Released: May 11, 1984

Directed By:  Barry Levinson

Screenplay By:   Roger Towne, Phil Dusenberry

Stars:  Robert Redford, Robert Duvall, Glenn Close, Kim Basinger, Wilford Brimley, Barbara Hershey, Robert Prosky and Richard Farnsworth

Plot:  A middle-aged unknown comes seemingly out of nowhere to become a legendary baseball player with almost supernatural talent.

How did this movie do
Budget: $28 Million
Box office: $48 Million

The Natural was nominated for 4 Academy Awards: Actress in a Supporting Role (Glenn Close), Cinematography (Caleb Deschanel), Art Direction (Mel Bourne, Angelo P. Graham, Bruce Weintraub), and Music (Randy Newman). Kim Basinger was also nominated for Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress.

King Arthur (Inspiration for the Book)

Author Bernard Malamud based his baseball tale on the story of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table seeking the Holy Grail. The name “Roy” means “King”, and Roy takes his bat, Wonder Boy, from the oak tree that was struck by lightning, just as Arthur pulls the sword from the stone. Pop Fischer is the wounded Fisher King, though in this story, it is Roy who has the wound that will not heal. There is the Lady Without Mercy, who gives Hobbs the wound. He rallies the “Knights” of the Round Table to be the best in the land. The original Malamud story has the tragic conclusion that better reflects La Morte d’Arthur.

The Odyssey (Inspiration for the Movie)

• While the story is an adaptation of the book by Bernard Malamud, the plot has been changed for movie to be more “uplifting”. Several characters and symbols are heavily influenced by the writings of Homer and Greek mythology: The line, “Have you ever read Homer?”
  • Roy Hobbs = Odysseus. He is trying to “find his way” (home).
  • Max Mercy = Vulcan, God of Fire and Forging. He can “make or break you”, and is always seen in red or brown clothing.
  • Pop Fisher = Zeus, King of the Gods. His uniform is #1, and both the oak tree and lightning bolt à la the Wonderboy bat, are his symbols.
  • The Judge = Hades, God of the Underworld. He is always in the dark, a.k.a. death, and the dead are “judged” in the underworld.
  • Memo Paris = Kalypso, a sea nymph who had an affair with Odysseus and held or distracted him from returning home. Kalypso means “I will conceal” in Greek.
  • Gus Sands = the Cyclops. Gus has the one strange eye.
  • Iris Gaines = Penelope, wife of Odysseus. Roy’s true love, from whom he was separated for sixteen years, while she raised their son.
  • Hubris = when Roy states his goal is for people to say, “there goes Roy Hobbs, the best there ever was in this game”, this is what the Greeks considered to be hubris, and for that, a person would often suffer turmoil.

• The bat that bat boy Bobby Savoy gives Roy is called the “Savoy Special”. The Savoy Special was a brand of beer in the 1930s, and was made by the United States Brewing Company. This bat is currently in the collection at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, and is displayed along with Roy Hobb’s jacket in an exhibit titled “Baseball and the Movies”.
  
  
• Hobbs breaking the scoreboard clock with a home run was inspired by Bama Rowell of the Boston Braves doubling off the Ebbets Field scoreboard clock on May 30, 1946, showering Dixie Walker with glass. Though he’d been promised a free watch by Bulova for hitting the company’s scoreboard sign, Rowell had to wait until 1987 to receive it.
  
  
• The quote by Roy Hobbs about what it takes to be a big leaguer, “You have to have a lot of little boy in you”, was actually a quote by Brooklyn Dodgers catcher Roy Campanella.
  
  
• The filmmakers scouted the country for a stadium to use in game scenes. They needed something nondescript with a pre-World War II feel, and found it in Buffalo’s War Memorial Stadium. The stadium, built in 1937 and demolished in 1988, had a shorter distance down the right field line than is shown in the movie. The stadium had been renovated prior to filming, which could explain the extra hundred feet displayed on the right field wall.
  
  
• Glenn Close’s initial appearance at the ballpark was carefully planned to give her the appearance of a guardian angel. They waited until a clear day, when the setting sun would be just at the right spot in the background to shine through her translucent hat, making it appear as a halo around her head.
  
  
• The patches on the left arm of the Knights’ uniforms are special patches commemorating the centennial of baseball, which was celebrated in 1939. This confirms the Knights’ season to be the 1939 season.
  
  
• While the movie owes a lot to Malamud’s book, the film takes many liberties with it. Characters are changed, combined, and created. Most of the best lines in the movie come from the book, but are often spoken by different characters. Roy is a very different character in the novel; less virtuous, more ambiguous, and the novel is much darker and more cynical about its subject matter than the film. Although many fans prefer the film version over the novel, and consider it the rare film that improves upon its source material, others consider the movie’s formulaic “Hollywood” treatment to be a betrayal of Malamud’s literary intentions.
  
  
• Boston Red Sox great Ted Williams’ single goal while playing baseball was for people to say, “There goes the greatest hitter who ever lived” (a sentiment echoed by Roy Hobbs in this movie). Like Williams, Hobbs wears number 9 on his uniform, and Williams and Hobbs both hit home runs in their last career at-bats. Hobbs was also an outfielder, as Williams was. According to Roger Angell of the New Yorker, Redford modeled his swing on Williams’. Angell added that Redford plays so authentically, “you want to sign him up”.
  
  
• Director Barry Levinson did the uncredited voice of the Knights Radio play by play. According to Levinson, he had intended to have a professional broadcaster do the role, but didn’t have proper time during post-production to find someone for the part.
  
  
• Pro wrestler Bret Hart took his catchphrase “the best there is, the best there was, and the best there ever will be” from this movie.
  
  
• The two eras of the film show Roy Hobbs at age 19 and age 35. Robert Redford was 47 at the time of filming.
  
  
• In 2001, Bill Simmons of ESPN Magazine compiled Roy Hobbs’s 1939 rookie season stats, taking cues from the movie. His line would’ve looked something like this: 115 Games Played, 400 At Bats, 92 Runs, 140 Hits, 44 Home Runs, 106 Runs Batted In, .350 Batting Average. Hobbs struck out 85 times and walked 75 times.
  
  
• “Shoeless” Joe Jackson was also an inspiration for the character of Roy Hobbs, particularly Jackson’s connection to the Black Sox scandal. This can been seen when the Judge attempts to bribe Roy to throw the game. Also, like “Shoeless” Joe, Hobbs has a special name for his bat.
  
  
• Robert Redford was a high school classmate of L.A. Dodgers great Don Drysdale.
  
  
• The film takes place in 1939, which was the one hundredth anniversary of baseball, and the year the Baseball Hall of Fame opened.
  
  
• In the hospital, the Judge gives Roy $20,000 to throw the game. Adjusted for inflation, this amount would be equivalent to nearly $393,000 in 2021.
  
  
• The first night game played in baseball history is recorded as May 24,1935 in Cincinnati with the first New York night game almost three years later on June 15, 1938 in Brooklyn.
  
  
• Roy Hobbs was born in 1904.
  
  
• One of the advertisements in the Knights’ stadium was for Rich’s Whipped Topping. This is for Rich Products which is in Buffalo, where this was filmed. The owner of Rich Products is Robert Rich, who owned the minor league team whose stadium was used as the Knights stadium.
  
  
• This movie may also have been inspired by the story of Alex “Red” McColl, a pitcher who made his Major League debut at the end of the 1933 season with the Washington Senators at the age of thirty-nine. He’d retired eleven years earlier after a lengthy career in the minors. He started four games in 1933 and pitched the next season before retiring, with a lifetime record of 4-4.
  
  
• The film cast includes three Oscar winners: Robert Redford, Robert Duvall, and Kim Basinger; and three Oscar nominees: Glenn Close, Barbara Hershey, and Richard Farnsworth.
  
  
• When Gus first formally meets Roy at the restaurant, he tells Roy that he once lost a $100,000 bet on three pitched balls, a hint that Gus may have been on the train when Roy struck out The Whammer on three pitches.
  
  
• The piano player at the party where Roy Hobbs gets sick and had to be taken to the hospital is Randy Newman, the composer of the film’s music.
  
  
• The day after the game when Hobbs knocked the cover off the ball, Glenn Close is reading the newspaper, and it states that the umpire ruled that Hobbs hit a ground-rule double. He presumably had to return to second base.
  
  
• When Roy Hobbs first joins the Knights, mid-season, the equipment manager declines to give him a uniform with number 11 on it, asserting that the number 11 is “bad luck”, and Hobbs winds up with number 9. There is no specific curse or jinx baseball recognizes about the number 11, but the sixteenth century scholar, Petrus Bungus, said that the number 11 “has no connection with divine things, no ladder reaching up to things above, nor any merit.” Rather, he concluded that the number 11 was stuck between the divine numbers 10 and 12, and therefore 11 was pure evil, and represented sinners.
  
  
• Among the actual baseball players appearing as extras in the film were Joe Charboneau, who played in the majors with Cleveland; Philip Mankowski, who played for the Tigers and the Mets; Duke McGuire, who had a minor league career mostly in the Tigers’ organization and is in the Buffalo Bisons’ Hall of Fame as a broadcaster, Richard Oliveri, who was a minor leaguer in the Dodgers’ organization; Ken Grassano, who spent four years in the Cardinals’ organization; and Eddie Cipot, who was a minor leaguer in the Mets’ and White Sox’ organizations.
  
  
• Hobbs’s $500 contract with the Knights equates to about $9,700 in 2021.
  
  
• Hobbs and the team celebrate around the piano, and while singing “Darktown Strutters’ Ball”, a popular song by Shelton Brooks, published in 1917, Roy falls ill.
  
  
• A newspaper in the latter part of the movie shows the date of June 7, 1939.
  
  
• In the climactic scene where Roy homers to win pennant, even though he has been given the “Savoy Special”, he hits homer with “Wonderboy”.