Fear Strikes Out

…made his first feature film, Fear Strikes Out, with Anthony Perkins as Boston Red Sox baseball outfielder Jimmy Piersall, who suffered from bipolar disorder. Like many of Mulligan’s future pictures, it was produced by Alan J. Pakula.

…biography of outfielder Jimmy Piersall, Fear Strikes Out (1957), which is an unsentimental account of Piersall’s struggle with mental illness. More in keeping with the period are entertaining comedies and musicals such as It Happens Every Spring (1949), Angels in the Outfield (1951), and Damn Yankees (1958), based on the…

…film that Pakula produced was Fear Strikes Out (1957), the psychological biography of baseball player Jimmy Piersall, which starred Anthony Perkins and was directed by Robert Mulligan, with whom Pakula then formed a production company. Pakula then produced and Mulligan directed To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), the moving adaptation of…

…awkward young men, notably in Fear Strikes Out (1957), The Tin Star (1957), and Desire Under the Elms (1958), before attracting international notice for Psycho.