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Heartwarming / The Right Stuff

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The Film

  • All the wives rallying around Annie Glenn when LBJ gets more and more insistent on interviewing her, despite how increasingly pissy he gets each time he's denied.(Annie had a severe stutter, and really didn't want to be interviewed on live TV.) This culminates in him throwing a full-on temper tantrum in his car.
    • Continued with her husband John. He's just been released from sitting in his cramped Mercury Capsule waiting for what turns out to be an aborted launch. He's already hot, tired, and frustrated at the scrub when the Flight Director approaches with a "serious problem." Glenn is rushed to the phone to talk to his wife, who is in tears. Annie, stuttering even worse now because she's so upset, explains that LBJ wants to come in and interview her on live TV. The Flight Director, standing next to John, urges him to do it because it's coverage for the program. John takes a deep breath and tells Annie that if she doesn't want LBJ to come in, then that's it. The Vice President of the United States will not set one toe in their home, and he'll back her up one-hundred percent. He tells her he loves her and will see her soon, and the smile on his face when he hangs up shows exactly what is most important to him. Morphs into a Moment of Awesome when the Flight Director angrily implies that John Glenn will be replaced on the flight schedule for not cooperating. Cue the other six Mercury Astronauts, a group of men all competing to be next into space, surrounding them and asking "Oh yeah? Who you gonna get?" They shove the Flight Director and his aides aside and escort Glenn away in unison, patting him on the back, leaving the powerless and shaken Flight Director to mutter "Pilots..."
  • Yeager subtly sticking up for the Mercury astronauts when his fellow Air Force pilot is joking about Grissom "losing" his capsule, and for the spacemen doing stuff that "monkeys" had already done.
    "You think a monkey knows he's sitting on top of a rocket that might explode? These astronaut boys, they know that, see? It takes a special kind of man to volunteer for a suicide mission—especially one that's on TV. Ol' Gus—he did all right."
  • Alan Shepard is wedging himself into the tiny cockpit of the Freedom 7, and he sees a sign inside reading "NO HANDBALL PLAYING." He immediately realizes who put it there and hands it back to John Glenn, saying, "Not very funny, John." Glenn starts to stammer out an apology, but Shepard continues, saying, "But I appreciate it. I surely do."

The 2020 TV Series

  • Every single one of John Glenn's interactions with his wife Annie, who he plainly adores.
  • In episode 4, Alan Shepard gets a two-fold heartwarming moment with his young niece, who has come to live with his family after the death of her mother. After a whole episode of being either ignored or harassed, Shepard reaches out to her, teaching her how to properly fold and raise the flag in their front yard, and telling her that that would be her special job to do every day. Afterwards, the girl, who had been renamed Martha to avoid confusion with one of Shepard's daughters (her birth name was Judith (Judy), which is close to Julie, one of Alan's biological daughters), tells Alan that she wants to pick her own name. She chooses Alan, and after he tells her that having a male name might be difficult for her later in life, he suggests the feminized Alice instead, which she happily accepts.
    • While Alan is making his historic spaceflight, a reporter allowed in the house, calls Alan Alice's father. Alice doesn't protest, and instead beams proudly.

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