JIM THORPE - ALL-AMERICAN (MAN OF BRONZE)
US, 1951, 107 minutes, Black and white.
Burt Lancaster, Charles Bickford, Steve Cochran, Phyllis Thaxter, Dick Wesson, Jack Bithead, Sonny Chorre.
Directed by Michael Curtiz.
Jim Thorpe – All- American is a biography of a Native American athlete who won many gold medals in track and field at the Stockholm Olympic Games in 1912.
The film traces his biography in the 1940s and 50s style. He grew up in poverty, trained hard in his college days, took jobs to make ends meet. However, he agreed to play semi-professional basketball at one stage of his studies – and this came up against him in Stockholm and he was stripped of his medals and his name stricken from the record. With lobbying, his name and the medals were restored in 1982.
Burt Lancaster, a strong athlete, portrays Thorpe most effectively. Charles Bickford is his coach. Phyllis Thaxter is his girlfriend. A number of Native American Indians have some supporting roles in this film.
After Stockholm, Thorpe became alcoholic, played some Indians in westerns in Hollywood, eventually lived from the payment made for his life story from Warner Bros. He died two years after the film was released.
The film is something of a belated tribute to one of America’s best athletes. It was directed by Michael Curtiz, Hungarian director who was very successful in Hollywood at Warner Bros in the 1930s, won an Oscar for Casablanca, made a number of musicals and comedies during the 1950s and moved into spectacles with The Egyptian in 1954.
1. The appeal of the film? sport? For all audiences?
2. The film as an example of Warner Brothers production in the early fifties? Black and white photography, Max Steiner's score?
3. The title and emphasis on Jim Thorpe? The American title an All American and the particular emphasis on this title?
4. Audience interest and sympathy in biography? The ups and downs of life, crises? How realistic a biography did this show? Facing the good and bad in life?
5. The background of racial issues in the film? The ups and downs of Thorpe's life becoming a race questioning? his feelings about this?
6. The importance of the opening with the boys' school? discipline, a sense of freedom, listening to his father's lecture? his bracing himself to leave?
7. The similarities when he was a young man? His arrival at the college with a chip on his shoulder, his sullenness and resentment? The encounter with the students and the football? His pushing himself to study? His running giving him a atmosphere of freedom?
8. The importance of the encounter with Doc? Doc's importance and pointing a moral about life? Encouraging him in sport? The change in his life and outlook?
9. The film's portrayal of Thorpe's talent? His natural ability at sport, his success and exhilaration? His energy in games and understanding them? The realisation that he had a purpose in life in being an athlete?
10. The importance of his love for Margaret? the genuineness of their love? The difficulty of the race question with Margaret at the school? Her going and returning? The importance of their marriage and what they meant to each other? The importance of the son and Jim Thorpe's trying to make hie son like him? How crushing the death? How crushing Margaret's re-marriage and separation? Was this credibly presented?
11. Thorpe's achievement at the Olympic Games and the way that he was visualised? His professional life, crisis about the trophies and his taking money, his bitterness about racism? His playing football yet going downhill? The reason for his self-centredness and grudges? The visit of his friends from college?
12. Scraping the bottom? drink, self-respect? playing mean games and physical collapse?
13. How did he come up again? The encounter with Doc at the Olympics? Breaking through his bitterness, the encounter with the children?
14. The finale with the dinner, the tribute to him? The hope for some kind of achievement? The film's realistic outlook on his life? Too optimistic for this kind of human achievement?
