Bang the Drum Slowly

Bang the Drum Slowly
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	John D. Hancock
Produced by	Maurice and Lois Rosenfield
Written by	Mark Harris
Starring	Robert De Niro Michael Moriarty
Music by	Stephen Lawrence
Cinematography	Richard Shore
Editing by	Richard Marks
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures
Release date(s)	August 26 1973
Running time	96 min.
Country	U.S.A.
Language	English
Budget	$1,000,000

Bang the Drum Slowly is a 1973 film adaptation of the 1956 baseball novel of the same name by Mark Harris. It was previously dramatized in 1956 on the U.S. Steel Hour with Paul Newman and Albert Salmi.

It was directed by John D. Hancock and stars Michael Moriarty and a then-little-known Robert De Niro as baseball teammates. De Niro's performance in this film and in Mean Streets, released two months later, brought him widespread acclaim.

Plot

Henry Wiggen is a star pitcher for the New York Mammoths, a fictitious Major League Baseball team. He is a valuable player to his manager, Dutch, but is in a dispute with the team's ownership, holding out for a new contract and more money. Henry also has a sideline as an insurance salesman working for the Arcturus Corporation, with ballplayers as his clients.

One of Henry's teammates and best friend on the team is a catcher, Bruce Pearson, a player of limited skill and intellect. Teammates call Henry by the nickname "Author" because the brainy pitcher once wrote a book, although Bruce misunderstands the origin of the name and, with his thick Southern drawl, often calls him "Arthur" instead.

The film opens with Henry and Bruce leaving the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, where Bruce has been told he is terminally ill with Hodgkin's disease and has very little time left to live. Henry and Bruce drive down to Bruce's hometown in Georgia, because he has always wanted his only friend to see his old stomping grounds. On their first night there, Bruce burns his old baseball memorabilia in a way to acknowledge the inevitable end of his life.

The team knows nothing about Bruce's fate. At spring training, Dutch is preparing to bench or release Bruce in favor of a hot young prospect, country boy Piney Woods. So management is amazed and confused when Henry ends his holdout and agrees to a new contract on one condition: that he and Bruce come as a package. If one is on the team, so is the other. If one's traded or sent down, the other goes too.

Dutch tries everything he can think of to make Henry reveal why he insists that Bruce catch for him. In the meantime, the Mammoths are losing games and have a low morale, with teammates quarreling among themselves.

Meanwhile, knowing that he is dying, Bruce wants Henry to change the beneficiary on his life insurance policy from his parents to his girlfriend Katie. She is interested only in Bruce's money, and is taking advantage of his limited intellect.

One day when a player picks on Bruce, a frustrated Henry blurts out the fact that Bruce is dying. He asks that it remain confidential, but quickly teammates and Dutch all find out. They begin to treat Bruce differently and each other as well, and the team's play and mood both improve.

Near the end of the season, Bruce becomes too ill to continue playing. The team goes on to win the World Series, but he returns to see his parents in Georgia. After the season is over, he passes away, and Henry vows that he won't "rag" on anyone again.

Cast

• Michael Moriarty as Henry Wiggen
• Robert De Niro as Bruce Pearson
• Vincent Gardenia as Dutch
• Phil Foster as Joe
• Heather MacRae as Holly
• Ann Wedgeworth as Katie
• Tom Ligon as Piney Woods

Production

The non-Florida baseball sequences were filmed at New York's Yankee and Shea stadiums during late May and June 1972, when the Yankees and Mets were on extended roadtrips. The opening scenes of the movie show the stars running on the warning track at Yankee Stadium; in addition, the visitors' clubhouse, the walkway from the Yankees' dugout, and the front of the right-field bullpen also were used in the "away-game" sequences. The few scenes of Yankee Stadium — particularly the wide pan at the end of the rain delay sequence — are some of the best clips of the stadium before the 1973-1976 renovation. Dugout shots of "home" games were shot at Yankee Stadium.

The "home" game sequences were filmed in Shea Stadium. The filmmakers also used the walkway that connected the Mets clubhouse, dugout, and the TV studio that was the home of "Kiner's Korner" post-game show for the singing scene. The Opening Day/band clips came from MLB; they were recorded before the fourth game of the 1969 World Series at Shea. Wide crowd shots are from a regular season game, and MLB films also provided clips of Tony Perez (from the 1970 World Series) and Brooks Robinson hitting.

Spring-training baseball scenes were shot at the Philadelphia Phillies' complex in Clearwater, Florida, which is still in use. Rain-delay footage of a grounds crew covering the infield with a tarp was from the 1969 All-Star Game in Washington's RFK Stadium (the game was postponed by rain and played the next day). In the audio over this clip was the voice of long-time Yankees' public-address announcer Bob Sheppard. Baseball-game action clips starting at 01:21 are from MLB films; they are from Yankees and Mets games in 1970 and 1971 — Danny Cater (10), shortstop Gene Michael (17), hitter Jerry Kenney, catcher Thurman Munson (15), and runner Bobby Murcer (1) can be seen.

The uniforms worn by the Mammoths baseball team are Yankees uniforms from 1971, but the "NY" on the home pinstriped shirts was changed. Other teams providing uniforms were the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Boston Red Sox.

The film and book include a fictional card game known as tegwar, which means "The Exciting Game Without Any Rules." It is a game basically designed to separate a sucker from their cash. Henry Wiggen plays this game along with other ballplayers and coaches to sucker passers-by in the lobby of the team hotel. It is generally believed that Bruce Pearson is too dumb to be able to sucker people, so he is initially excluded; however, Henry begins to include Bruce in the tegwar games as the story progresses.

This film is reportedly Robert De Niro's colleague Al Pacino's favorite film.^[1] In reviews, Wiggen is often referred to as being modeled after Tom Seaver, though not in the book, which was written when Seaver was 12.^[2]

One error: Moriarity's Wiggen is a right-handed pitcher, while Wiggen in Harris's novels is explicitly a left-handed pitcher.^{[citation needed]}

References

External links

Film portal

• Bang the Drum Slowly at the Internet Movie Database
• Bang the Drum Slowly at AllRovi
• Bang the Drum Slowly at the TCM Movie Database
• Bang the Drum Slowly at Rotten Tomatoes
• Bosque Boys: "My Favorite Baseball Movie"