The Natural

The Natural is a 1952 novel about baseball by Bernard Malamud, and is his debut novel. The story follows Roy Hobbs, a baseball prodigy whose career is sidetracked when he is shot by a woman whose motivation remains mysterious. Whether she is acting alone or is part of a plot can be debated. Most of the story concerns itself with his attempts to return to baseball later in life, when he plays for the fictional New York Knights with his legendary bat "Wonderboy".

Based upon the bizarre shooting incident and subsequent comeback of Philadelphia Phillies player Eddie Waitkus, the story of Roy Hobbs takes some poetic license and embellishes what was truly a strange, but memorable, account of a career lost too soon. Apart from the fact that both Waitkus and fictional Hobbs were shot by women, there are few if any other similarities. It has been alternately suggested that the shooting incident might have been inspired by Chicago Cubs shortstop Billy Jurges, who was shot by a showgirl with whom he was romantically linked, but there has been no evidence to support this claim.

Robert Redford

Charles Robert Redford Jr. (born August 18, 1936), known professionally as Robert Redford, is an American actor, director, producer, businessman, environmentalist, and philanthropist. He is the founder of the Sundance Film Festival. He has received two Academy Awards: one in 1981 for directing Ordinary People, and one for Lifetime Achievement in 2002. In 2010, he was made a chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur.

Redford's career began in 1960 as a guest star on numerous TV programs, including The Untouchables, Perry Mason, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and The Twilight Zone, among others. He earned an Emmy nomination as Best Supporting Actor for his performance in The Voice of Charlie Pont (1962). His biggest Broadway success was as the stuffy newlywed husband of Elizabeth Ashley in Neil Simon's Barefoot in the Park (1963).

Redford made his film debut in War Hunt (1962). His role in Inside Daisy Clover (1965) won him a Golden Globe for best new star. He starred in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), which was a huge success and made him a major star. In 1972, he had a critical and box office hit with Jeremiah Johnson (1972), and in 1973 had the biggest hit of his career, the blockbuster crime caper The Sting, for which he was also nominated for an Academy Award. The popular and acclaimed All the President's Men (1976) was a landmark film for Redford.

Bernard Malamud

Bernard Malamud (April 26, 1914 – March 18, 1986) was an American author of novels and short stories. Along with Saul Bellow and Philip Roth, he was one of the best known American Jewish authors of the 20th century. His baseball novel, The Natural, was adapted into a 1984 film starring Robert Redford. His 1966 novel The Fixer (also filmed), about antisemitism in Tsarist Russia, won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.

Biography

Bernard Malamud was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Bertha (née Fidelman) and Max Malamud, Russian Jewish immigrants. A brother, Eugene, was born in 1917. Malamud entered adolescence at the start of the Great Depression. From 1928 to 1932, Bernard attended Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn. During his youth, he saw many films and enjoyed relating their plots to his school friends. He was especially fond of Charlie Chaplin's comedies. Malamud worked for a year at $4.50 a day as a teacher-in-training, before attending college on a government loan. He received his B.A. degree from City College of New York in 1936. In 1942, he obtained a master's degree from Columbia University, writing a thesis on Thomas Hardy. He was excused from military service in World War II because he was the sole support of his widower father. He first worked for the Bureau of the Census in Washington D.C., then taught English in New York, mostly high school night classes for adults.

Wilford Brimley

Anthony Wilford Brimley (born September 27, 1934), credited either as A. Wilford Brimley or Wilford Brimley, is an American actor. He has appeared in such films as The China Syndrome, The Thing, Cocoon and The Firm. He had a recurring role on the 1970s television series The Waltons. Brimley has also done television advertisements, including for the Quaker Oats Company and Liberty Medical.

He has diabetes, and both his appearance in related commercials and pronunciation of the illness (as "Dia-Beet-is" or "Di-uh-Beet-us") have gained him a cult following.

Early life

Brimley was born Anthony Wilford Brimley in Salt Lake City, Utah on September 27, 1934, where his father worked as a real estate broker. Prior to his career in acting, Brimley dropped out of high school to serve in the United States Marine Corps, where he served in the Aleutian Islands for three years. He also worked as a bodyguard (for Howard Hughes),ranch hand, wrangler and blacksmith. He then began shoeing horses for film and television. He began acting in the 1960s as a riding extra in Westerns and a stunt man at the urging of his friend, actor Robert Duvall.

Barry Levinson

Barry Levinson (born April 6, 1942) is an American screenwriter, Academy Award-winning film director, actor, and producer of film and television. His most notable works include acclaimed films such as the comedy-drama Diner (1982), the sports drama The Natural (1984), the war-comedy Good Morning, Vietnam (1987), the crime drama Bugsy (1991), and the political black comedy Wag the Dog (1997). He won the Academy Award for Best Director for his work on the drama Rain Man (1988), which also won the Academy Award for Best Picture.

Early life

Levinson was born in Baltimore, Maryland, the son of Violet "Vi" (née Krichinsky) and Irvin Levinson, who worked in the furniture and appliance business. His family was of Russian Jewish descent.

Career

Levinson's first writing work was for variety shows such as The Marty Feldman Comedy Machine, The Lohman and Barkley Show, The Tim Conway Show, and The Carol Burnett Show. After some success as a screenwriter – notably the Mel Brooks comedies Silent Movie (1976) and High Anxiety (1977) (in which he played a bellboy) and the Oscar-nominated script (co-written by then-wife Valerie Curtin) ...And Justice for All (1979) – Levinson began his career as a director with Diner (1982), for which he had also written the script and which earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay.