On May 22 2002, the real-life All The Way Mae died. Faye Dancer was a member of the All American Girls Professional Baseball League in the 1940s and an inspiration for the character (Mae Mordabito) Madonna played in the 1992 hit film, A League of Their Own.
On April 18 2017, the 25th Anniversary Edition of A League Of Their Own was released on Blu-ray.
This is the press release for the anniversary edition of the hit film:
Celebrate the 25th anniversary of this hilarious and beloved comedy starring Tom Hanks, Geena Davis and Madonna. Hanks stars as Jimmy Dugan, a washed-up ballplayer whose big league days are over. Hired to coach in the All-American Girls Baseball League of 1943 – while the male pros are at war – Dugan finds himself drawn back into the game by the hearts and heroics of his all-girl team, led by the indomitable Dottie Hinson (Davis). Lori Petty, Rosie O’Donnell and Jon Lovitz round out the all-star roster. Based on the true story of the pioneering women who blazed the trail for generations of athletes.
Has it really been 25 years since Tom Hanks, Geena Davis and Madonna hit one out of the park with the all-American comedy A League Of Their Own? On April 18, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment celebrates the 25th Anniversary of the iconic, memorable and relevant comedy favorite when A League Of Their Own returns to Blu-ray in an all-new special anniversary edition.
This anniversary edition includes the all-new bonus featurette “Bentonville, Baseball & The Enduring Legacy of A League of Their Own,” an unforgettable visit to the annual softball game at the Bentonville Film Festival, featuring all-new interviews with Geena Davis, and more. The Blu-ray also includes hilarious and insightful archival special features, including 15 deleted scenes, a documentary featuring interviews with the cast and filmmakers, Madonna’s This Used To Be My Playground music video and a filmmaker commentary.
Synopsis:
Celebrate the 25th anniversary of this hilarious and beloved comedy starring Tom Hanks, Geena Davis and Madonna. Hanks stars as Jimmy Dugan, a washed-up ballplayer whose big league days are over. Hired to coach in the All-American Girls Baseball League of 1943 – while the male pros are at war – Dugan finds himself drawn back into the game by the hearts and heroics of his all-girl team, led by the indomitable Dottie Hinson (Davis). Lori Petty, Rosie O’Donnell and Jon Lovitz round out the all-star roster. Based on the true story of the pioneering women who blazed the trail for generations of athletes.
Directed and Executive Produced by Penny Marshall from a screenplay by Lowell Ganz & Babaloo Mandel and based on a story by Kim Wilson & Kelly Candaele, A League Of Their Own is produced by Robert Greenhut and Elliot Abbott.
On July 8, 1991, Madonna began filming A League Of Their Own, starring Tom Hanks and Geena Davis, directed by Penny Marshall.
On June 30 1992, Madonna’s This Used To Be My Playground video was released, a day before the release of A League Of Their Own.
The video was filmed in June 1992 at Raleigh Studios in Hollywood, California and Malibu Beach. The This Used To Be My Playground video was directed by Alek Keshishian.
On July 7 1992, Madonna contributed This Used To Be My Playground to the Special Olympics benefit CD, Barcelona Gold.
This Used To Be My Playground was the theme song to the hit film A League of Their Own, but it was not included on the film soundtrack. The soundtrack for the film was released by Columbia Records, while Barcelona Gold was released by Warner Bros., possibly the reason why Madonna’s hit single appeared on the benefit CD instead of the soundtrack.
On June 25 1992, Madonna attended the New York premiere of A League Of Their Own at the Ziegfeld Theatre.
On December 28 1992, Madonna was named one of the 25 Most Intriguing People In The World For 1992 by People magazine.
Here’s what People had to say about Madonna in 1992:
The Movies! The Album! The Naughty Pictures! Once Again Madonna Was Everywhere, Shouting, “Look at Me—Every Inch of Me!”
Intriguing: suggests an air of mystery. Madonna: does everything in public but floss her teeth.
Intriguing: wrapped in enigma. Madonna: not wrapped in anything.
Intriguing: means doesn’t appear on-camera in romantic encounters with Evian water bottles. Madonna: does.
OK—so what’s so intriguing about somebody who lets you know that her lovers require a five-cent deposit?
For one thing, she made ya look. Consider Sex, the photo book in which she had her picture taken doing everything but blushing. Besides proving that a naked Madonna could arch backward over a pinball machine without mussing her hair, it also pushed the envelope out to the size of a circus tent. And when the crowds came pouring in, there she was at center ring, cracking her whip.
It only served her purposes that Sex earned sniffy reviews like “The Empress Has No Clothes” and that it was banned in places such as Japan and Ireland. Coming on the heels of her summer film hit, A League of Their Own, the fuss over her book helped to launch her new album, Erotica, and primed the movie audience for her next assault on their sensibilities, Body of Evidence. Her success at getting the world to subsidize her sexual preoccupations—to say nothing of her mammoth self-absorption—is what makes her worth the $60 million deal she cut this year with Time Warner (the parent company of PEOPLE). Madonna is not the first star to find the bucks in buck nakedness. But no one before her has capitalized so well on human willingness to have our fears and desires repackaged and sold back to us.
Yet this most public of women still strains to be a mystery. This year she went through more faces than Lon Chaney—one minute in Baby Jane pigtails, a cupcake from hell; the next in sour milkmaid gear, Heidi with a mean streak. Her changing gallery of faces is one reason that she’s a sex symbol who inspires a lot of heavy breathing from intellectuals. One landmark of the 1992 publishing list—The Madonna Connection: Representational Politics, Sub-cultural Identities and Cultural Theory. You didn’t get this sort of thing for Petula Clark.
But does she really throw such a mysterious light on our culture? More likely it’s just the glinting gears of a giant publicity machine. Yet the sheer magnitude of her achievement in that regard is, well, intriguing. And the grinding of those gears is surely too loud to be ignored. “I’m a revolutionary,” she once sighed. “And yes. it’s a burden.”
Sometimes it’s a burden for her, we sigh in return, and sometimes for us.
Madonna was a busy woman in 1992! What did you enjoy most? A League Of Their Own? This Used To Be My Playground? Erotica? Sex? Body Of Evidence?
Today In Madonna History 