Candaele: What Penny Marshall did for girls with ‘A League of Their Own’
From Kelly Candaele at the Los Angeles Times on December 19, 2018:
Penny Marshall, director of the movie “A League of Their Own” and many others, died Monday night. I met her in 1989 when she contacted me after she watched a documentary I made about my mother and my aunt who were both professional baseball players in the 1940s. They were part of the All American Girls Professional Baseball League, which filled a gap when the players in the men’s major leagues went to war; the women’s league lasted from 1943 to 1954. Marshall turned the AAGPBL story into the highest grossing baseball film in Hollywood history.
Marshall loved baseball and understood that while Major League Baseball is big business today, there remains something pure and playful about the game. She wanted to capture that, along with making a statement about women and their talents. In her autobiography, whose cover showed Marshall outfitted in catcher’s gear, she described the barriers and sexism she faced from the male executives who doubted her abilities.
Read the full article here: https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-candaele-penny-marshall-a-league-of-their-own-20181220-story.html
Originally published: December 21, 2018. Last Updated: December 21, 2018.