USA
, 35 min
Shown in 1963
CREDITS
- dir
-
Lee Mendelsohn
- scr
-
Charles Einstein
-
COMMENTS
Willie Mays in person.
This film, a documentary about Willie Mays written and narrated by former Examiner sports writer Charles Einstein, is a lively account of the career highlights of the world’s greatest baseball player. Tracing Mays’ early days in baseball and his subsequent rise to fame, the movie clearly shows the phenomenal hitting, running, throwing and catching that have earned for the great centerfielder a higher salary than that of the president of the United States.
—Jeanne Miller, San Francisco Examiner
A condensed version of the 90-minute television program which recently was seen on a coast-to-coast broadcast, The Willie Mays Story is a 26-minute glimpse into the career of one of the world’s greatest athletes. Written and narrated by ex-San Francisco Examiner sports writer Charles Einstein, the film was quite some time in the making, and traces the early days of Mays’ baseball training and his subsequent rise to fame. A good deal of the film was made in Candlestick Park and the footage includes many scenes from the Seals Stadium, as well. The Willie Mays Story is being shown on the same night as Czechoslovakia’s The Boxer, which is also concerned—but in a fictional sense—with the life of a great athlete.
FACTOID #95
Later to find fame with the amnesia-tinged film noir update Memento, British director Christopher Nolan was nominated for the SKYY Prize in 1998 for his first feature Following. Nolan shot the film about a writer who stalks strangers, on weekends over the course of a year on a budget of $6,000.
