In 1929, Josef von Stern­berg began assem­bling the cast for the first major Ger­man sound film — Der blaue Engel, oth­er­wise known as The Blue Angel. A clas­sic of Weimar cin­e­ma, the 1930 film fea­tured Mar­lene Diet­rich play­ing Lola-Lola, a seduc­tive singer in the local cabaret. Lola-Lola was, it has been said, a “lib­er­at­ed woman of the world who chose her men, earned her own liv­ing and viewed sex as a chal­lenge.” The per­sona cap­ti­vat­ed audi­ences, and it made Diet­rich an inter­na­tion­al star.

Above, you can watch Diet­rich’s screen test for the film. Inhab­it­ing the role, she gives the poor piano play­er an ear­ful (essen­tial­ly say­ing, “How the hell can I sing through this garbage with you play­ing like that?”). Then she works her way through “Why Cry at Part­ing?” and climbs on that piano, cig­a­rette no longer in hand, and puts on a show…

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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.