Jim Piersall was a major league baseball player from 1950-1967 who made his mark playing as an outfielder and short stop for the Boston Red Sox. Following a highly publicized mental breakdown, Piersall entered a Massachusetts hospital for treatment in July 1952 and returned to playing baseball the following year.

In 1955, Piersall published his autobiography (written with the help of Al Hirshberg) called Fear Strikes Out: The Jim Piersall Story. In it, he candidly documented his struggle with mental illness and his breakdown, and the fascinating book became a best seller.

That same year, actor Tab Hunter portrayed Piersall in a well-received live television version of Fear Strikes Out for the dramatic CBS series Climax!. Under contract at Warner Bros., Hunter had high hopes that the studio would snap up the rights to a feature film version with him as the star.

Ironically, not long after his portrayal of Piersall on television, Tab Hunter met Anthony Perkins, who was a newcomer to Hollywood, and the two began a secret affair. Perkins was then under contract to Paramount, and following the death of James Dean, the studio was grooming Perkins to follow in Dean's footsteps as a leading man. In his 2005 autobiography Tab Hunter Confidential, Hunter recalls how he sweated over whether or not Warner Bros. would buy the property for him and poured his heart out to Perkins about it. At the time, it didn't even occur to him that Perkins might want the part also.

While Hunter sweated it out waiting on Warner Bros. to buy the rights, they never did. Some sources claim it was because Jack Warner simply couldn't stand Tab Hunter's agent, Henry Willson, and didn't want to deal with him. Whatever the reason was, it came as quite a shock to Hunter when one day Perkins, with a devilish grin on his face, swept in and announced that Paramount had bought the rights to Fear Strikes Out for him. Hunter felt blindsided, and it was a slap in the face that he never forgot. "Our relationship didn't end after that," said Hunter, "but it definitely changed. We still saw each other, but from then on we weren't nearly as close."

The producer of Fear Strikes Out, Alan J. Pakula, had begun his career at Paramount as an assistant to writer/director/producer Don Hartman. Now the Head of Production at Paramount, Hartman decided to give Pakula his big break by assigning him the job of producing Fear Strikes Out, which would mark Pakula's first feature film assignment. Writer Alvin Sargent, commenting on Pakula's decision to do Fear Strikes Out, said, "Why he did that particular movie, I don't know. I don't think of Alan as a sports fan-not at all. I can't imagine him rooting at a baseball game."

Pakula, it turned out, was more interested in Piersall as a psychological study rather than a baseball hero. "I at one time toyed with the idea of being a psychoanalyst," recalled Pakula in a 1983 interview. "When I read the book about Jimmy's breakdown, what fascinated me was that it dealt with a ballplayer...the all-American figure, and at that time, the fifties, there was much of middle America who thought about mental breakdown and emotional illness in terms of neurasthenic, bohemian, artistic, sensitive types rather than recognizing that it is something that can happen to anyone," said Pakula. "Plus," he continued, "it dealt with a theme that has great interest to me, and that is, somebody trying to live through somebody else."

Pakula knew that the casting of Jim Piersall would be critical to the success or failure of the film. At one point he even considered allowing Jim Piersall to play himself. He had been impressed with Anthony Perkins' complex Oscar®-nominated performance in Friendly Persuasion (1956) the year before. He felt that Perkins had "a kind of mystery and darkness and sensitivity," which would be assets to the intense role of Piersall. With Paramount's support, Perkins was hired for the part.

Meanwhile, a writing team was brought into the studio to begin shaping up a screenplay. Ted Berkman and Raphael Blau, who had previously collaborated on the Ronald Reagan comedy Bedtime for Bonzo (1951), were hired to work on the project. They expanded the role of Jim's father and focused their attention on Piersall's gradual breakdown, which would be the driving force of the whole film.

Writers Berkman and Blau were initially less than impressed with Anthony Perkins as Alan Pakula's choice to play Piersall. Berkman recalled how they were called into a meeting between Pakula and Perkins in order to meet the film's star. "Into the room slouched this tall, skinny guy with long hair falling over his eyes wearing glasses, stooped shouldered and shy," said Berkman. "My first thought was, 'This guy's going to play a sharp, aggressive ballplayer? Al must be out of his mind. There goes the movie."

While Paramount executives had a lot of faith in Pakula as a producer, they weren't ready to let him direct a picture just yet so Pakula set out to find a young director with a similar creative sensibility. He had meetings at Paramount with several potential directors, most of them from the world of television. Robert Mulligan was one of the potential directors he saw during that period and he was already familiar with and admired some of the work Mulligan had done on television. Still, Pakula wasn't ready to make a final decision.

Pakula was also having some doubts about his decision to cast Anthony Perkins. He had started watching some of the young actor's television work, and he became more and more convinced that he had made a terrible mistake in casting Perkins to play Jim Piersall. "I was kind of shattered," said Pakula years later, "because (Perkins) seemed very mannered and very stylized and self-conscious...I really got worried."

One night, however, Pakula happened to catch Perkins starring with actress Kim Stanley on television in a 1951 Goodyear Television Playhouse production of Joey that had been directed by Robert Mulligan, the same one who had recently met with Pakula about directing Fear Strikes Out. Quickly, all of Pakula's doubts about Perkins vanished. "Tony was just marvelous," said Pakula. "I thought it must be on account of the director." The following day, Pakula called Perkins into his office and asked him if he would like to have Mulligan as his director on Fear Strikes Out. In response, Perkins reportedly dropped to his knees and said, "Please, please, please!" Soon afterwards, Pakula flew to New York and offered Mulligan the job.

To round out the cast, Pakula hired veteran actor Karl Malden, who had won an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor for his work in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) and had just been nominated for his work in On the Waterfront (1954), as Jim Piersall's demanding father. To play Mary, Piersall's wife, Pakula hired 21-year-old Norma Moore who was primarily a television actress. Fear Strikes Out would mark Moore's feature film debut. Though she and Anthony Perkins were both living at the legendary Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles, the two had never met. They met for the first time at Moore's screen test at Paramount where they performed a scene together. Moore liked Perkins immediately. "He was wonderful at the test. He couldn't have been easier to meet and to work with, friendly and jovial and warm. We kidded around. He made it easy."

by Andrea Passafiume