Pick the better Piersall

Who was the better Jimmy Piersall?

  • Tab Hunter

    Votes: 5 41.7%
  • Anthony Perkins

    Votes: 7 58.3%

  • Total voters
    12

Bernie Carbohydrate

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Jimmy Piersall's memoir, Fear Strikes Out, was twice filmed.

In 1955 it was made into a TV movie, with Piersall played by Tab Hunter, he of "Operation Bikini" and a bunch of 70's TV episodes.

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In 1957 it was made into the more famous theatrical film, starring Anthony "Psycho" Perkins:

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We could delve into the story of how Hunter and Perkins were in a relationship, and Hunter broke up with Perkins after the latter upstaged the former in the Piersall role, but instead I just wanna know, who do you all think was a better choice? Here's a reference point for looks, Piersall himself:

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Deweys New Stance

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Well of course a year after getting passed over for the movie role of Piersall, Tab Hunter got to play Joe Hardy in a much-better baseball-themed movie, Damn Yankees.

Thanks for sharing; I had no idea there was a tv-movie version of Fear Strikes Out. I did know that there was a tv-version of Bang the Drum Slowly in the fifties which starred a very young Paul Newman as Henry Wiggen. I saw the Tony Perkins version on tv as a kid in the seventies and thought that he wasn't the least bit convincing as a ballplayer during the action scenes (although Tim Robbins in Bull Durham was probably even worse, and I discovered later that William Bendix as Babe Ruth was probably the most absurd casting choice in the history of baseball films). And I never understood why Tony Perkins' Sox uniform had the wrong piping around the neck and the sleeves (as you can see in the picture above compared to the real Piersall); it was particularly bizarre given that all of the other actors playing his Sox teammates in the movie wore the correct uniforms.

Anyway, I remember that the real Jimmy Piersall hated the movie and called it garbage. FWIW, I voted Tab Hunter based on his fairly credible performance as Joe Hardy....who cares if he looked nothing like Jimmy?

edit: I mean I get why Tony Perkins was probably the better choice to play a young man undergoing a nervous breakdown as a result of the pressure to succeed from an overbearing parent; characters like that were his stock-in-trade. But good god, actually watching him play baseball...
 
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Al Zarilla

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edit: I mean I get why Tony Perkins was probably the better choice to play a young man undergoing a nervous breakdown as a result of the pressure to succeed from an overbearing parent; characters like that were his stock-in-trade. But good god, actually watching him play baseball...
How was he at climbing the screen behind home plate? I’ll have to look around Netflix and Amazon, etc. to see if anybody has it currently. Terrific center fielder, Jimmy.
 

Deweys New Stance

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How was he at climbing the screen behind home plate? I’ll have to look around Netflix and Amazon, etc. to see if anybody has it currently. Terrific center fielder, Jimmy.
I must admit he was convincing in that scene. His overall performance in retrospect reads like he was working on some of the elements of playing Norman Bates a few years later. But another problem with the movie is that the production values for the baseball scenes were pretty shabby even beyond the fact that Tony Perkins couldn't throw a baseball. There were a couple of wide angle shots of Fenway that looked like stock footage spliced in with close up scenes that were clearly filmed on a different field. Back then Wrigley Field in Los Angeles was used to shoot a lot of baseball action in films; don't know if that was the case here.
 

Red(s)HawksFan

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I must admit he was convincing in that scene. His overall performance in retrospect reads like he was working on some of the elements of playing Norman Bates a few years later. But another problem with the movie is that the production values for the baseball scenes were pretty shabby even beyond the fact that Tony Perkins couldn't throw a baseball. There were a couple of wide angle shots of Fenway that looked like stock footage spliced in with close up scenes that were clearly filmed on a different field. Back then Wrigley Field in Los Angeles was used to shoot a lot of baseball action in films; don't know if that was the case here.
Perkins was naturally left-handed, which probably was an issue for him portraying the right-handed Piersall accurately.
 

Deweys New Stance

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Perkins was naturally left-handed, which probably was an issue for him portraying the right-handed Piersall accurately.
That was undoubtedly a significant part of the problem. Right-handed Gary Cooper had the same issue playing left-handed Lou Gehrig in Pride of the Yankees; that problem was solved by having Cooper bat right-handed and then reversing the film images for the finished movie. Like Perkins, Cooper had never really played baseball, but unlike Perkins he at least had some ability. But I took a look at the IMDB page for Fear Strikes Out, and it seems the lefty/righty issue wasn't the whole of it:

While Anthony Perkins had proven that he was more than capable as an actor, he was not quite as convincing as a ball player. This presented a bit of a problem since he was depicting the life of a Major League athlete. According to Karl Malden, "He couldn't throw a ball. They had to hire a real pro, Tommy Holmes, to go out there and teach him how to throw, and he still couldn't do it."
 

Bernie Carbohydrate

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I don't know if anyone here saw the 1955 TV movie -- I can't find it. But the New York Times review (August 19, 1955) says nice things about Hunter, who at the time was kind of a "pretty boy":

"Tab Hunter, as Mr. Piersall, looked the part of the ballplayer. This was a point in his favor, but the role was a demanding one that required a great deal more than a superficial resemblance. The assignment called for a delicately balanced impersonation of a real person who leaves the world of reality and is restored after careful psychiatric treatment. Mr. Hunter's performance was perceptive and believable."
 

Red(s)HawksFan

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That was undoubtedly a significant part of the problem. Right-handed Gary Cooper had the same issue playing left-handed Lou Gehrig in Pride of the Yankees; that problem was solved by having Cooper bat right-handed and then reversing the film images for the finished movie. Like Perkins, Cooper had never really played baseball, but unlike Perkins he at least had some ability. But I took a look at the IMDB page for Fear Strikes Out, and it seems the lefty/righty issue wasn't the whole of it:

While Anthony Perkins had proven that he was more than capable as an actor, he was not quite as convincing as a ball player. This presented a bit of a problem since he was depicting the life of a Major League athlete. According to Karl Malden, "He couldn't throw a ball. They had to hire a real pro, Tommy Holmes, to go out there and teach him how to throw, and he still couldn't do it."
Guess actors back then didn't have the sway Ray Liotta had for Field of Dreams. Joe Jackson was left-handed? Fuck it, I'm doing it righty anyway.
 

geoflin

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Al Hirshberg, who wrote "Fear Strikes Out" with Jimmy Piersall, was my uncle. I knew him well, spent a lot of time with him, and met many of the people he wrote with and about including Jimmy. I can second DNS's comment above that Jimmy hated the movie. He didn't think Anthony Perkins looked realistic as a baseball player but he also didn't appreciate the way his father was portrayed. Understanding of mental illness, in his case bipolar, was nowhere near then what it is today but we do know, and had some idea at the time, that it is not caused by an overbearing father. Jimmy, after undergoing treatment in the early 1950's, also accepted that it wasn't his father who was responsible for his illness. He didn't like the fact that this dynamic was used to provide a "story" for the movie to tell. There is a scene in the movie where Jimmy is in the hospital and his father is visiting, and his father says "Everything you are today is because of me," meaning a major league baseball player but of course understood by the audience to refer to his mental illness.
The Tab Hunter movie was based on a two part article in the Saturday Evening Post titled "They Called Me Crazy and I Was" which preceded the publication of the book. Jimmy, not surprisingly, hated the title and was actually pretty angry. He wasn't happy with Tab Hunter either but didn't have as strong of an opinion about him as he did about Tony Perkins. Since the book hadn't yet been published they had to come up with a different title. Jimmy suggested "Fears Strike Out" but the publisher said that "Fear Strikes Out" had a better flow and sound, which seems right.

Edited to add more information.
 
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Al Zarilla

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I don't know if anyone here saw the 1955 TV movie -- I can't find it. But the New York Times review (August 19, 1955) says nice things about Hunter, who at the time was kind of a "pretty boy":

"Tab Hunter, as Mr. Piersall, looked the part of the ballplayer. This was a point in his favor, but the role was a demanding one that required a great deal more than a superficial resemblance. The assignment called for a delicately balanced impersonation of a real person who leaves the world of reality and is restored after careful psychiatric treatment. Mr. Hunter's performance was perceptive and believable."
As careful as Electroconvulsive therapy could be back then as Lithium Carbonate and other treatment drugs for bipolar disease had yet to be discovered. He and his family and the Red Sox probably didn’t know if he’d walk out of the hospital “normal”. Fortunately, he did, mostly.
 

Deweys New Stance

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Al Hirshberg, who wrote "Fear Strikes Out" with Jimmy Piersall, was my uncle. I knew him well, spent a lot of time with him, and met many of the people he wrote with and about including Jimmy. I can second DNS's comment above that Jimmy hated the movie. He didn't think Anthony Perkins looked realistic as a baseball player but he also didn't appreciate the way his father was portrayed. Understanding of mental illness, in his case bipolar, was nowhere near then what it is today but we do know, and had some idea at the time, that it is not caused by an overbearing father. Jimmy, after undergoing treatment in the early 1950's, also accepted that it wasn't his father who was responsible for his illness. He didn't like the fact that this dynamic was used to provide a "story" for the movie to tell. There is a scene in the movie where Jimmy is in the hospital and his father is visiting, and his father says "Everything you are today is because of me," meaning a major league baseball player but of course understood by the audience to refer to his mental illness.
The Tab Hunter movie was based on a two part article in the Saturday Evening Post titled "They Called Me Crazy and I Was" which preceded the publication of the book. Jimmy, not surprisingly, hated the title and was actually pretty angry. He wasn't happy with Tab Hunter either but didn't have as strong of an opinion about him as he did about Tony Perkins. Since the book hadn't yet been published they had to come up with a different title. Jimmy suggested "Fears Strike Out" but the publisher said that "Fear Strikes Out" had a better flow and sound, which seems right.

Edited to add more information.
Great color, thanks for sharing! I remember Al Hirshberg from my childhood as the author of a ton of athletes' biographies, but specifically a fairly critical history of the Sox titled "What's the Matter with the Red Sox?"
 

SumnerH

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I must admit he was convincing in that scene. His overall performance in retrospect reads like he was working on some of the elements of playing Norman Bates a few years later. But another problem with the movie is that the production values for the baseball scenes were pretty shabby even beyond the fact that Tony Perkins couldn't throw a baseball. There were a couple of wide angle shots of Fenway that looked like stock footage spliced in with close up scenes that were clearly filmed on a different field. Back then Wrigley Field in Los Angeles was used to shoot a lot of baseball action in films; don't know if that was the case here.
It was shot at LA's Wrigley Field, according to The Baseball Filmography. The studio sent director Robert Mulligan to Fenway to try to get some B-roll that matched up with the Wrigley footage. He talked to Piersall while he was out there, asking him to try to get a home run that night. But that Fenway footage was never used, they wound up going with the stock footage you note (no explanation as to why is given).

The book also claims that Piersall personally liked Anthony Perkins and rated Psycho among his favorite movies, despite hating Perkins' portrayal of him in Fear Strikes Out.
 

Deweys New Stance

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It was shot at LA's Wrigley Field, according to The Baseball Filmography. The studio sent director Robert Mulligan to Fenway to try to get some B-roll that matched up with the Wrigley footage. He talked to Piersall while he was out there, asking him to try to get a home run that night. But that Fenway footage was never used, they wound up going with the stock footage you note (no explanation as to why is given).

The book also claims that Piersall personally liked Anthony Perkins and rated Psycho among his favorite movies, despite hating Perkins' portrayal of him in Fear Strikes Out.
I wonder if that Fenway footage still exists; would really enjoy seeing that. I was curious, so I looked up the film history of west coast Wrigley, and both Pride of the Yankees and Damn Yankees were filmed there as well. And as ESPN viewers in the late 80's/early 90's may recall from reruns, the 1959-60 series Home Run Derby was also shot there.