‘A League of Their Own’ is 25 Years Old, OMFG!
A League of Their Own is turning 25 this summer and we’re literally freaking out — who knew we were getting so old!
But really though, this is probably one of the best movies ever made. A baseball film led entirely by women? The movie changed the landscape of how moviegoers saw female-led movies, and the response is still visible today.
If you haven’t seen the movie, let’s fill you in:
It was directed by the one and only Penny Marshall, and centers around sisters Dottie (Geena Davis) and Kit (Lori Petty) who join the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League during World War II — yes that was an actual thing that happened. They play for the Rockford Peaches, alongside the likes of Madonna, Rosie O’Donnell, and Tom Hanks.
The movie came out July 1, 1992, and is returning to Blu-ray on April 18 for a special anniversary edition.
Geena Davis later went on to found the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, which is “the only research-based organization working within the media and entertainment industry to engage, educate, and influence content creators and audiences about the importance of eliminating unconditional bias, highlighting gender balance, challenging stereotypes, creating role models, and scripting a wide variety of strong female characters in entertainment and media that targets and influences children ages 11 and under.”
Thankfully, Entertainment Weekly sat with Geena to talk about the importance of the movie and why it had such an impact.
“I was so thrilled to be cast and to be part of it,” she said to EW, “and terrified at the same time because I was supposed to play the best ball player anybody had ever seen and I had never played baseball and really had never learned any sport with a ball. I was so tall in high school. They would beg me to be on the girls’ basketball team, but I said, ‘I can’t play!’ They said, ‘Who cares! You’re so tall, just stand there.’”
She spoke about working with Penny and her costars: “I think we all felt like we were in this together,” she said. “It was a fairly long shoot, but also in the middle of the summer in Indiana where the humidity was like 90 percent. It was 95 every day and we were out on the field mostly, playing. That part of it was a little bit torturous, but we were really bonded. We had so much fun all being together like that. We just got along great.”
Read the full interview at Entertainment Weekly.