Headin’ Home (1920) is not what a baseball fan might hope that it is and yet it is everything you would expect of a low-budget exploitation film. Its lame story is a fictional biography of Ruth, pure hokum designed for children, built up around Ruth and cartoon characters in the nondescript small town of Haverlock. The story, painting Babe as a lazy good for nothing, leads to a ball game where he is expected to be a washout until a mammoth home run hit. Babe saves the banker’s daughter from a swindler, and soon reaches the big time, he saves the banker’s son from a vamp, and returns home to . . . well, stardom, wouldn’t you know.

The producers of the film, which included director Raoul Walsh, didn’t have anything but dollar signs in mind when they initiated this project. Not only did they bilk movie audiences with the substandard Headin’ Home, the AFI catalog relates the story that Babe Ruth received only $15,000 of the $50,000 he was promised to do the film. Apparently, for years Ruth carried around a worthless check for $35,000 as conversation novelty.

The film does, however, contain a few views of (what is likely) the old Polo Grounds, and some documentary footage of Ruth playing baseball. — Carl Bennett

This collection of short and feature-length baseball films, including Headin’ Home, has been transferred from film elements provided by Dennis Atkinson, Film Preservation Associates, the Larson-Casselton Collection, the Library of Congress, and Lobster Films, and is accompanied by music composed and performed by David Drazin, David Knudtson and Ben Model.

USA: Click the logomark at right to purchase a Region 1 NTSC DVD of this edition from Amazon.com.
Canada: Click the logomark at right to purchase a Region 1 NTSC DVD of this edition from Amazon.ca.

The highly-compressed video transfer utilized a 16mm reduction print with the usual flaws, including contrasty picture with blasted out highlights and closed-up shadows, long print scratches, and a blurry and overcropped picture with the sides of intertitles and the tops of heads cut off. Some viewers will have trouble reading intertitles due to the tight cropping and Ruth’s letter to home is nearly unreadable due to the hot highlights. A better print (even in 16mm) has to have survived somewhere. But this edition of Headin’ Home has to look at least as good as any, although we haven’t seen one, of the public-domain videotape copies of the film that are available. The film is accompanied by a cobbled together classical music score that we think is too slow and subdued for a baseball film with comedy.

Headin’ Home is packaged with The Jackie Robinson Story (1950), with Jackie Robinson as himself and the beautiful Ruby Dee as Rae Robinson. The film is presented in a very good but highly-compressed transfer from a very good 35mm print. Robinson does a pretty good job of acting and allowing his personality to come through is this part-biography and part-social statement film that is a valuable document of both Robinson’s life and the late 1940s in America. Look for character actress Mary Wickes as an enthusiastic Brooklyn fan. Also included is the made-for-television biography It’s Good to Be Alive (1974) directed by Michael Landon. Based on his autobiography, the film is the story of the great Brooklyn Dodger catcher Roy Campanella, which begins with new footage of Campanella ‘writing’ his memoirs and file footage and stills of Campy’s playing days with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Paul Winfield stars as Campy and Ruby Dee appears (again) as his wife, Ruth. The film is presented in a very good but highly-compressed transfer (what should be expected from a budget disc) from an OK 16mm reduction print for broadcast television.

While this budget DVD features three OK baseball films in compressed transfers from substandard to very good materials, the films are quite watchable and the disc is certainly worth the ten bucks (or less) to add to your collection.

USA: Click the logomark at right to purchase a Region 0 NTSC DVD of this edition from Amazon.com.
Canada: Click the logomark at right to purchase a Region 0 NTSC DVD of this edition from Amazon.ca.