PG | 1 h 46 min | TV Drama, Biopic | 1975
Teenaged Mildred Ella “Babe” Didrikson (Susan Clark) dreams of becoming “the greatest athlete.” So, she grows up practicing basketball and track-and-field sports in her neighborhood. She also works with weights in the makeshift gym her father built for her in their working-class backyard in Beaumont, Texas.
In her early 20s, spurred on by talent-spotter Col. McCombs (Slim Pickens), Babe starts breaking world records at the Illinois Olympic qualifying meet. Then, in Depression-era Los Angeles, she wins the javelin throw and 80-meter hurdles at the 1932 Summer Olympics.
While she shines at baseball and a wider spectrum of sports, Babe’s talent draws sponsors who persuade her to try her hand at golf. Despite palm blisters, from never having swung clubs, she persists. On those lawns, she meets and later marries wrestler-turned-golfer George Zaharias (Alex Karras).
As she’s been doing on every sports field she enters, Babe battles and beats tough odds in golf too, becoming “the first American woman ever to take the British Amateur Cup golf back to the States.” Then, still in her prime as an enviably decorated sports star, colon cancer strikes, forcing new battles off the field.
Humor lightens up what might have been a grim watch. Babe asks a fellow golfer if it’s sheep that she’d spotted earlier on tournament lawns. When the golfer clarifies, yes, sheep do graze on the course, Babe smiles, “That’s a relief, for a minute I thought they were late entries.”
Screenwriter Joanna Lee’s central character is a kind of hurricane, tearing through tensely contested tournaments like she’s in a hurry to get somewhere.
But you also see an ordinary woman with extraordinary athleticism. You hear the barbs she stomachs from those who resent her skill, her fame, her earnings. You see her (through her cancer charity) inspire patients to bounce back, convincing them that they too can enjoy fun and fulfilling lives after surgery. And for all her championing of the cause of sportswomen, she welcomes the patronage of supportive men throughout.
Director Buzz Kulik lends his film a touch of realism by using color for scenes about Babe in her 40s, and black and white for flashbacks from her 20s. Sensible scene construction makes a point lost in critiques of Babe’s legacy.
A Perceptive Portrait
Lee and Kulik depict Babe almost as much at private practice as at public performance. You see her wrestle with a lingering lack of self-belief, not always brimming with confidence. They’re saying that strength, power, and stamina are only starting points; they’ll take any athlete only so far. Physical integrity requires making all that work together to the right degree at the right time.At the real-life Olympic qualifier, Babe won a bewildering range of competitions: broad jump, baseball throw, shot put, javelin, and the 80-meter hurdles, all within three hours.
Extended if largely slow, quiet scenes from a series of golf tournaments worldwide, explain how Babe’s all-round, consistent success required more than physicality: hand-eye coordination, consistency, patience, resilience and judgment of distances, directions, and angles. She evolved from a single-year, albeit three-time, Olympic-medalist into an enduring, global pro and amateur golf champion. And as if that wasn’t enough, she was also a mean seamstress, singer, and harmonica player!
Ms. Clark as Babe is accomplished and vulnerable at once, self-possessed one moment, shy the next. You share her shock and rage at what cancer will do to her body, one that she’s prized and protected since childhood, one that’s repeatedly won her reward and recognition.
When a fellow patient says she’d rather accept her “fate” than choose potentially life-changing surgery, Babe demurs, “I don’t think there’s anything more important or sacred than the gift of life.” When her golf swing falters following surgery, Babe weeps on the lawn, alone with her fears, her shame, and, for the first time, a sense of defeat.
A former football defensive tackle and a gorilla of a man, Karras looks every bit the genial ex-wrestler Zaharias. When Babe and Zaharias are together, looking (and laughing) at photo-albums from her early years, their warmth rings true. Karras first met Clark during filming and later married her.
Some of the film’s best shots are of young Babe racing on her neighbor’s yard, using his lush hedge as an imaginary hurdle as she practices track-and-field events, in daylight and at night. Mid-tournament, medium close-up shots show her racing toward the camera, clearing hurdle after hurdle on the track. The only thing you hear is the sound of her labored breath through nearly clenched teeth and a slight gasp as she breasts the tape.
