Penny Marshall advised Tom Hanks not to look cute in ‘A League of Their Own’. Hanks revealed the advice as follows: “Put on as much weight as you can. I can’t have you cute because you’re too young, and I don’t want the girls to think, ‘Oh, Jimmy’s cute.’”
‘On A League Of Their Own’, Penny said, ‘”Put on as much weight as you can.” I can’t have you cute, because you’re too young, and I don’t want the girls to think, ‘Oh, Jimmy’s cute,'” Hanks revealed on a recent episode of the Happy Sad Confused podcast.
“So I said, ‘Well, you know, if I’m the guy who’s 36 and I’m managing a girls’ baseball team, there’s got to be a problem with me,’” he continued. “She said, ‘Well, you’re a drunk.’ But then I asked, ‘Well, why am I a drunk?’” From that question, the actor and director had a breakthrough in developing the character.
‘A League of Their Own‘ chronicles the formation of the fictional women’s baseball team, the Rockford Peaches, and the team’s progress through the real-life All-American Girls Professional Baseball League in 1943. Hanks plays the team’s manager.
Tom Hanks also spoke about Marvel and DC on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, saying, “The thing is, it’s actually meeting up right with the state of the art. Never mind the commerce,” the actor began. “The state of the industry right now. The great thing that happened was…remember in the 1970s and 80s, they tried to do TV versions of ‘Captain America’ and ‘Spider-Man’ and even ‘Batman’—the Adam West Batman. The technology did not exist to make it look like it did in the comic books. Now it does. You can do anything at all. You could probably say the Christopher Reeve ‘Superman’ was the first one that came close because the cutting-edge technology at that time allowed for wire removal. ‘You will believe a man can fly,’ and, you know what, we all did when we saw it. It was quite extraordinary.”
