Motion Pictures

A new PBS documentary examines Hollywood’s love affair with sports.

by Dennis Freeland

ports and movies. Movies and sports. The two have gone together for most of the 20th century. Hollywood has always loved larger-than-life sports figures, from Babe Ruth and Knute Rockne to Ty Cobb and Jake La Motta. Making movies about sports subjects is easy. The playing field, boxing ring, or horse track makes a natural stage, while the drama grows naturally from the competition.

A scene from Blue Chips.

Now comes Sports on the Silver Screen, a 100-minute documentary which will appear on PBS this week (locally, WKNO-TV Channel 10, Saturday at 7 p.m.). Written by talented sportswriter Frank DeFord and produced in conjunction with the American Film Institute, this tribute film is jam-packed with snippets from sports movies ranging from obscure silent flicks to Oscar winners like Chariots of Fire and Rocky, from The Champ (1931), with Wallace Berry and Jackie Cooper, the first sports film to win an Oscar, to the Marx Brothers, Bugs Bunny, and Popeye.

In fact, all the movie footage poses a problem – there are too many clips here and not enough insight. The pace is blinding, and the film scenes proceed so rapidly that the viewer barely has time to remember one movie before another shoots across the screen. DeFord’s script is disjointed and never sure of where it is going. Sometimes it seems chronological, at other times thematic.

But there are interesting sections. And if you love sports, how bad could Sports on the Silver Screen possibly be? Some of the narration from the likes of Cooper, Billy Crystal, Gene Hackman, and Ron Shelton is captivating and many of their points are insightful. It’s just lost in the whirl of tape.

One of my favorite sections examines coaches. Among the clips are famous scenes such as Pat O’Brien’s “win one for the Gipper” speech in the 1940 classic Knute Rockne – All American. That speech, whether historically accurate or not, became the standard for all inspirational locker-room talks since, both on the silver screen and in the real world. Other coaches featured in this section include Hackman as the grizzled coach in Hoosiers, taking his team onto the floor in the big Indianapolis arena and having them measure the distance from the floor to the rim, just to make the point that the gym might be bigger than the one in Hickory, but the basket was still the same height. Nick Nolte, who was terrific as the beat-up, washed-up wide receiver in North Dallas Forty, gets a good turn here as the coach in Blue Chips, the basketball movie starring Shaq and Penny.

The problem with sports movies, as Crystal points out, is duplicating the authenticity of the real thing. Sports offer the ultimate realism in American entertainment, and this has always been difficult for Hollywood to capture. Sometimes directors seeking the real deal have cast athletes to play themselves in sports movies. Babe Ruth did it (with mixed results); Jackie Robinson did it (with better results) in The Jackie Robinson Story (1950). We even learn from Sports on the Silver Screen that Gale Sayers, the great Chicago Bear running back, was offered an opportunity to play himself in the 1970 tear-jerker Brian’s Song, which was originally made for television. But Sayers’ coach, George (Papa Bear) Halas, nixed the idea and the role went to Billy Dee Williams.

Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull (1980) gets my vote for greatest sports movie. More realistic in some ways (the slow-motion, black-and-white beatings) than an actual fight, Raging Bull sets the standard for sports realism on film. On the other hand, who, Crystal asks, has ever seen a boxing match in which simple jabs sent the opponent’s head flying back, as in Rocky?

While unrealistic, Rocky (1976) was important for another reason – the return of the underdog film. The screenplay itself was an underdog, written by an unknown actor, Sylvester Stallone, who insisted on playing the leading role. Rocky captured the hearts of audiences, critics, and Academy voters. Coming on the heels of Vietnam and Watergate, as the country was celebrating its 200th birthday, Rocky was the feel-good movie Americans wanted to see. Its success led to a spate of sports-underdog stories, from The Bad News Bears to Rudy to The Mighty Ducks.

Sports on the Silver Screen is an enjoyable tribute to the hundreds of films made about sports. I would have liked to hear more from the interviews, especially Crystal, Hackman, and Shelton, the director of three of my favorite sports movies: Cobb, Bull Durham, and White Men Can’t Jump. But maybe that’s another documentary.