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.

Dur­ing the 1940s, Warn­er Broth­ers bought the rights to Robert Lind­ner’s book, Rebel With­out a Cause: The Hyp­no­analy­sis of a Crim­i­nal Psy­chopath, and began turn­ing it into a film. A par­tial script was writ­ten, and a 23-year old Mar­lon Bran­do was asked to do a five-minute screen test in 1947. For what­ev­er rea­son, the stu­dio aban­doned the orig­i­nal project, and even­tu­al­ly revived it eight years lat­er with a new script and a new actor — James Dean, of course. Dean’s own screen test for Rebel With­out a Cause appears here.

Down the road, you can find the Bran­do clip in our col­lec­tion of 275 Cul­tur­al Icons, which fea­tures great thinkers and artists appear­ing in orig­i­nal video & audio. Tol­stoy, Sal­vador Dali, Geor­gia O’Ke­effe, they’re all part of the mix.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The God­fa­ther With­out Bran­do?: It Almost Hap­pened

The James Dean Sto­ry by Robert Alt­man (Com­plete Film)

Paul New­man and James Dean Screen­test for East of Eden

In 1980, Stan­ley Kubrick shot The Shin­ing, the clas­sic hor­ror film based on Stephen King’s nov­el. Dur­ing pro­duc­tion, the direc­tor allowed his daugh­ter Vivian, then 17 years old, to shoot a doc­u­men­tary called Mak­ing The Shin­ing, which lets you spend 33 min­utes being a fly on the wall. The film orig­i­nal­ly aired on the BBC and gave British audi­ences the chance to see Jack Nichol­son revving him­self up to act, and Shel­ley Duvall col­laps­ing in the hall­way from stress and fatigue. Min­utes lat­er, we watch Mr. Kubrick exert some direc­to­r­i­al force on the actress, and we under­stand her predica­ment all the more.

via Coudal.com

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More

Down­load & Play The Shin­ing Board Game

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Anno­tat­ed Copy of Stephen King’s The Shin­ing

Saul Bass’ Reject­ed Poster Con­cepts for The Shin­ing (and His Pret­ty Excel­lent Sig­na­ture)