This article was published on Collider on 8/25/22
There is nothing secret about Pat Henschel and Terry Donahue’s pro-baseball romance. In the 2018 Netflix documentary, A Secret Love, the world got to see what Pat and Terry had long fought so hard to hide: their love story. For a lot of women who played pro baseball back in the 1940s, this was a challenge they had to face. And now, some 77 odd years later, content creators are speaking truth to these women’s stories. Through the documentary, A Secret Love, and the new Prime Video show A League of Their Own, female pro baseball players are finally getting to be exactly who they are.
During World War II, the draft took many of America’s young men. With all the men off fighting, many jobs that were typically men’s careers were now left for the women to do. Everything from working in factories, to driving trucks, to cutting lumber were jobs women could now do during the war. Sports were not exempt from this new trend. In 1943, the All American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) was formed, allowing women to be the new star athletes in America. For dozens of years, more than 500 women were able to show their ability in sports. Terry Donahue was one of those women.
This period in America’s history has been a focal point for many filmmakers and content creators. In 1992, the feature film A League of Their Own was released showing what the AAGPBL was like, shedding light on the struggles the women faced, as well as the sexism they endured, and the power they had as athletes. Something most people had never heard of was now at the forefront of people’s minds when they thought about women in sports. Although A League of Their Own was a successful movie that gave the women of the AAGPBL the recognition they deserved, it left out a lot of important context of the league. The 1992 film focused only on the stories of straight, white women. While this could be because women in the league who were still alive at the time of the film’s release felt like what happened in the league stayed in the league, modern audiences are clamoring for modern stories about diverse characters from our history.
The truth about the AAGPBL was that it was not inclusive of non-white players, and lesbian relationships got women kicked out of the league if they were caught. As fun as A League of Their Own was, it neglected to address some darker realities of being a player in the league. The film addressed sexism in the industry, but it didn’t tell viewers that the “play like a man, look and act like a lady” rules came from a fear of the players being seen as lesbians. It’s impossible to say exactly how many women in the AAGPBL were gay because they were all in the closet. But, what can be determined is the number was big enough that team managers and the league officials worried about the players being seen as lesbians by viewers. Black women were another group of women not addressed in A League of Their Own, although they have an arguably more interesting story. Even though they were not allowed in the AAGPBL, black women played baseball in the Negro National League playing with and against men. Three women played in the Negro National League, and the season they played proved to be the most prosperous season the Negro National League had seen in a long time.
With so many interesting stories about the different kinds of women wanting to and trying to play baseball while balancing their identity on the other side of their professional desires, content creators saw an opportunity to expand upon the success of A League of Their Own by expanding the universe and giving audiences a more realistic portrayal of the story they hold in such high esteem. In August 2020, it was announced that audiences were getting just that. Prime Video had ordered a series reboot of A League of Their Own that would focus on gay and Black players in women’s baseball during the '40s. The show was released this month and has received critical and audience acclaim. Drawing inspiration from the original film, the show follows the same baseball team, but with a twist. Expanding the film’s established world, the A League of Their Own show explores LGBTQ+ and BICOP stories that until now have gone untold. The show creators took the LGBTQ+ subtext from the movie and made it text, adding BICOP stories excluded from the original A League of Their Own. In addition to baseball, this new show addresses segregation, women’s rights, and the LGBTQ+ experience in the 1940s.
A Secret Love was a good bridge between the 1992 film A League of Their Own and the 2022 series of the same name. After a studio film very much influenced by the best “Hollywood” story to tell, audiences and fans of A League of Their Own got to see a story of a real AAGPBL player. Untouched by the magic of Hollywood, A Secret Love gave a glimpse into what A League of Their Own was really like for a lot of women — full of secret relationships. Most women never got to tell their stories and the ones who did waited until their partners passed away to reveal that their friend or roommate was actually their life partner. Pat Henschel and Terry Donahue spent 60 years of their relationship as cousins or roommates, identities the documentary allows them to shed in exchange for their true selves. People who love A League of Their Own slowly cross over into the more realistic, but still fictionalized, version of the film by seeing what a relationship was really like in baseball in the '40s.
A Secret Love shows that the relationships in A League of Their Own weren’t actually like the Tom Hanks and Geena Davis’s will-they-won’t-they; they were dangerous. They could lose the players their careers and their families. In many ways, to be themselves was also to make a sacrifice. That darker reality mixed with the joys of true love and self-expression make up the documentary A Secret Love. It leads by example and deepens the world only touched upon in A League of Their Own. The success of the documentary following its release on Netflix showed that audiences are still interested in women's baseball.
Audiences are asking for more stories like that of Pat Henschel and Terry Donahue. They want touching stories that reflect their relationships, not censored perfectly-constructed-for-a-straight-audience ones like the A League of Their Own film. You can see the power streaming has given to content just by looking at the microcosm of A League of Their Own. In the '90s, what was acceptable was different. What studios thought audiences would want to pay money to go see was different. If a studio was struggling to understand a movie with a female action lead would make money, they certainly wouldn’t be on board for an all-female ensemble cast about LGBTQ+ issues and racism. Unbound by old studio expectations and standards, streaming services have given new content creators the opportunity and space to create a new standard. One where more people are represented in the stories being told.
The new Prime Video series perfectly marries together every aspect of the cinematic A League of Their Own universe. A Secret Love opened the door for A League of Their Own to include a depth of stories and characters that show the true nature of the AAGPBL. A League of Their Own, the new show, also includes homages to the old movie by way of a cameo from Rosie O'Donnell and similar shots to the original film. The documentary and series fused a popular film from the 1990s with truthful depictions of real relationships to create a show that speaks to modern audiences and creates a new standard of studio content creation.
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