Lou Gehrig, Yankee Legend, Stars in 1938 Western Rawhide

In 1938, Lou Gehrig began his six­teenth sea­son as the New York Yan­kees’ first base­man. He con­tin­ued build­ing toward his leg­endary record of play­ing 2,130 con­sec­u­tive games. His bat­ting aver­age held at a respectable .295, though down from the scorch­ing .351 of the year before. And, dur­ing the pre­sea­son, Gehrig crossed over to Hol­ly­wood and starred in Rawhide, a West­ern film shot dur­ing an era when West­erns were a sta­ple of Amer­i­can film­go­ers. (John Wayne starred in more than 40 West­erns dur­ing the 1930s, and you can watch many of them online here.)

The plot of Rawhide is implau­si­ble, to say the least. The film starts with Gehrig play­ing him­self, telling reporters at Grand Cen­tral sta­tion:

I am through with base­ball… I got what I want. My sis­ter and I bought a swell ranch in a peace­ful val­ley.  I am going to wal­low in peace and qui­et for the rest of my life. I am going to hang up my spikes for a swell old pair of car­pet slip­pers.

Of course, things don’t turn out to be very peace­ful or qui­et in the town of Rawhide. And the 58 minute dra­ma unfolds from there. This being a no-spoil­er zone, we won’t tell you the rest.

The next year, the unthink­able hap­pened. The Iron Horse was afflict­ed by ALS. His bat­ting aver­age plum­met­ed to .145, and soon enough, Gehrig deliv­ered his “luck­i­est man on the face of the earth” speech and left base­ball. Years lat­er, neu­rol­o­gists looked back at Rawhide to see if Gehrig dis­played any vis­i­ble signs of the motor neu­ron dis­ease in ear­ly 1938. But none could be detect­ed.

Rawhide appears in the “West­erns” sec­tion of our grow­ing col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online, along with The Pride of the Yan­kees, a Lou Gehrig biopic filmed in 1942. It starred Gary Coop­er was nom­i­nat­ed for a num­ber of Acad­e­my awards.


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Comments (9)
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  • Gary Madison says:

    My hus­band was diag­nosed with MND ALS (amy­otroph­ic lat­er­al scle­ro­sis) when he was 69 years old 6 years ago. The Rilutek (rilu­zole) did very lit­tle to help him. The med­ical team did even less. His decline was rapid and dev­as­tat­ing. The psy­cho­log­i­cal sup­port from the med­ical cen­ter was non-exis­tent and if it were not for total­cure­herb­s­foun­da­tion .c om and the sen­si­tive cure of their herbal for­mu­la he would have been not been alive today,there was sig­nif­i­cant improve­ment in the first 4 weeks of usage that gave us hope that he will be alive,His doc­tor put him on rilu­zole, let­ting us know there was no cure until we gave try on total cure herbal sup­ple­ment that cure him total­ly from this dis­ease after 15 weeks of his usage. There is noth­ing pos­i­tive about cure ALS con­di­tion except for their herbal treat­ment .

  • Tanya Broom says:

    i had dif­fi­cul­ty swal­low­ing and fatigue. I was giv­en med­ica­tions which helped but only for a short burst of time, then i decid­ed to try alter­na­tive mea­sures and began on ALS For­mu­la treat­ment from Maya­ka Nat­ur­al Clin­ic , It has made a tremen­dous dif­fer­ence for me (Vis­it mayakanat­u­ral­clin­ic com)

  • Marcia Stewart says:

    i was diag­nosed of Bul­bar ALS. After years on med­ica­tions, symp­toms wors­ened with tremors on my right hand, For­tu­nate­ly last year, I learnt about Kycuyu Health Clin­ic and their effec­tive ALS For­mu­la treat­ment through an ALS sup­port group on face­book the Lou Gehrig’s dis­ease treat­ment made a great dif­fer­ence, most of my symp­toms includ­ing bal­ance, weak­ness, falling alot and oth­ers grad­u­al­ly dis­ap­peared. I improved great­ly over the 4 months treat­ment, its been a year since the treat­ment, i have no symp­toms. I have a very good qual­i­ty of life and a great fam­i­ly!

  • Thato amelia says:

    My first symp­toms of ALS occurred in 2014, but was diag­nosed in 2016. I had severe symp­toms rang­ing from short­ness of breath, bal­ance prob­lems, could­n’t walk with­out a walk­er or a pow­er chair, i had dif­fi­cul­ty swal­low­ing and fatigue. I was giv­en med­ica­tions which helped but only for a short burst of time, then I decid­ed to try alter­na­tive mea­sures and began on ALS For­mu­la treat­ment from Tree of Life Health clin­ic. It has made a tremen­dous dif­fer­ence for me (Vis­it w w w. tree­oflife­herbal­clin­ic .com ). I had improved walk­ing bal­ance, increased appetite, mus­cle strength, improved eye­sight and oth­ers. ]

  • Eugen Lavole says:

    My hus­band first symp­toms of ALS occurred dur­ing covid, but was diag­nosed in 2021 when he was 61 years. He was on Rilu­zole- not crazy about it! he was also on Gabapentin and Rad­i­ca­va not crazy about any of it either, The Rilutek (rilu­zole) did very lit­tle to help him. The med­ical team did even less. His decline was rapid and dev­as­tat­ing. His arms weak­ened first, then his hands and legs. I was a mas­ter Gar­den­er and love herbs! This ALS took my life from me, I was no longer able to work in my gar­den any­more because I was a full time care­giv­er for my hus­band. We stopped most of his ALS med­ica­tions due to severe side effects and I start­ed him on herbal treat­ments from Health Herbs Clin­ic (health­herb­sclin­ic. c om), the treat­ment has made a very huge dif­fer­ence for him. His symp­toms includ­ing body weak­ness and slurred speech dis­ap­peared after few months on the treat­ment. He is get­ting active again since start­ing this treat­ment, he is able to walk and able to ride his tread­mill again.

  • Amy Larder says:

    My hus­band who had been diag­nosed with Bul­bar ALS dis­ease for 2 years at the age of 63 had all his symp­toms reversed with Ayurve­da med­i­cine from nat­ur­al
    herbs cen­tre. com after under­go­ing their ALS/MND nat­ur­al pro­to­col, he no longer requires a feed­ing tube. God Bless all Lou Gehrig’s dis­ease Care­givers. Stay Strong, take small moments through­out the day to thank your­self, to love your self, and pray to what­ev­er faith, star, spir­i­tu­al force you believe in and ask for strength. I can per­son­al­ly vouch for these rem­e­dy but you would prob­a­bly need to decide what works best for you.

  • Thato amelia says:

    My first symp­toms of ALS occurred in 2014, but was diag­nosed in 2016. I had severe symp­toms rang­ing from short­ness of breath, bal­ance prob­lems, could­n’t walk with­out a walk­er or a pow­er chair, i had dif­fi­cul­ty swal­low­ing and fatigue. I was giv­en med­ica­tions which helped but only for a short burst of time, then I decid­ed to try alter­na­tive mea­sures and began on ALS For­mu­la treat­ment from Tree of Life Health clin­ic. It has made a tremen­dous dif­fer­ence for me (Vis­it w w w. health­care­herbal­cen­tre .com I had improved walk­ing bal­ance, increased appetite, mus­cle strength, improved eye­sight and oth­ers. ]

  • Julie Hilditch says:

    In Decem­ber my health took a turn for the worse I became very weak fast and could not even eat When I say fast I mean going from eat­ing a full plate of food to three days lat­er not being able to drink a a sip of water I went to VA hos­pi­tal emer­gency room for dehy­dra­tion and fig­ure they sched­ule me for a feel­ing tube place­ment They admit­ted me and two weeks lat­er I woke up to my stand­ing over me in the hos­pi­tal room this occurred dur­ing my sec­ond or third drug hol­i­day from Rad­i­ca­va Again no way to know if what I expe­ri­enced was a side effect When I was dis­charged I was com­plete­ly par­a­lyzed So i start­ed on Ayurvedic treat­ment from Nat­ur­al Herbs Cen­tre as time went on move­ment returned to my legs and to my arms and hands Able to hold my head up and strength has returned I give cred­it to God and NHC for my recov­ery Almost for­got to men­tion I was on 24 hours ven­ti­la­tion Now only use vent at night and dur­ing naps Was diag­nosed in 2021 with ALS, I urge you to seek out nat­u­ral­herb­s­cen­tre. com. We’re a lit­tle scared to tell every­one because some peo­ple might not believe us, since there’s no cure for ALS. But when I saw this post, I decid­ed to share our sto­ry. This treat­ment is a break­through!

  • cory meron says:

    My first ALS  symp­tom occurred in 2016, but was diag­nosed in 2018. I had severe symp­toms rang­ing from short­ness of breath, bal­ance prob­lems, could­n’t walk with­out a walk­er or a pow­er chair, i had dif­fi­cul­ty swal­low­ing and fatigue. I was giv­en med­ica­tions which helped but only for a short burst of time, then I decid­ed to try alter­na­tive mea­sures and began on ALS For­mu­la treat­ment from Akn­ni herbs cen­tre, It has made a tremen­dous dif­fer­ence for me (Vis­it ww w. aknniherbscentre.c om). I had improved walk­ing bal­ance, increased appetite, mus­cle strength, improved eye­sight and oth­ers.

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