Shut up and play ball!

THE JACKIE ROBINSON STORY (1950)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Jackie Robinson playing Jackie Robinson! It is so Joe, and that is one of the many strengths of "The Jackie Robinson Story," a Hollywood biography that glosses over many aspects of Jackie's life yet retains the public abuse and scandal of being the first black man to play baseball.

The narrator states that the Jackie Robinson Story could only happen in a country which is truly free. This is true but it doesn't mean Jackie didn't have to jump over many obstacles to get to his legendary status. He plays many sports at UCLA, including track and field and football, but he is worried that once he graduates college, nobody will hire him as a coach. This is due to his brother Mack (Joel Fluellen), who was a superb athlete and college graduate but ended up as nothing more than a street cleaner. Jackie's girlfriend and fiancee Rae (Ruby Dee) encourages him but Jackie feels that after one rejection letter after another, he'll never amount to anything.

After his Army stint which is only briefly alluded to, Jackie plays baseball for the Black Panthers (a fictional team - the actual team was the Kansas City Monarchs) in the Negro Leagues. However, his batting average and pitching stirs up interest from the Brooklyn Dodgers. This is where the sprightly Branch Rickey (Minor Watson), the manager of the Dodgers, hires Jackie with one major stipulation - don't let the racism from the white folks get him down. No reaction, no confrontation - just play ball.

Jackie Robinson is very low-key as himself, and possibly on purpose to illustrate the demands by Rickey to play it cool and calm and never engage in a fight with white people's racist insults. However, in his very few scenes with the delightful Ruby Dee, he is still somewhat stoic and inexpressive. The baseball scenes is where he really comes alive, though the sequences themselves are ill-conceived in terms of framing and composition (sometimes we can only guess that Jackie hits a ball because he swings his bat and we hear the sound of a ball being hit, except for one low-angle shot from the point-of-view of the catcher).

Despite some shortcomings in the visuals and in Jackie himself, "The Jackie Robinson Story" is an enjoyable and rousing picture that runs a bracing 76 minutes. Minor Watson steals the shows as the colorful old codger Rickey, and one can't help but root for Jackie and Rickey as well, both defying all odds in a racially charged climate. The fact that this movie even got made in 1950 is something of a miracle.