Lori Petty says the enormous turnout for A League of Their Own auditions reflected something bigger than enthusiasm for a baseball movie. Women in Hollywood were hungry for substantial roles in the same major studio production.
Petty, who played competitive pitcher Kit Keller in Penny Marshall’s 1992 film, recalled actresses flooding the casting process once the project finally moved forward.
“Every single female in California was at the auditions,” Petty told PEOPLE in a new retrospective.
For Petty, the interest made sense. Instead of asking women to orbit male leads as girlfriends, wives or mothers, A League of Their Own offered an ensemble of female characters with their own ambitions, rivalries, friendships and careers.
Petty Remembered Women Flooding the Auditions
Petty remembered Marla Maples among the women who showed up to audition. The image stuck with her because Maples arrived in full hair and makeup while auditioning for a movie about professional baseball players. “Marla Maples was at the audition,” Petty told PEOPLE. She also recalled, less definitively, “I think, Spice Girls at the audition.”
What Petty remembered most clearly was why so many actresses wanted a chance at the film. “Women were begging to be more than the wife or the whore or the mom,” she said.
Petty made a similar point in a 2021 Vulture interview, explaining that a movie in which women occupied most of the leading roles gave actresses an opportunity to play “a whole person, not just a type.”
Penny Marshall Faced Doubts About a Movie Led by Women
Petty described A League of Their Own as “groundbreaking feminist work” and said Marshall encountered years of resistance while trying to get the project made. According to Petty, some people involved in the process doubted audiences would turn out for a movie centered so heavily on women.
“They were like, ‘They’re not going to watch a movie with all girls in it,’” she recalled. The completed film put Geena Davis and Petty at the center as sisters Dottie Hinson and Kit Keller, who join the Rockford Peaches during World War II before their competitive relationship pushes them in different directions.
Madonna, Rosie O’Donnell, Megan Cavanagh, Ann Cusack, Tracy Reiner and Freddie Simpson were among the players in the ensemble, while Tom Hanks starred as their manager, Jimmy Dugan. Audiences ultimately did show up. Released in July 1992, A League of Their Own earned approximately $107.5 million at the domestic box office and more than $132 million worldwide.
Petty Really Hit Kit’s Climactic Home Run
The film’s baseball sequences required the actors to do considerably more than simply look convincing in uniform. Petty told PEOPLE that the actresses played against real local teams while filming, helping give the games a more authentic quality.
For Kit’s most memorable baseball moment, Petty did not need movie trickery. “When I hit my home run, I really hit that damn ball on the high and outside,” she said. Petty had played baseball throughout her life and said that particular pitch was already her favorite.
She also ran the bases herself and completed Kit’s collision at home plate. In her earlier Vulture interview, Petty said she slammed into Geena Davis’ double rather than Davis herself during the play and performed the physical sequence without a stunt double of her own. “There was no movie magic,” she told PEOPLE.
The shoot was physically demanding in other ways. Petty recalled the extreme heat, heavy period costumes, wigs, wool socks and old-fashioned cleats, saying cast members sometimes became sick or fainted while filming. She also worked through much of production with an injury.
Petty told Vulture that she broke her foot after a cleat became caught while sliding into home. She wore a removable plastic cast through roughly half of the movie, occasionally hiding it by positioning one sock lower than the other.
The Movie Was Based on a Real Women’s Baseball League
A League of Their Own fictionalized the history of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, which began during World War II. The National Baseball Hall of Fame says the league began play in 1943 after nearly 300 women from the United States and Canada attended its first tryouts.
The inaugural teams included the Rockford Peaches, Racine Belles, South Bend Blue Sox and Kenosha Comets. The league operated for 12 seasons through 1954 and ultimately gave more than 600 women an opportunity to compete professionally.
Its players also faced strict expectations about how women athletes should present themselves. League rules emphasized traditionally feminine clothing and appearance away from games, and players were required to attend charm-school classes during the early years.
Petty Says Nobody Knew the Film Would Last This Long
Petty said the cast could not have predicted in 1991 that the movie they were making would remain part of popular culture decades later. “Of course, we had no idea,” she told PEOPLE.
Petty had made a similar observation years earlier, noting that children whose parents grew up with the film were beginning to dress as its characters themselves. “It’s literally the third generation of girls going as me and Geena for Halloween,” she told Vulture in 2021.
The National Baseball Hall of Fame now includes the cultural impact of A League of Their Own in its “Diamond Dreams” exhibition devoted to women in baseball. For Petty, that longevity validates a movie Hollywood had once worried audiences would not want to watch. “Then when something becomes iconic and everlasting, you’re like, ‘Whoa, that’s awesome,’” she told PEOPLE.