Though subtitled The Life of Lou Gehrig, the film is less a sports biography than an homage to a heroic and widely loved sports figure whose tragic and premature death touched the entire nation. It is a tribute to the legendary New York Yankees first baseman Lou Gehrig, who died only one year before its release, at age 37, from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which later became known to the lay public as 'Lou Gehrig's disease'. The Pride of the Yankees is a 1942 American film produced by Samuel Goldwyn, directed by Sam Wood, and starring Gary Cooper, Teresa Wright, and Walter Brennan.
