Jim Thorpe: All American is a historical drama which premiered in 1951. It is a biopic of the famous Native American athlete Jim Thorpe (1887-1953).
Here is some basic information this drama:
** Director: Michael Curtiz (1886-1962)
** Writers: Russell Birdwell, Douglas Morrow, and Everett Freeman
** Language: English
** Subtitles: English
** Released on DVD in 2007
** Run time: 107 minutes
The cast includes the following:
** Burt Lancaster (1913-1994) as Jim Thorpe (adult)
** Billy Gray (born 1938) as Jim Thorpe (child)
** Charles Bickford (1891-1967) as Glenn Scobey “Pop” Warner (1871-1954) – a sports coach
** Phyllis Thaxter (1919-2012) as Margaret Miller – the wife of Jim Thorpe
** Jack Bighead (1930-1993) as Little Boy
** Al Mejia as Lewis Tewanima (1888-1969)
** Hubie Kerns as Tom Ashenbrunner – a football player (this person is a fictional character)
** Roy Joseph Turner (1894-1973) as himself – he was the governor of Oklahoma 1947-1951
Since this drama is based on a true story, the basic facts are part of the public record. They are not a secret. This is why I feel free to mention some of them here.
While this drama is based on a true story, it is not a documentary film. It is a dramatized version of events. Not everything happened exactly as shown here.
Some details may have been altered, added or excluded for dramatic reasons or practical purposes. But the basic story is true.
This biopic of Jim Thorpe covers his life from the time when he was a child in Oklahoma until 1932. The final 21 years of his life are not covered in this drama.
We follow Jim as he moves from his childhood home in Oklahoma to the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania. He is a student at Carlisle from 1904 to 1912.
He begins to focus on sports in 1907. He is a great athlete who excels in several disciplines: running, jumping, football and baseball.
His biggest triumph is the moment when he represents the USA during the 1912 Olympic Games held in Stockholm, Sweden.
He wins two gold medals:
** The first medal when he wins the pentathlon
** The second medal when he wins the decathlon
In 1913, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) decides to revoke his victories and tells him to return his gold medals.
According to the IOC, he has violated the rules, because he accepted a small amount of money when he played baseball for a short time in 1909 and 1910.
They say he is not an amateur, because he played for money. Only amateurs are allowed to take part in the Olympic Games.
But the members of the IOC do not follow their own rules when they make this decision. According to the rules, any complaint against an athlete must be made within 30 days after the end of the games.
The games are held in 1912. The complaint is made in 1913; six months after the end of the games!
The deadline has already passed. It is a violation of the rules to make a complaint against Jim Thorpe in 1913.
Jim Thorpe appeals for mercy. He claims he did not know anything about such a rule when he accepted to play baseball in 1909 and 1910.
He says he was poor. He says he only received a small amount of money to cover his room and food.
His coach and mentor Pop Warner supports his appeal, but this does not help. The members of the committee cannot be moved. They say:
“Ignorance is no excuse!”
This decision is a pivotal moment in Jim Thorpe’s life. He feels he is a victim of an unjust rule. He feels this rule has only been enforced, because he is an American Indian.
He is probably right, on both counts, although no member of the IOC is ever going to admit to this.
He had planned to become a sports coach after taking part in the Olympic Games, but now this path seems to be closed to him.
What school or college is going to hire an athlete who has been stripped of his Olympic medals?
From this moment in time, he decides to become a professional athlete.
Over the following years, he plays football and baseball for several teams, but his career is not going well.
Something inside him was broken when his victories in Stockholm were revoked. It seems it can never be fixed.
In 1932, he attends the Olympic Games which are held in Los Angeles, but this time he is not an athlete, he is a spectator.
During his final years, Jim Thorpe has a problem with alcoholism. His marriage ends with a divorce. He is no longer the man he once was.
What do reviewers say about this historical drama?
Here are some results:
** 56 percent = Rotten Tomatoes (the audience)
** 69 percent = IMDb
On Amazon there are at the moment more than 600 ratings of this product, including more than 170 with reviews.
The average rating is 4.6 stars, which corresponds to a rating of 92 percent.
In order to illustrate positive as well as negative ratings of this drama, I will mention a few examples:
A three-star review on Amazon has the headline:
“A good movie about a great athlete”
A two-star review on Amazon has the headline:
“Awful movie about a great athlete”
A one-star review on Amazon has this headline:
“Great example of how stereotypes are perpetuated by Hollywood”
A user review posted on IMDb offers a rating of 100 percent. The headline says:
“Unforgettable movie”
A user review posted on IMDb offers a rating of 70 percent. The headline says:
“A lot of fiction in this biopic, but great Burt Lancaster performance”
A user review posted on IMDb offers a rating of 50 percent. The headline says:
“Not really Jim Thorpe’s life”
A user review posted on IMDb offers a rating of 40 percent. The headline says:
“Melodrama, not history”
Historical truth is a serious problem in this drama. The level of historical accuracy is low. Several reviewers mention some cases where historical truth has been violated, apparently for no good reason.
#1. The main character is played by a white man, who is too old for the role. Burt Lancaster was in his thirties, almost forty years old, when he had to portray a man who was in his twenties.
The role of Jim Thorpe should have been played by a Native American, but a white actor was chosen.
In 1951, Hollywood was prepared to make a movie about the life of a Native American, but the leading role still had to be played by a white man!
Here is another example of this approach:
The famous musical West Side Story was turned into a movie which premiered in 1961.
The two main characters in the musical are Tony, who is a young white man, and Maria, who is a young woman from Puerto Rico.
Who was chosen to play the role of Maria?
A white actress: Natalie Wood!
# 2. Jim Thorpe is a student at Carlisle Indian Boarding School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. This school was the first of many boarding schools established for Native Americans.
The founder of the school had a motto or a slogan which defined the purpose of the Native American Boarding Schools:
“Kill the Indian and save the man!”
The aim was assimilation. Everything native was to be stripped away. Language and culture. Students should have little or no contact with their parents, because the influence of the parents was regarded as negative and unwanted.
None of this is seen or implied in the drama. Life at the Carlisle is romanticized. Students seem to have a pleasant life there.
Apparently, they can do whatever they want. There are no rules or regulations. The harsh reality of the boarding school system has been washed away.
# 3. In the drama, Jim Thorpe has one wife and one child. In real life, the situation was quite different:
Jim Thorpe was married three times and he was the father of eight children. Four with his first wife and another four with his second wife.
Apparently, the director was not prepared to deal with three wives and eight children. He decided to scale reality down to one wife and one child.
# 4. When the drama covers the Olympic Games of 1932, archive footage from the event is added to the drama. I do not want to object to this decision. It is a good idea.
The switch from Hollywood movie to archive footage is almost invisible, because the Hollywood movie from 1951 is in black-and-white just like the archive footage from 1932.
In the drama, we can see some moments of the opening ceremony. A runner enters the stadium with a torch and lights the flame of the Olympic tower.
This scene is not from 1932. This did not happen in 1932. This is Hollywood drama from 1951.
The Olympic flame was used for the first time during the Olympic Games in Amsterdam in 1928. The flame was burning on top of an Olympic tower.
A runner who enters the stadium with a burning torch was used for the first time during the Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936. A runner used the burning torch to light the flame of the Olympic tower. But this did not happen in Los Angeles in 1932.
The runner with the torch is an anachronism. This detail was introduced by the Nazis in Berlin in 1936, and it has become a standard element of the opening ceremony.
The notion is so common that the director decided to add it to the opening of the Olympic Games in 1932. Four years before it happened in real life!
# 5. The question of citizenship. When Jim Thorpe was born in 1887, he was not an American citizen, even though he was born in the US.
Many Native Americans lived on reservations. They were not regarded as American citizens, because the Indian tribes were regarded as foreign nations.
Native Americans could become American citizens by leaving the reservation and by renouncing their Native American identity. But many Native Americans did not want to surrender their Native American identity.
This odd situation lasted for many years. This odd situation continued until 1924, when the US Congress passed an act which declared that all Native Americans were American citizens.
In 1912, when Jim Thorpe represented the US during the Olympic Games in Stockholm, many Native Americans were still not regarded as American citizens, even though they were born in the US; even though they had more generations of American ancestors than the white politicians who made the laws in Congress.
The question of citizenship is significant, but it is never mentioned in this drama.
Jim Thorpe was an amazing athlete. His accomplishments in the world of sports are impressive. His performance in different disciplines was unsurpassed for many years.
The story of his life is important. It deserves to be told. But as you can see, this drama has some flaws. I have to remove two stars because of these flaws.
This drama is neither great nor good. It is average. This is why it deserves a rating of three stars (60 percent).
PS # 1. Michael Curtiz is the director of several movies, including Casablanca (1942) which was described by the famous film critic Roger Ebert as "one of the most popular films ever made."
PS # 2. The term “All American” is used about an American athlete who is honored as one of the best amateurs in the US.
PS # 3. In 1982, the IOC reversed the decision of 1913. But the reversal was only partial. He was listed as a co-champion. Not as a winner.
In 2022, he was finally recognized as the sole champion of both events: he was the winner of the pentathlon and the winner of the decathlon.
REFERENCES
#1. Books
Native American Testimony: A Chronicle of Indian-White Relations from Prophecy to the Present
By Peter Nabokov
(1991 = first edition)
(1999 = second edition)
Pop Warner, Football's Greatest Teacher: The Epic Autobiography of Major College Football's Winningest Coach, Glenn S. (Pop) Warner
Edited by Mike Bynum
(1993)
Children of the Indian Boarding Schools
By Holly Littlefield
(2001)
All American:
The Rise and Fall of Jim Thorpe
By Bill Crawford
(2004)
Boarding School Blues: Revisiting American Indian Educational Experiences
Edited by Clifford E. Trafzer, Jean A. Keller, and Lorene Sisquoc
(2006)
Native Athletes in Sport and Society
Edited by C. Richard King
(2006)
Native American Son:
The Life and Sporting Legend of Jim Thorpe
By Kate Buford
(2010 = hardcover)
(2012 = paperback)
Native American Boarding Schools
By Mary A. Stout
(2012)
Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875-1928
By David Wallace Adams
(1995 = first edition)
(2020 = second edition)
Path Lit by Lightning:
The Life of Jim Thorpe
By David Maraniss
(2022 = hardcover)
(2023 = paperback)
# 2. Film and video
Geronimo:
An American Legend
(1993)
Smoke Signals
(1998)
The Canary Effect
(2006)
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
(2007)
Reel Injun
(2009)
Unspoken:
America’s Native American Boarding Schools
(2016)
Native America
A television series on US television (PBS)
Season one (2018) - Four episodes
Season two (2023) - Four episodes
*****
The Native American athlete
Jim Thorpe
(1887-1953)
This photo was taken sometime between
1915 and 1920
*****
Native American Son:
The Life and Sporting Legend of
Jim Thorpe
By Kate Buford
(2010 = hardcover)
(2012 = paperback)
*****
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