The Stratton Story (1949)

Life has a way of knocking you down just when things are going your best, and what matters is whether you get back up. Sam Wood's "The Stratton Story" is a warm, easygoing baseball biopic starring James Stewart as Monty Stratton, who, as the film tells it, is a Texas farm boy plowing the fields when a down-on-his-luck scout (Frank Morgan) discovers him and lands him a tryout with the Chicago White Sox. Stratton becomes a star pitcher, but after a couple of great seasons, a hunting accident costs him his leg. If you think that's where the story ends, consider that this was one of the biggest box-office hits of 1949. The film leans on Wood's eye for wide-open American spaces - country roads and small-town ballparks - and on the can-do chemistry between Stewart and June Allyson, who plays his devoted wife, Ethel. It was their first pairing, and "The Glenn Miller Story" and "Strategic Air Command" would follow. Audiences loved seeing the lanky Stewart opposite the tiny, husky-voiced, endlessly cheerful Allyson, even if the story is as predictable as a studio pitch meeting. Fans of nostalgic baseball movies won't mind the corny script, and there are a few cameos from real big leaguers, most notably Bill Dickey. Agnes Moorehead plays Stratton's down-to-earth mother, though she's mostly confined to a backlot farmhouse. The film won an Oscar for Best Motion Picture Story, back when that category still existed.