This film clip is taken from Harold Lloyd's 1928 movie "Speedy". I had never seen it before.
The five-minute clip features none other than Babe Ruth hailing Lloyd's taxi for a ride up to to Yankee Stadium.
Some fun highlights:
- Babe Ruth's face at 2:32 absolutely killed me.
- Lou Gehrig appears on the screen for a few seconds! As Ruth exits the taxi right around 3:10, Gehrig looks through the window at the camera.
Please be sure to play it in full-screen mode as I think it accentuates all that's happening on the screen. Some scenes are clearly filmed with everything moving slowly and then played back at a faster rate of speed to simulate frenetic movement. Others, however, seem to be elaborately staged sight gags that appear to be as dangerous as they look. I think the horse & carriage scene is actually real and, if I'm right, it's downright horrifying.
Almost as horrifying and prone to slapstick as our 2019 starting rotation...
Enjoy.
Well, that's a few minutes I'll never get back.
ReplyDeleteCouldn't help to think all those years later that Jeter had an Edge...
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed that. I don't enjoy reading the transcripts of Brian Cashman's press conferences.
ReplyDeleteBrian is a moron.
ReplyDeleteHal doesn't care.
Sign Bryce Harper
ReplyDeleteHe has great hair
ReplyDeleteCall me a nerd but I've actually watched that one last year. LOL
ReplyDeleteI can totally relate to poor Babe there. I was down in NYC for Christmas of 2016 and the taxis still drive the same way but now it's far more congested and a hell of a lot more scarier. I was fearing for my life as they drove within inches of one another and yet somehow it still took forever to go from Penn Station to my hotel a couple blocks away from Rockefeller Center. Next time I'll walk!
Ah, a classic! Ruth did a couple of them, I think. And look how sleek he looks, back before the Yanks made him stop working out in the postseason.
ReplyDeleteThe Gehrig cameo is terrific, too. Did you know he once tried out in Hollywood to be Tarzan?
Just the normal traffic in NYC at the time looks like pure anarchy: two-way avenues, buses, streetcars, elevated...
Harold Lloyd was a great comic and seeing the Babe and Lou was a special treat. I never saw that film before, and aside from the heart-stopping stunt driving it's a great look at the city of 90 years ago. Which I think I would've liked. A lot.
ReplyDeleteIt DOES look like a lot of fun. Tough, tough town, though—you can see it in those gloomy river shots they always have from the time. A lot of people made their living on the waterfront, and it was a very hard and meager living.
ReplyDeleteAlso—no surprise—the number of traffic fatalities was appalling. There were many fewer parks, and the ones there were were terribly neglect so that—horribly—kids got run down left and right, playing in the streets.
Corruption was also worse than ever, under Jimmy Walker, and with the mob running amok. It was all pretty colorful and funny until the Crash came in 1929, and people were actually building Hoovervilles on the Great Lawn of Central Park.
Still, it would've been a helluva lot of fun to go see Tex Guinan at the El Fey, visit one of those monster movie palaces in Times Square, and go see the Babe play baseball...
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