Babe Ruth appeared in 10 movies over his career. That’s more films than home runs he hit during his first four seasons playing major league baseball. The Sultan of Swat has also been portrayed in more films than most.
William Bendix played the role in The Babe Ruth Story in 1948, Ramon Bieri played Babe Ruth in A Love Affair: The Eleanor and Lou Gehrig Story in 1977, John Goodman was The Babe in 1992, Art LaFleur played the ghost of Babe Ruth in The Sandlot in 1993, and Brian Dennehy plays the voice of Babe Ruth in Everyone’s Hero in 2006.
Here are the movies where Babe Ruth was cast (as himself mostly) and gained his Hollywood fame, alphabetically. Many are short films, and they are all black & white, as Technicolor was not invented until 1932.
Babe Comes Home (1927)
Babe Dugan has a chewing tobacco habit. Snow White Laundry comes to the rescue to clean his juice-stained uniforms each game. (1 hour.)
Fancy Curves (1932)
Babe Ruth teaches an all girls team how to play baseball. (9 minutes.)
Headin' Home (1920)
Babe Ruth makes his motion picture debut and plays a country boy who the locals consider useless. No one takes him seriously until he hits a ball through a church window. (1 hour, 11 minutes.)
Home Run on the Keys (1937)
Babe Ruth returns from a duck-hunting trip to a cabin shared by musicians Zez Confrey and Byron Gay, and the three of them knock off a little highly-forgettable ditty on the piano. (9 minutes.)
Just Pals (1932)
Babe Ruth umpires a game at an orphanage, and later takes one of the struggling kids to the ballpark to teach him to hit a baseball. (20 minutes.)
Over the Fence (1932)
Babe Ruth saves kids from an arithmetic class so they can play baseball instead. (10 minutes.)
Perfect Control (1932)
Babe Ruth invites school boys to play sandlot baseball. Even the teacher joins, and The Babe shows them his big-league techniques. (10 minutes.)
The Pride of the Yankees (1942)
Acclaimed film about Lou Gehrig, the famed baseball player stricken with a terminal disease, ALS, commonly referred to today as Lou Gehrig's Disease. (2 hours, 8 minutes.)
Slide, Babe, Slide (1932)
Babe Ruth gets off a train and joins a baseball game with some kids who refuse to believe he is the Babe – until one of them produces a newspaper. (10 minutes.)
Speedy (1928)
Harold "Speedy" Swift has a fatal attraction for baseball that always causes him to lose his jobs. So he becomes a cab driver and delivers Babe Ruth to Yankee Stadium. (1 hour, 25 minutes.)
You can enjoy these movies or clips through the links above. And be sure to share your comments on your favorite film moments featuring Babe Ruth in the comments below.
Brett Rudy lives in Boston, Massachusetts where he created Baseball Is My Life, and is co-founder of Charity Hop Sports Marketing, helping athletes raise money for their philanthropic initiatives. Brett helped launch Charity Wines with more than 30 professional athletes, selling more than one million bottles of wine. Brett is also the creator of the Corked Bat Collection, 100 Innings of Baseball for ALS, the Cooperstown Classic at the Baseball Hall of Fame, and Winterball for Toys for Tots. In his spare time, Brett plays outfield in the Boston Men’s Baseball League.