late ‘60s is that it feels more like today. Other than saying “groovy” once in a while… there is not, in either watching the movies, or reading books, or reading interviews, or watching the news, it does not feel even slightly anachronistic. There is nothing to laugh at by the time you’re in the late ‘60s. It is very similar to right now, with the exception of technology.

The very first season someone said, ‘What’s Don Draper gonna think about Woodstock?’ Don Draper grew up in rural poverty during the Great Depression. I don’t know that this is going to be a particularly impressive event for him. He’s going to be happy that the music’s good, maybe. Source: tv.blog.imdb.net

Sam Shepard has been cast as Kyle Chandler's father in an upcoming Netflix drama. The still-untitled show, from Damages creators Todd A. Kessler, Daniel Zelman, and Glenn Kessler, is about a family of adult siblings whose secrets resurface when their black-sheep brother returns. Shepard will play the dad; Sissy Spacek will play the mom; and Chandler, Linda Cardellini, Norbert Leo Butz, and Ben Mendelsohn will play the kids, with Mendelsohn as said black sheep. Source: www.vulture.com

"In A Lonely Place" (1950) directed by Nicholas Ray, points not only to the emerging culture of psychology but also the emerging dramatic structure of middlebrow teleplays and an increased fascination with Method acting in Broadway and in Hollywood. This juxtaposition between the social necessity of self-presentation and the theatricality of acting as illustrated by Bogart's various mirror performances of Dixon Steele, suggests the continuing psycho-dramatic power of noir to explore, as Jay P. Telotte notes: "how film's seeming depths link up only with a false surface and can deprive us of any real experience of depth." According to James Gilbert, the preoccupation with masculinity in the 1950s in the US was particularly intense "because the period followed wartime self-confidence based upon the sacrifice and heroism of ordinary men." -"Post-World War II Masculinities in British and American Literature and Culture" (2013) by Stefan Horlacher and Kevin Floyd

If a movie actor, though, is someone who works in quick closeup detail, then a movie star is someone who creates a persona roomy enough to contain dozens of different roles. "High Sierra" and "The Maltese Falcon" had shown off Bogart the Actor; now "Casablanca" would confirm Bogart the Star.

Michael Curtiz' movie is first a metaphor for its age; set during the days before Pearl Harbor, it has Bogart representing a still uncommitted America, the desperate refugees in his club as symbols of every overrun country. "High Sierra" had given Bogie a stubborn sense of purpose; "The Maltese Falcon," a personal code. "Casablanca," though, added romantic self-sacrifice. It created a character who stuck his neck out "for nobody," who was "no good at being noble" — and yet who did risk, and was noble, when it counted. Who would eventually drop the cynical mask of indifference and do what was necessary, for the greater good. And it was that final heroic piece that turned Bogart into Bogie, and a true Hollywood icon. Source: www.nj.com

Kyle Chandler as Gary Hobson in "Everybody Goes To Rick's" episode from "Early Edition" (2000): Gary wakes up to get the newspaper and finds himself living in the past. It is 1929 and he is in an early business in the location of McGinty's. Gary tries to prevent the St Valentine's Day Massacre. "Everybody Comes to Rick's" was an American play written by Murray Burnett and Joan Allison in 1940, featuring the Cafe Americain in Casablanca owned by Rick Blaine. Eventually, Rick helps an idealistic Czech resistance fighter escape with the woman Rick loves. It was bought by Warner Brothers for $20,000. It was adapted for the movie "Casablanca" (1942), starring Humphrey Bogart as Rick Blaine.

Kyle Chandler: I don't place upon myself, "Oh, I'm going to be a movie star now." I don't even know what a movie star truly is, other than a movie star is someone in all the tabloids, and he's a great actor because he's a movie star!!! I don't know that I want to be a movie star in that sense. But if I can keep working with folks like this, and carry on in my career, and still have a family, and move on, I'll keep rolling along with the hits. There are some careers that I look at, but it's mostly for the longevity and the variety of work. I'm still learning. Each one of these is an acting class to me. I've got a long road to go. Source: www.aintitcool.com

Bogart and the Legacy of Cool

“Bogart was cool: no one used the word then, but it’s the term everyone reaches for now,” writes the literary scholar Joel Dinerstein in American Cool, which he co-authored with photographic scholar and curator Frank H. Goodyear. Besides Bogie, the reach of those who make cut in this sleek book of photographs interspersed with essays includes Johnny Depp, civil rights protestors, Miles Davis as he appeared on the cover of Ebony, Elvis, Robert Mitchum, Jack Kerouac, Amiri Baraka, Bob Dylan, Anita O’Day, Madonna, Tupac Shakur, Susan Sontag, Selena, and sundry others.

“Cool figures are the successful rebels of American culture,” writes Dinerstein, the James H. Clark Endowed Chair in American Civilization at Tulane University. “To be cool is to have an original aesthetic approach or artistic vision—as an actor, musician, athlete, writer, activist or designer—that either becomes a permanent legacy or stands as a singular achievement.” That explains Brando, Duke Ellington, Greta Garbo, Muhammad Ali and of course James Dean.

Men far outnumber women in American Cool. “It is rare to find an article, website, or blog post declaring anyone ‘Ms. Cool,’” writes Dinerstein, “despite the plethora of cool women in this book, from Georgia O’Keefe, Bessie Smith, and Dorothy Parker to Patti Smith, Chrissie Hynde, and Missy Elliot.” The gender tilt lies in “the presumed association between cool and American masculinity,” he notes, and “the persistence of a double standard where independent, sexually confident women are concerned.”

But the scandal of this book and exhibition is that Marilyn Monroe is nowhere depicted. One of the sexiest movie stars of all time, the woman who married Joe DiMaggio and Arthur Miller, is not cool? Hemingway is shown on p. 89, pensive with rifle at a pheasant shoot in Idaho. “He wrote in a terse, clipped style that featured stripped-down dialogue and characters unanchored from society. While he portrayed man as essentially alone, he admired ‘grace under pressure,’ a phrase often considered synonymous with cool,” writes Frank H. Goodyear III, co-director of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, who shows a wise hand and keen eye in arrangement of the images in book and exhibit.

“In the next generation it is likely that women will outnumber men for lasting iconic effect and innovative artistic impact,” Dinerstein writes. Those who make the potential list include Esperanza Spalding, Janelle Monáe, Pink, Jennifer Lawrence, Tina Fey, Ani DiFranco, Connie Britton... Source: www.thedailybeast.com

JD: Negotiating the dark side is a necessary condition of cool. I think [the idea of the cool] crosses over [into mainstream culture] quickly because of the Great Depression and World War Two. When it first shows up in that period, there is this mask of cool as a stylish stoicism, which is about that generation facing up globally to a set of challenges that are threatening. The reason that [Humphrey] Bogart ends up the cool figure is because he looks like he has navigated and negotiated some very dark periods in his life. The reason why “Casablanca” is still the number one or two films ever [as noted by the American Film Institute], and that is also true for an actress like Barbara Stanwyck. Source: www.washingtonpost.com

Cool, Dinerstein says, is a quintessentially American notion. "We're a country born in revolution, we've always valued rebellion more than any other country," he says. In the 60's and 70's, being cool was more important than being rich. And for adolescents all over the country, the elusive idea of coolness is still something to ambiguously strive for."

THE AMERICAN COOL LIST - The Roots of Cool: Fred Astaire, Bix Beiderbecke, Louise Brooks, James Cagney, Frederick Douglass, Greta Garbo, Ernest Hemingway, Zora Neale Hurston, Jack Johnson, Duke Kahanamoku, Buster Keaton, HL Mencken, Georgia O’Keeffe, Dorothy Parker, Bessie Smith, Mae West, Walt Whitman, Bert Williams

The Birth of Cool: Lauren Bacall, James Baldwin, Humphrey Bogart, Marlon Brando, Lenny Bruce, William S Burroughs, Raymond Chandler, Gary Cooper, Miles Davis, James Dean, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Woody Guthrie, Audrey Hepburn, Billie Holiday, Jack Kerouac, Gene Krupa, Robert Mitchum, Thelonius Monk, Anita O’Day, Charlie Parker, Jackson Pollock, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Barbara Stanwyck, Muddy Waters, John Wayne, Hank Williams, Lester Young

Cool and the Counterculture: Johnny Cash, Angela Davis, Joan Didion, Faye Dunaway, Bob Dylan, Clint Eastwood, Walt Frazier, Marvin Gaye, Deborah Harry, Jimi Hendrix, Steve McQueen, Bill Murray, Paul Newman, Jack Nicholson, Lou Reed, Patti Smith, Susan Sontag, Hunter S Thompson, John Travolta, Andy Warhol, Frank Zappa

The Legacy of Cool: Jean-Michel Basquiat, David Byrne, Kurt Cobain, Johnny Depp, Missy Elliott, Tony Hawk, Chrissie Hynde, Steve Jobs, Michael Jordan, Madonna, Willie Nelson, Prince, Susan Sarandon, Selena, Sam Shepard, Bruce Springsteen, Jon Stewart, Quentin Tarantino, Benicio del Toro, Tom Waits, Neil Young

16th Festival of Film Noir, Baseball Legends

BORN TO BE BAD (22nd March, 7:30 p.m., Egyptian Theatre) 1950, Warner Bros., 94 min, USA, Dir: Nicholas Ray -Joan Fontaine looks sweet and innocent on the surface, but after she steals millionaire Zachary Scott away from another woman, she continues an illicit affair with novelist Robert Ryan. Things just get more complicated from there in this energetic, daring and slightly nasty little melodrama. One of Nicholas Ray's best early films, and certainly his most audacious until Johnny Guitar. With Mel Ferrer - and the original deleted ending!

ANGELS OVER BROADWAY (28th March, 7:30pm, Egyptian Theatre) 1940, Sony Repertory, 79 min, USA, Dir: Ben Hecht, Lee Garmes - An off-beat, mordant melodrama that was written, directed and produced by the great Ben Hecht. A con-man (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) lures a suicidal embezzler into a rigged poker game with an unemployed chanteuse (Rita Hayworth) only to have the tables turned by a boozing playwright (Thomas Mitchell in a superb performance). Hecht received an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay with co-director Lee Garmes providing the shadowed cinematography.

Get paroled, whatever it takes - because we need you to be part of our racket on Saturday, April 5th. Instead of getting weepy when our travels in Noir City come to the end, we're celebrating the close of our 16th annual series of Film Noir (on the big screen) at the Egyptian Theatre! Pull the brim of your fedora down low over your face and jump on the Red Car to join a bevy of other shady characters for a celebration - Noir City style. Get in a noir mood with a screening of DETOUR, followed by a party in the Egyptian Theatre Courtyard! Source: www.amaericancinemathequecalendar.com

Today, the figure of the femme fatale is often seen as one of the distinctive features of film noir and as emerging at the end of World War II. As Pam Cook has claimed, the femme fatale was born out of "the historical need to re-construct an economy based on a division of labour by which men control the means of production and women remain within the family, in other words the need to reconstruct a failing patriarchal order." The femme fatale is therefore claimed to operate as a demonization of the independent working woman at a time when there was a concerted effort to persuade women to surrender the jobs that they had taken on during the war and to return to their roles as wives and mothers within the domestic sphere.

However, critics writing during the 1940s seem to have understood the women usually identified as femme fatales in ways that were remarkably different from current accounts of these figures. Certainly critics recognised that "vicious womanhood" was one of "Hollywood's hardest-worn current themes" but the films associated with this theme did not develop towards the end of the war but rather at its start. As many critics have noted, it is not simply that the name film noir did not exist within US culture during the 1940s, but that the films associated with this term today were not understood as constituting a distinct category at the time. As James Naremore puts it, film noir is "an idea we have projected onto the past" a retrospective category that may hinder rather than help an understanding of that past. -"Vicious Womanhood": Genre, the Femme Fatale and Postwar America" (2011) by Mark Jancovich

Of all the players in baseball history, none possessed as much talent and humility as Lou Gehrig. His accomplishments on the field made him an authentic American hero, and his tragic early death made him a legend. Gehrig's later glory came from humble beginnings. He was born on June 19, 1903 in New York City. The son of German immigrants, his endurance and strength earned him the nickname "Iron Horse." In 927 Babe Ruth hit 60 homers, breaking his old record of 59, and Gehrig clouted 47, more than anyone other than Ruth had ever hit. During his career, Gehrig averaged 147 RBIs a season. No other player was to reach the 147 mark in a single season until George Foster did it in 1977. And, as historian Bill Curran points out, Gehrig accomplished it "while batting immediately behind two of history's greatest base-cleaners, Ruth and DiMaggio." Doctors at the Mayo Clinic diagnosed Gehrig with a very rare form of degenerative disease: amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), which is now called Lou Gehrig's disease. There was no chance he would ever play baseball again. Source: www.lougehrig.com

World War II had its effect on sports as all able-bodied men between 18 and 26 were expected to serve in the military. Rubber went to the war effort; consequently, balls were soggy and unresponsive. Wood was in short supply, leading to a shortage of baseball bats and bowling pins. Even so, professional sports were encouraged to continue, to improve the morale of the troops. President Roosevelt signed the Green Light letter, supporting baseball. Baseball games were considered so important to troop morale that the Japanese tried to jam radio broadcasts. By 1943, half the baseball players had enlisted.

In the All-American Girls Baseball League, players wore dresses and had to attend charm school. After the war, television and easier transportation changed the face of American sports. In 1947, Jackie Robinson became the first black professional baseball player - in fact, the first black professional athlete outside of boxing. By 1950, the top earning player, Stan Musial, was making $50,000. Postwar baseball names included Ted Williams, Ralph Kiner and Joe DiMaggio. Source: kclibrary.lonestar.edu

Early Edition's executive producer Bob Brush: "Kyle Chandler should have played Lou Gehrig - that kind of quiet leader who performs and isn't flashy about it and yet has this sly sense of humor tucked underneath. He doesn't act like a star; he's a guy going through his life."

Kyle Chandler's mind is preoccupied with a time and place far, far away - a bygone era when folks were just folks and soda came in glass bottles. "I'd love to be able to buy Fanta in a bottle again, or grape Nehi," he says wistfully. "That was the best. That stuff was great. Holy Toledo!" No wonder Chandler was cast as Jeff Metcalf, Homefront's boyishly earnest brother-lover-baseball player. In person, he projects the same homespun warmth and old-fashioned idealism that the show captures. Chandler is a walking, talking slice of Americana. He turns the world around him into a Frank Capra movie. Later, for dessert, he requests apple cheesecake and "a glass of milk - a large one." He obviously has an affinity for the character he plays: "I like that Jeff could go to kiss a girl" -he reaches impetuously across the table- "and knock her glass over!" Like his 'Homefront' character, Chandler was cut from the cloth of middle America: "I liked Jimmy Stewart a lot."

Once, Chandler says he saw Jimmy Stewart give a lecture at the dinosaur museum where he was working. "He talked so slow," Chandler recalls. "People were sort of laughing. But at the very end, he pulled out a little quip, and you knew the whole time he was almost making fun of them." As he tells the story, Chandler's left eyebrow goes up a fraction of an inch, in an almost invisible wink. His eyes are smiling. Maybe this aw-shucks persona is an act; maybe it isn't. Either way, Jimmy Stewart would be proud. -Kyle Chandler Offscreen: 'The star of the retro-Americana series Homefront' by Karen Schoemer (US Weekly Magazine, November 1992)