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Jackie Robinson And The New Movie '42'

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Jackie Robinson broke the color line in Major League Baseball. The new movie “42” tells the story. The director is with us.

Chadwick Boseman as Jackie Robinson in the film "42" (Warner Brothers)
Chadwick Boseman as Jackie Robinson in the film "42" (Warner Brothers)

Jackie Robinson didn’t just change baseball. He changed America. When race was a wall in this country, he walked through it to play ball. In the face of white rage, he was a black man with the number 42 on his Brooklyn Dodgers uniform who –game by game - knocked deep, bitter racial stereotypes out of the park.

A big new biopic – “42,” from Warner Bros – puts the Jackie Robinson story back on the big screen. Lets us look again at the first man to break the color line in Major League Baseball.

This hour, On Point: Jackie Robinson and “42.”
-Tom Ashbrook

Guests

Brian Helgeland, director and screenwriter of the new movie “42,” out April 12th. Also the Academy-Award-winning screenwriter of “L.A Confidential,” “Mystic River,” and many other films.

David Steele, columnist for AOL Sporting News. (@david_c_steele)

From Tom's Reading List

Associated Press "Michelle Obama said Tuesday that a new movie chronicling Jackie Robinson's rise through Major League Baseball, including the racial discrimination he endured while breaking the sport's color barrier in the 1940s, left her and the president 'visibly, physically moved' after they saw it over the weekend."

The New York Times "What unfolds in '42' — written and directed by Brian Helgeland, who won a screenwriting Oscar for 'L.A. Confidential' (1997) — is a mostly Rockwellian portrait that feels like an old-fashioned Hollywood movie: 'Mr. Robinson Goes to the Major Leagues.' Harrison Ford’s Branch Rickey, the white baseball executive who brought Robinson to the majors, is gruff and avuncular. Chadwick Boseman’s Jackie Robinson is fierce and noble as he simmers and silently faces down the racists and the skeptics."

The Wall Street Journal "In a sense, just as Steven Spielberg's 'Lincoln' offered a refresher course in the 13th amendment, '42' makes sure the details of Jackie Robinson's challenge are ones we don't forget. 'The story is worth telling over and over again,' Mr. Helgeland says. 'I think there's a little bit of an attitude in the country that integration is a complete success, and we don't need to worry about it anymore.'"

Trailer for '42'

http://youtu.be/Z9TJz-vMJq8

This program aired on April 8, 2013.

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