This film stars Burt Lancaster as Jim Thorpe. This is the Hollywood treatment of the American Indian, who became one of the greatest athletes of the twentieth century. It was directed by Michael Curtiz.
The film starts off with Pop Warner, played very well by Charles Bickford, speaking at a banquet, honoring Thorpe. The story is told in flashback, by Bickford, as Pop Warner. It follows Thorpe as a rebellious boy in Oklahoma, always running away from school and having discipline problems; and then growing into a young man, who attends The Carlisle Indian school.While there, he struggles academically. He manages to cope with these and other problems, by running. While running one day, he is seen by Pop Warner, the coach of the track team. He manages to recruit Thorpe for the track team. He excels at it, and wants to play football. Pop Warner tries to discourage him, saying track is his sport. Thorpe wont hear of it, and makes the team, also coached by Warner. He excels at football, and brings the school to national prominence.
A few years after graduating from Carlisle, Thorpe goes to the Olympics, and wins several gold medals. He becomes a sports hero, but then is stripped of his medals, because he briefly played semi-pro baseball. Although devastated by this, he becomes a successful pro football player, for several years.
His life begins to fall apart when his athletic skills decline, and his son dies. All of this leads to heavy drinking and the breakup of his marriage. His life has become so bad, that he gets a job dressed as a tribal chief, judging a dance contest in L.A., the site of the 1932 summer Olympic Games. Pop Warner has tracked him down, and gives him a ticket to the games. While watching with Warner, Thorpe becomes inspired and begins to turn his life around.
The film ends with a banquet, celebrating Jim Thorpe as the greatest athlete, of the first half of the twentieth century. Pop Warner, is the M.C, and has remained his lifelong friend. When Thorpe leaves the banquet, he catches a football thrown by some kids, and throws it back to them.
Burt Lancaster is credible playing a complicated man like Jim Thorpe. He has a good scenes with Phyllis Thaxter, who plays his wife, Margaret. He shows off his shot putting skills, while the other guys try to impress her with their football skills. He tells her that he’s in love with her, even though he doesn’t know what that is, having never experienced it. Lancaster expresses anger, and hits a coach who’s chewed him out, because he is grief stricken after the loss of his son. He shows a man very emotional when his marriage is falling apart. It’s sad when Lancaster shows Thorpe at his lowest judging a dance. He does show the light in his eyes, when he realizes at the end, that he can still coach football. Lancaster was the type of actor who could show high and low emotional range, without much effort. This role shows that.
Michael Curtiz was an academy award winning director, who was familiar with Hollywood biops. Although not the uplifting Yankee Doodle Dandy, he proves that he can do well with this story. He has very good scenes with Thorpe running everywhere on Carlisle’s campus, to the point where he loses track of where he is. He’s done a good job with the football scenes, capturing key moments of Thorpe’s career at Carlisle. He does a good job with the beginning and ending banquet scenes. At the end Lancaster is shown, considerably older, when introduced, and never speaks. Curtiz has done well getting this movie to flow.
As a general rule, this movie isn’t much different, from Hollywood straying more than a little bit, from the facts. Even so it does tell the story of an American sports hero, who hits hard times, in its own inimitable way. It is still a very watchable film, if only for Burt Lancaster making Jim Thorpe a terrific, but flawed athlete.