Cobb (1994) on Netflix
In 1960, sportswriter Al Stump is hired to ghostwrite the autobiography of Ty Cobb. At Cobb's Lake Tahoe estate, the aging ballplayer is abusive, armed and intent on controlling the book.
- Netflix3.4/5
- IMDb6.4/108,590 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes65%
Trailer
Plot summary
Al Stump, a sportswriter, is chosen by Ty Cobb to co-write the ballplayer's authorized autobiography. Cobb, 74 and in failing health, wants the record set straight before he dies, and Stump is to travel with him to the Hall of Fame induction weekend in Cooperstown. At Cobb's estate on Lake Tahoe, the house has no heat, power or running water because of Cobb's long disputes with utility companies, and domestic workers come and go. Cobb is drunk, bitter and abusive to those around him, and keeps loaded guns within reach. From the first day the two argue about the book: Cobb wants to proclaim his own greatness, while Stump tells him that others must say it for him.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Cobb (1994)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Tommy Lee Jones was in the middle of shooting Cobb when he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for The Fugitive. His head had already been partly shaved to play the balding 72-year-old Ty Cobb, so he told the Oscar audience he was not really bald.
- While practicing Ty Cobb's famous slide for the film, Tommy Lee Jones broke his ankle, and went on acting with both the injury and the half-shaved hairline the role required.
- When author Charles Leerhsen asked director Ron Shelton about the film's inaccuracies, Shelton would not produce documentation for its most extravagant scenes and admitted that he and Al Stump had fabricated some of them because they believed the real Cobb could plausibly have done such things.
- A 2010 article by William R. Cobb accused the film's source, Al Stump, of forging Cobb memorabilia, including a shotgun Stump claimed Ty Cobb's mother used to kill his father in 1905. The gun passed to collector Barry Halper, although court and newspaper records of the time show the father was shot with a pistol.
