With the 2022-23 American Football season under way, Cinema Paradiso looks back on a century of gridiron movies that not only reflect the changes within the sport, but also the way its status has flourished within US society as a whole.
Fifty-five years have passed since one of America's greatest sporting institutions was inaugurated. In 1966, the National Football League and the American Football League decided to have an end-of-season showdown between their champion teams. The first final saw the Green Bay Packers triumph over the Kansas City Chiefs by 35-10 in January 1967.
Four years later, the Baltimore Colts prevailed 16-13 over the Dallas Cowboys to win the first Super Bowl, a title that has since stuck, as a play on the Rose Bowl Game that had been held annually between the two best college teams since 1916. The university influence on the sport runs deep, as the first-ever game had been played between Princeton and Rutgers in November 1869. Consequently, film-makers have dedicated as much time to the collegiate and Pee Wee levels as to pro ball. The quality of the on-field action may be different, but the sporting and human drama is the same no matter who is playing.
The Pigskin Parade's Gone By
Despite it being known worldwide as 'American Football', the sport should more accurately be called 'Canadian Football', as the oval ball, the use of hands, forward passing and tackling were all imported from the hybrid rugby/soccer game played north of the 49th Parallel. However, the rules were codified by universities in the United States after a Harvard-Yale game in 1875 and it's that form of the game, complete with the snap at the line of scrimmage, that Hollywood first got round to depicting in feature form in Charles Ray's lost comedy, Two Minutes to Go (1921), in which a star college player moonlights as a milkman to keep his father's business afloat.
Four years later, Samuel Taylor and Fred C. Newmeyer's The Freshman (1925) alerted audiences worldwide to American Football, as Harold Lloyd's water boy scores the winning touchdown for Tate University after coming on to the gridiron sward as a last- gasp substitute. Sadly, the full film isn't currently available for rental, but Cinema Paradiso users can catch a glimpse of the fun in Harold Lloyd's World of Comedy (1962).
Although linebackers tended to be immovable objects, running backs, full backs and quarterbacks didn't have to be quite so muscular. Consequently, some of the biggest stars of the silent era headlined football films, including Richard Dix (The Quarterback, 1926), William Haines (Brown of Harvard, 1926) and Richard Barthelmess (The Drop Kick, 1927). Moreover, it did flappers like Clara Bow (The Plastic Age, 1925) and Joan Crawford (West Point, 1927) no harm to be seen mooning over a hunky leatherhead.
In 1892, Pudge Heffelfinger became America's first pro baller and the rise of a professional game alongside the college circuit was boosted by the growth of major cities, improved transport links and the introduction of radio commentaries in 1921. Sound came to cinema six years later, with John Ford's Salute (1929) being the first football talkie. George O'Brien and Ward Bond starred as brothers on opposite sides in an Army-Navy game and further forces showdowns came in Kurt Neumann's That Navy Spirit (1937) and Touchdown, Army (1938), which sandwiched Sam Wood's Navy Blue and Gold (1937), in which midshipman James Stewart has to clear his father's name before the kick-off.
The advent of sound meant that songs could be added into sporting scenarios like Wesley Ruggles's College Humor (1933) and Norman Taurog's College Rhythm (1934), which respectively featured Bing Crosby as a professor and Jack Oakie as a campus wheeler-dealer. It's perhaps not surprising that these titles haven't made it to disc on this side of the pond. But David Butler's Pigskin Parade (1936) would undoubtedly prove popular, less because the Oscar-nominated Stuart Erwin's hayseed becomes a star player at Texas State than because 14 year-old Judy Garland made her feature debut as his clued-in younger sister and got to sing three songs.
Play Up, (Insert School Name Here) !
The Hollywood studios liked American Football films. They extolled the virtues of fair play, discipline and dedication, teamwork and fighting spirit. Moreover, they showed how the underdog could overcome adversity to triumph, which was an important message during the dark days of the Great Depression. Football also provided escapism and, by setting their stories on campus, film-makers could lace the sporting action with a plenty of co-ed pep.
The template for the college football flick was Norman Z. McLeod's Horse Feathers (1932), which sees the Marx Brothers bend the rules in order to win the big game between Huxley and Darwin. A mishap sees Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff (Groucho) mistake iceman Baravelli (Chico) and Pinky (Harpo) for the ringers son Frank (Zeppo) suggests could give Huxley the edge over their rivals. However, a length of elastic, some banana skins and a horse-drawn chariot ensure that the home team prevails.
Earnest dramas like Edward Killy's Saturday's Heroes (1937) focussed on the way in which colleges exploited their star players. But celebrations of inspirational coaches were more popular, most notably Lloyd Bacon's Knute Rockne, All American (1940) and Ray Enright's The Iron Major (1943), with the former featuring Ronald Reagan delivering the famous line, 'win just one for the Gipper', which was parodied in Airplane! (1980), which was directed by Jim Abrahams and David and Jerry Zucker.
The emphasis was on fun in postwar football features, as television started beaming pro games into people's living rooms. While the big city franchises had their fans, the lure of school and college teams remained strong, as they lay at the heart of local communities. It wasn't just students and faculty members who attended games, hence the importance of star player Peter Lawford passing the exam that will let him take the field for Tait College's end-of-season showdown in Charles Walters's Good News (1947). It's a shame this brisk musical isn't on disc and the same is true of such comedies as John M. Stahl's Father Was a Fullback (1949), Hal Walker's Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis vehicle, That's My Boy (1951), and Frederick De Cordova's Bonzo Goes to College (1952), which sees coach Edmund Gwenn select a chimpanzee at quarterback.
As in the silent era, strapping stars recognised the kudos of playing jocks, even when they discover that sporting fame isn't all it's cracked up to be. This was the case with John Derek in David Miller's Saturday's Hero (1951) and Tony Curtis in Jesse Hibbs's The All American (1953). Clearly audiences failed to respond to these downbeat dramas, however, as no significant football film was made in Hollywood for the next 12 years, as kids lost interest in clean-cut athletes and found new heroes in rebellious rock'n'roll singers.
The world was a very different place by the time J. Lee Thompson's John Goldfarb, Please Come Home (1965) was released. A comedy about the CIA trying to persuade Notre Dame to lose a game in order to appease an Arab potentate, it was adapted from his own novel by William Peter Blatty, who would go on to win the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for tailoring his own 1971 bestseller for William Friedkin's The Exorcist (1973). Moreover, it proved to be the last Hollywood football film produced before the launch of the Super Bowl, which so raised the profile of pro ball that almost another decade would pass before the grassroots game got another look in.
It's all the more amusing, therefore, that Robert Aldrich's The Longest Yard (1974) should centre on a disgraced NFL player's bid for redemption through a game staged behind bars. Burt Reynolds starred as Paul 'Wrecking' Crewe, who assembles a team to take on the semi-pro guards unit coached by Warden Rudolph Hazen (Eddie Albert). A number of leading players took cameos and Reynolds himself would return as Coach Nate Scarborough in Peter Segal's The Longest Yard (2005), which cast Adam Sandler as Crewe and James Cromwell as Hazen. In between times, Vinnie Jones changed the shape of the ball for Barry Skolnick's Mean Machine (2001), which led many to draw comparisons with the plot of Dick Clement's 1979 feature spin-off from the Ronnie Barker sitcom, Porridge (1974-77).
Anticipating Rod Daniel's Teen Wolf (1985), Larry Cohen's Full Moon High (1981) stars Adam Arkin as a jock who becomes a werewolf after a family holiday in Transylvania. However, the plot also contains echoes of Jono McLeod's documentary, My Old School (2022). The emergence of the Brat Pack in the 1980s saw a notable rise in the quantity and quality of high school movies, thanks in no small measure to writer-director John Hughes, whose finest films are all accessible via the Cinema Paradiso searchline.
Curiously, American Football plays little part in gems like The Breakfast Club (1985) and Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986), but others were waiting in the pocket. First up was Michael Chapman's All the Right Moves (1983), which turns on the battle of wills between defensive back Stefen Djordjevic (Tom Cruise) and Ampipe High School coach, Vern Nickerson (Craig T. Nelson), and the fallout from their fall out after a defeat to bitter rivals, Walnut Heights High. A key film in Cruise's rapid rise to stardom - alongside Paul Brickman's Risky Business (1983) - this demonstrated that cliché can often be the smartest call in a director's playbook.
Sentiment also played a sizeable part in David Seltzer's Lucas (1986), in which football star Cappie Roew (Charlie Sheen) and pint-sized Lucas Blye (Corey Haim) see their friendship at a suburban Chicago high school come under threat when they each fall for cheerleader, Maggie (Kerri Green). Schoolday rivalries resurface when Robin Williams and Kurt Russell decide to revisit a scoreless draw from their youth in Roger Spottiswoode's The Best of Times (1986). It's puzzling that this is not available on disc in this country, as the stars are on fine form and it was written by Ron Shelton, who went on to direct such epochal sports movies as Bull Durham (1988), White Men Can't Jump (1992), Tin Cup (1996) and Play It to the Bone (1999).
The latter stars Woody Harrelson, who made his screen bow (alongside fellow debutant Wesley Snipes) in Michael Ritchie's Wildcats (1986), a long-overdue comedy about women in American Football. Goldie Hawn stars as Molly McGrath, the daughter of a respected coach, who is appointed to turn the misfits at Chicago's Central High School into a winning team. On the other side of the tracks, stellar quarterback Anthony Michael Hall finds himself with too many options in Bud S. Smith's Johnny Be Good (1988), as every college in the country wants to recruit him from Ashcroft High. But all the adulation starts to go to his head and threatens his relationships with best buddy Robert Downey, Jr. and girlfriend Uma Thurman.
What wouldn't Coach Ed 'Straight Arrow' Gennero (Hector Elizondo) give for such problems in Stan Dragoti's comedy, Necessary Roughness (1991), as he takes over the Fightin' Armadillos at Texas State University in the wake of a corruption scandal. With the dean eager to scrap the team, Gennero places his faith in 34 year-old quarterback, Paul Blake (Scott Bakula), and women's soccer ace, Lucy Draper (Kathy Ireland). Taking talent at face value is also the theme of Robert Mandel's School Ties (1992), which takes us back to 1959 to see how Jewish student Brendan Fraser copes on a football scholarship to St Matthew's, a Roman Catholic prep school in Massachusetts.
Matt Damon and Ben Affleck are among Fraser's anti-semitic tormentors and it's frustrating that we can't bring you David S. Ward's companion piece, The Program, in which Omar Epps has to overcome prejudice to make Coach James Caan's team. The same goes for David Anspaugh's Rudy (1993), which regularly makes Top 10 lists of US sports films. However, British audiences are deemed unlikely to have heard of Daniel 'Rudy' Ruettinger, a dyslexic (played by Sean Astin) who fulfilled an ambition to play football for Notre Dame in the 1970s. They could still appreciate the struggle, however, and they could also identify with the efforts of Rick Moranis and Ed O'Neill to coach their Ohio Pee Wee teams in Duwayne Dunham's Little Giants (1994).
Clearly these films had a cliché deficiency that can't be said of Frank Coraci's The Waterboy (1998), which takes plotlines from the previous six decades of American Football movies and punts them in the direction of Adam Sandler. He plays Bobby Boucher, a socially awkward 31 year-old who is given a chance to play tackle for the Mud Dogs after being fired as a water boy by their snooty rivals, the Louisiana Cougars. Will he get to feature in the Bourbon Bowl finale and transform his team's fortunes? What do you think?
The same year saw the release of Richard Martin's canine tale, Air Bud: Golden Receiver (1998), in which Kevin Zegers discovers that his pet pooch not only excels at basketball, but also at football. Buddy's displays for the Timberwolves might not have impressed coach Bud Kilner (Jon Voight) in Brian Robbins's Varsity Blues (1999), however, as nothing quarterback Jonathan Moxon (James Van Der Beek) and his high school teammates do is good enough for the folks of the Texan town of West Canaan.
Not all screen coaches are tyrants, though. Take Herman Boone (Denzel Washington) and assistant Bill Yoast (Will Patton), who manage to put their differences aside in Boaz Yakin's biopic, Remember the Titans (2000), in order to defy racial tensions in the town of Alexandria, Virginia and turn the football team from T.C. Williams High School into a winning machine. Staying in the 1970s, Michael Tollin tells another true story in Radio (2003), which recalls how twentysomething James Robert 'Radio' Kennedy (Cuba Gooding, Jr.) conquers his intellectual disability to help Coach Harold Jones (Ed Harris) inspire the football team and receive a formal education at T.L. Hanna High School in Anderson, South Carolina.
Completing a factual hat-trick is Peter Berg's Friday Night Lights (2004), which draws on a bestseller by H.G. Bissinger to chronicle the season that saw the city of Odessa, Texas become obsessed with the championship push of the Permian High School Panthers. There's plenty for Coach Gary Gaines (Billy Bob Thornton) to contend with, as star players succumb to injury and his decisions are questioned. But that's nothing compared to what happens against Dallas Carter High at the Houston Astrodome.
The fictional town of Blue Springs, Montana is the setting for Alex and Andrew J. Smith's The Slaughter Rule (2002), in which Roy Chutney (Ryan Gosling) is helped to cope with his father's suicide and being cut from the school football squad by Gideon Ferguson (David Morse) inviting him to join the six-a-side team he coaches. It's the power of prayer that helps the Shiloh Christian Academy Eagles reach the final against the Richland Giants in Alex Kendrick's Facing the Giants (2006), whose supporting cast is made up of volunteers from the Sherwood Baptist Church from Albany, Georgia.
We're back in biopic territory for McQ's We Are Marshall and Phil Joanou's Gridiron Gang (both 2006). The former recalls how Coach Jack Lengyel (Matthew McConaughey) helped a town grieve and rediscover its pride by rebuilding the Marshall University Thundering Herd team after several players and members of the coaching staff were killed in a plane crash in November 1970. The Kilpatrick Mustangs provide the inspiration for the latter title. They were formed by Los Angeles detention officer Sean Porter (Dwayne Johnson) to give street kids a focus. Inter-gang tensions threaten to scupper the experiment in a 1990 season that is defined by two games against the unstoppable Barrington Panthers.
In 1961, Ernie Davis became the first African American to win the coveted Heisman Trophy for the outstanding college footballer. He was discovered by Syracuse University coach Ben Schwartzwalder (Dennis Quaid) to replace the hugely successful Jim Brown (Darrin Dewitt Henson) and Davis (Rob Brown) seized his chance with both hands. Fate would not be kind, however, as Gary Fleder reveals in The Express (2008). Released the same year, Fred Durst's The Longshots offers another true-life story, as it reveals how Jasmine Plummer (Keke Plummer) of the Minden Browns became the first girl to participate in the Pop Warner league that was founded in 1929 to give underprivileged children a chance to shine. Coached in Illinois by her Uncle Curtis (Ice Cube), Jasmine develops the self-worth to confront her deadbeat father.
Giving kids a chance to make something of themselves is also the theme of John Lee Hancock's The Blind Side (2009). Yet another narrative rooted in fact, this earned Sandra Bullock the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance as Leigh Anne Tuohy, the interior designer who adopts parentless and homeless 17 year-old, Michael Oher (Quinton Aaron), and guides him to becoming the star offensive tackle for the Wingate Christian Academy. It's the Wake Forest Demon Deacons who lead the charge in Rick Bieber's The 5th Quarter (2011), another real-lifer that shows how Jon Abbate (Ryan Merriman) honoured the memory of his younger brother by piloting a team from North Carolina on a miraculous winning streak during the 2006 season.
Daniel Lindsay and T.J. Martin can be forgiven for sticking to the facts in Undefeated (2011), as their Oscar-winning documentary celebrates the achievements of volunteer coach Bill Courtney, who turned the serial losers from Manassas High School from Memphis, Tennessee into the rampaging Manassas Tigers during the glorious 2009 season.
It would also be nice to recommend Kyle Smith's Turkey Bowl (2011), which joins some friends for their Thanksgiving touch football game. However, this indie hasn't been released in this country and the same goes for another football reunion, Greg Coolidge's The Turkey Bowl (2019). But Cinema Paradiso members can revel in The One With the Football, a 1996 episode of Friends (1994-2004), in which the sibling rivalry between Ross (David Schwimmer) and Monica (Courteney Cox) goes to extremes when they play touch football for the Geller Cup.
An Ohio farmer on his uppers (Brian Presley) attempts suicide in Dan Handfield's Touchback (2012) and finds himself reliving the state championship game that had changed his life when he picked up the injury that had cost him a university scholarship. A teenager from Corbin, Kentucky looks to have lost his chance of fulfilling his footballing ambitions when he goes blind in actor Dylan Baker's directorial debut, 23 Blast (2013). However, this biopic of Travis Freeman (Mark Hapka) has an inspirational twist that drives the Corbin Redhounds on to success.
More facts and some incredible stats are shoehorned into Thomas Carter's When the Game Stands Tall (2014), which charts how high school coach Bob Ladouceur (Jim Caviezel) steered the De La Salle Spartans from Concord, California through a 151-game unbeaten run that lasted from 1992-2003 and caused some of his rivals to suspect him and assistant Terri Eidson (Michael Chiklis) resorting to foul play. An infamous scandal sours the mood in Arthur Muhammad's Carter High (2015), as the Cowboys from David W. Carter High in Dallas, Texas are stripped of their 1988 state championship title after six members of a team that had been forced to battle against racial prejudice are involved in an armed robbery.
Bigotry is also the issue in Andrew and Jon Irwin's Woodlawn (2015), which returns to Birmingham, Alabama in 1973 to show how Coach Tandy Gerelds (Nic Bishop) defied those against including Black players like running back Tony Nathan (Caleb Castille) in the recently desegregated school's gridiron team. Faith is the order of the day in Chris Dowling's Christian drama, Run the Race (2018), while we conclude this segment with two more biopics, Reginald Hudlin's Safety (2020), a Disney tribute to caring sibling and Clemson Tigers rookie, Ray McElrathbey, and Ty Roberts's 12 Mighty Orphans (2021), which stars Luke Wilson as Rusty Russell (Luke Wilson), who coached the title-chasing Mighty Mites team from Fort Worth, Texas during the Great Depression.
NFL For Leather
The National Football League was still the only game in town when Jacques Tourneur's Easy Living (1949) told how New York Chiefs quarterback Victor Mature played on with a heart condition in order to please socially ambitious wife, Lizabeth Scott, and when Michael Curtiz's Jim Thorpe - All-American (1951) starred Burt Lancaster as the Native American who played football for Carlisle College before competing in the 1912 Olympics. However, the rival American Football League had been in existence for six years when Walter Matthau gave his Oscar-winning performance as William H. Gingrich in Billy Wilder's The Fortune Cookie (1966), which sees 'Whiplash Willie' persuade TV cameraman Harry Hinkle (Jack Lemmon) to sue star player Luther 'Boom Boom' Jackson (Ron Rich), when he collides with him during a Cleveland Browns game.
The Super Bowl revitalised the sport and Hollywood responded with a trio of football classics, which aren't available in the UK, despite being much lauded in the US: Alex March's Paper Lion (1968); Buzz Kulik's Brian's Song (1971); and Vincent McEveety's Gus (1976), with the latter being a Disney comedy about a goal-kicking mule.
Having played a New Orleans Saints quarterback on the skids in Tom Gries's Number One (1969), Charlton Heston turned up as an LAPD captain joining forces with SWAT commander John Cassavetes to search the the championship crowd at the Memorial Coliseum for a sniper in Larry Peerce's Two-Minute Warning (1976). Fans at the Miami Orange Bowl are similarly imperilled by a bomb in the blimp filming the Super Bowl in John Frankenheimer's thriller, Black Sunday (1977), which was adapted from a novel by Thomas Harris.
Alexander Hall's Here Comes Mr Jordan (1941) provided the inspiration for Warren Beatty and Buck Henry's Heaven Can Wait (1978), in which Los Angeles Rams quarterback, Joe Pendleton (Beatty), is plucked before his time by an inexperienced celestial escort (Henry) and is allowed to return to Earth in a new body by Mr Jordan (James Mason). Unfortunately, millionaire Leo Farnsworth has just been the victim of a murder attempt by his wife, Julia (Dyan Cannon), and her lover, Tony Abbott (Charles Grodin).
By contrast with this comedy, other films released around this period dealt with the physical toll taken by playing pro ball. Bafflingly, notable examples like Ted Kotcheff's North Dallas Forty (1979) are not currently available to rent. Taylor Hackford's similarly themed Everybody's All-American (1988) is also missing. But the same director's Against All Odds (1984) is available from Cinema Paradiso and provides a textbook example of how sporting and human drama can combine to compelling effect.
Dropped by the Outlaws, receiver Terry Brogan (Jeff Bridges) is hired by shady nightclub owner, Jake Wise (James Woods), to find his missing girlfriend, Jessie Wyler (Rachel Ward), whose father owns the Outlaws. A remake of Jacques Tourneur's Out of the Past (1947), this simmering neo-noir features a cameo as Jessie's mother by Jane Greer, who had been the femme fatale caught between Robert Mitchum and Kirk Douglas in the original adaptation of Daniel Mainwaring's novel.
Football is equally tangential to the plot in Tony Scott's The Last Boy Scout (1991), a Shane Black-scripted actioner that pitches fallen hero Joe Hallenback (Bruce Willis) into a conspiracy involving gambling in sports and the efforts of Jimmy Dix (Damon Wayans) to get back on the Los Angeles Stallions squad. Money also plays a vital part in Cameron Crowe's Jerry Maguire (1996), as the eponymous agent as Sports Management International (Tom Cruise) seeks to save his career by securing a bumper deal for Arizona Cardinals wide receiver Rod Tidwell (Cuba Gooding, Jr.).
However. starting up his own agency poses additional problems, when Jerry falls for his assistant, single mom Dorothy Boyd (Renée Zellwegger). Nominated for Best Picture and Best Actor, this heartwarming romcom earned Cuba Gooding the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. Jamie Foxx had missed out on the role, but he plays a blinder in Oliver Stone's Any Given Sunday (1999), which was adapted from a novel by former defensive end, Pat Toomay (who cameos alongside a host of former NFL stars).
Promoted when an injury sidelines quarterback Jack 'Cap' Rooney (Dennis Quaid), Willie "Steamin'" Beamen (Foxx) leads the Miami Sharks to an unexpected victory. Owner Christina Pagniacci (Cameron Diaz) is impressed, but Coach Tony D'Amato (Al Pacino) dislikes Beamen's arrogance and off-field antics.
Another bench-warmer seizes his opportunity in Howard Deutsch's The Replacements (2000). Inspired by the 1987 NFL strike, this lively comedy sees the Washington Sentinels appoint Jimmy McGinty (Gene Hackman) as coach with three games of the regular season remaining. However, with the A squad working to rule, he has to recruit out of the box and persuades ex-college quarterback Shane Falco (Keanu Reeves) to swap his houseboat for the locker room.
In his varsity days, Brandon Long (Matthew McConaughey) had shown promise before an injury cruelly curtailed his career. He is now, however, making a steady living handicapping sports events and his unerring judgement attract the attention of sports consultant Walter Abrams (Al Pacino) in D.J. Caruso's edgy exposé of football gambling, Two For the Money (2005). The double act is more wholesome in Ericson Core's Invincible (2006), a Disney biopic that shows how teacher-turned-bartender Vince Papale (Mark Wahlberg) became a key cog under Coach Dick Vermeil (Greg Kinnear), as the Philadelphia Eagles reach Super Bowl XV against the Oakland Raiders.
The same year saw Peter Griffin get traded by the New England Patriots to the London Silly Nannies for whipping up the crowd for the showstopping 'Shipoopi' after scoring a touchdown in the Patriot Games episode of Family Guy (1999-). The Pats would also feature in 3 Acts of God in 2014, as God promises Peter to stop making the team lose if he can make Coach Bill Belichick smile. And while we're in TV Land, don't forget to check out The Cornhusker Vortex (2010) and the The Thanksgiving Decoupling (2013) episodes of The Big Bang Theory (2007-19), in which Leonard Hofstadter (Johnny Galecki) and Sheldon Cooper (Jim Parsons) respectively demonstrate expectedly little and surprisingly extensive knowledge about American Football.
Back in the realms of features, Boston Rebels quarterback Joe Kingman (Dwayne Johnson) discovers he has an eight year-old daughter named Peyton (Madison Pettis) in Andy Fickman's The Game Plan (2007). The same year saw George Clooney direct himself in a very different kind of comedy. Set in the 1920s and loosely based on fact, Leatherheads chronicles the efforts of Jimmy 'Dodge' Connelly (Clooney) to raise the game and profile of the Duluth Bulldogs by signing Great War hero, Carter Rutherford (John Krasinski), only for them both to fall for reporter Lexie Littleton (Renée Zellwegger).
Supporters rather than players take the spotlight in Robert D. Siegel's Big Fan (2009), in which a New York Giants devotee has an altercation with his favourite player, and David O. Russell's Silver Linings Playbook (2012), in which young widow Tiffany Maxwell (Jennifer Lawrence) helps bipolar Patrizio Solitano (Bradley Cooper) repair his fractured relationship with his Philadelphia Eagles-loving father (Robert De Niro).
Back on the gridiron, Sonny Weaver (Kevin Costner) feels the pressure in Ivan Reitman's Draft Day (2014), as the general manager of the Cleveland Browns has to convince Coach Vince Penn (Denis Leary) to go with the decision by owner Anthony Molina (Frank Langella) to replace a respected starting quarterback with a Heisman Trophy-winning first pick draftee. A fine companion piece to Benjamin Miller's Moneyball (2011), this presents an intriguing, overview of how a major sporting franchise is run.
Equally riveting is Peter Landesman's Concussion (2015), which draws on Jeanne Marie Laskas's GQ article, 'Game Brain', to reveal how forensic pathologist Bennet Omalu (Will Smith) discovered the brain disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy after performing an autopsy on former Pittsburgh Steelers centre, Mike Webster (David Morse). This is one of the films mentioned in Cinema Paradiso's Brief History of Films Inspired by Magazine Articles and it's where we end our look at film and American Football, because Andrew and Jon Erwin's American Underdog (2021) - another biopic which charts the rise of Kurt Warner (Zachary Levi) from grocery stockboy to Los Angeles Rams Super Bowl winner - isn't currently available on disc.
Going Into Overtime
Having distinguished themselves at collegiate and/or professional levels, a number of former footballers gravitated towards Hollywood. Edward F. Cline's The Forward Pass (1929), for example, featured an uncredited turn from a young John Wayne. As Marion Morrison, he had been a useful footballer as at Glendale High School and the University of Southern California, where he had earned the nickname 'Duke' before injury cut short his career. He was more prominent in Edward Sedgwick's Maker of Men (1931), in which Richard Cromwell is driven hard by coach father Jack Holt. Cromwell would uniform up again for That's My Boy (1932), which was directed by Roy William Neill, who helmed the best of Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce's outings as Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson. Head for the Cinema Paradiso searchline and the game will be afoot.
William Wellman's musical, Maybe It's Love (1930), cast Joan Bennett as the president's daughter recruiting ringers to win a big game. Wellman would also direct College Coach (1933), which sees Pat O'Brien persuade president's son Dick Powell to pick football over chemistry. However, it's more notable as the last film in which Wayne took an uncredited cameo after having been top-billed in Raoul Walsh's The Big Trail (1930). It wasn't Wayne's final football offering, however, as he plays the coach hired by a New York Catholic college in Michael Curtiz's Trouble Along the Way (1953).
Norman Z. MacLeod's Touchdown (1931) has coach Richard Arlen risking a player's well-being to get a much-needed win. But its allure lies in cameos by Jim Thorpe and Herman Brix, who were both former footballers and Olympic athletes. The latter went on to have a fine screen career after landing the lead in W.S. Van Dyke's Tarzan the Ape Man (1932). Unfortunately, he broke his shoulder making Touchdown and the part went to fellow Olympian Johnny Weissmuller. But Brix did take the lead in the serial, The New Adventures of Tarzan (1934), in which he performed his own stunts on the Guatemalan shoot and became the only actor in the studio era to play the Lord of the Jungle as a refined English gentleman. He would later change his name to Bruce Bennett and followed war service with accomplished displays alongside Humphrey Bogart in Zoltan Korda's Sahara (1943), Delmer Daves's Dark Passage (1947) and John Huston's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948). Among his other credits were Michael Curtiz's Oscar-winning noir, Mildred Pierce (1945), and Roy Del Ruth's creature feature, The Alligator People (1959).
Turning on a twin who becomes a football star at his timid brother's college, H. Bruce Humberstone's The Quarterback (1940) pitched Wayne Morris into the dual role. He had played for Los Angeles City College and was a star in the making when he left Hollywood to become a decorated war pilot. On returning to Tinseltown, he found his moment had passed, although he continued to appear in such studio pictures as H.C. Potter's The Time of Your Life (1948) and Rod Amateau's The Bushwhackers (1951) and British Bs like Terence Fisher and Francis Searle's The Gelignite Gang (1956) and Henry Cass's The Crooked Sky (1957). The latter was released in the same year as Morris's last major role, as Lieutenant Roget in Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory.
Following stints as a linebacker with the Pittsburgh Steelers and the LA Rams, Mike Henry followed Herman Brix into Tarzan movies. Sadly, none of his three jungle adventures is available on disc. But Cinema Paradiso users can see Henry hooking up with John Wayne in The Green Berets (1969) and Howard Hawks's Rio Lobo (1970), as well with Burt Reynolds in The Longest Yard and Hal Needham's Smokey and the Bandit (1977). Indeed, he would reprise the role of Junior, the son of Buford T. Justice (Jackie Gleason), in Needham's Smokey and the Bandit Ride Again (1980) and Dick Lowry's Smokey and the Bandit 3 (1983).
Reynolds had been a halfback at Florida State before injury forced him to find an alternative career. He revisited the gridiron on screen in Michael Ritchie's Semi-Tough (1977), in which he plays a Miami footballer who tumbles into a love triangle with teammate Kris Kristofferson and owner's daughter, Jill Clayburgh. Such is Reynolds's renown that we shall merely invite you to use the Cinema Paradiso searchline to discover his career highs and lows. But we shall linger longer over two more ex-players who hit Hollywood in the 1960s, Jim Brown and Fred Williamson.
In 1957, Brown joined the Cleveland Browns at the start of an eight-year career that would see him break records as an elusive running back. He would go on to win the NFL championship the season after he had joined friends Cassius Clay, Malcolm X and Sam Cooke for the celebratory gathering recalled in Regina King's One Night in Miami... (2020), which is the subject of one of Cinema Paradiso's What to Watch If You Liked articles.
Brown made his acting debut as buffalo soldier Sergeant Franklin in Gordon Douglas's Western, Rio Conchos (1964). But it was his second outing in Robert Aldrich's The Dirty Dozen (1967) that established him at MGM, where he also made John Sturges's Alistair MacLean thriller, Ice Station Zebra (1968).
Following a groundbreaking mixed-race love scene with Raquel Welch in Tom Gries's 100 Rifles (1969), Brown played an ex-football icon in Jerry Paris's The Grasshopper (1970). His blaxploitation features aren't on disc, but a quick click on the searchline will take you to his Cinema Paradiso archive. Among the titles are Gordon Parks, Jr.'s Three the Hard Way (1974) and One Down, Two to Go (1982), in which he co-starred with Fred Williamson, who had been a defensive back with the Steelers, the Raiders and the Chiefs in a footballing pomp that had earned him the nickname, 'The Hammer'.
Following blaxploitation thrillers like Larry Cohen's Black Caesar (1973), Williamson proved a dynamic force in forging an Italian connection through Enzo G. Castellari's Inglorious Bastards (1978), Bronx Warriors and The New Barbarians (both 1983) and Stelvio Massi's Black Cobra (1987) and Edoardo Margheriti's Black Cobra II (1988) and Black Cobra 3: The Manila Connection (1990). Williamson also established himself as a pugnacious director with Mean Johnny Burrows (1976), Steele's Law (1991), On the Edge (2002), Lexie (2004) and Vegas Vampires (2007).
Subsequent events have clouded the record-breaking achievements of running back Orenthal James Simpson with the Buffalo Bills and the San Francisco 49ers. Known as 'The Juice', O.J. made a seamless transition into acting in movies like Terence Young's The Klansman and John Guillermin's The Towering Inferno (both 1974). He appeared in the TV series, Roots (1977), between cinematic excursions in George P. Cosmatos's The Cassandra Crossing (1976) and Peter Hyams's Capricorn One (1977). But he was best known as Nordberg in David Zucker's The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988) and The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear (1991) and Peter Segal's Naked Gun 33: The Final Insult (1994). The dream turned sour, however, as Ezra Edelman reveals in the Oscar-winning documentary, O.J.: Made in America (2016).
In the early 1970s, Carl Weathers moved north from a spell with the Oakland Raiders to join the BC Lions in Vancouver. He started acting while still in training and followed minor roles in Ted Post's Magnum Force (1973) and Arthur Marks's Friday Foster (1975) by being cast as Apollo Creed in John G. Avildsen's Best Picture winner, Rocky (1976). He sparred again with Sylvester Stallone's Rocky Balboa in Rocky II (1979), Rocky III (1982) and Rocky IV (1985) before playing George Dillon in John McTiernan's Predator (1987) and the title role in Craig R. Baxley's Action Jackson (1988). Latterly, in addition to playing Chubbs Peterson opposite Adam Sandler in Denis Dugan's Happy Gilmore (1996) and Steven Brill's Little Nicky (2000), Weathers also played a comic variation on himself in Arrested Development (2003-19) and voiced Combat Carl in Josh Cooley's Toy Story 4 (2019).
A semi-professional with the Seattle Flyers, Sam J. Jones modelled to help make ends meet. He so impressed in Blake Edwards's 10 (1979) that he pipped Kurt Russell and Arnold Schwarzenegger to the title role of Mike Hodges's Flash Gordon (1980). However, a feud with producer Dino De Laurentiis, who had previously approached Federico Fellini and Sergio Leone to make the film, led to the cancellation of a proposed trilogy. Jones has remained busy in films and television, with Cinema Paradiso members being able to find him in titles like Jobic Wong's Jungle Heat (1985), Richard Pepin's Fist of Honor (1993) and Seth MacFarlane's Ted (2012) and Ted 2 (2015).
Leaving Michigan State as the first draft pick, Bubba Smith went on to play for the Baltimore Colts, the Houston Oilers and the Oakland Raiders. Although busy on television, his cinematic CV wasn't extensive. But he will forever be remembered as Moses Hightower in Police Academy (1984), Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment (1985), Police Academy 3: Back in Training (1986 Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol (1987), Police Academy 5: Assignment Miami Beach (1988) and Police Academy 6: City Under Siege (1989).
We're going to guess that Miami Hurricane Dwayne Johnson, Seattle Seahawk Brian Bosworth and Sacramento Mountain Lion John David Washington will need no introduction to Cinema Paradiso's knowledgeable clientele. But, before the clock runs down, might we also draw your attention to such other footballing actors as Roman Gabriel (The Undefeated, 1969), Alex Karras (Blazing Saddles, 1974), Merlin Olsen (The Little House on the Prairie, 1977-81), Fred Dryer (Cheers, 1982-87), Ben Davidson (Conan the Barbarian, 1982), Dick Butkus (Johnny Dangerously, 1984), John Matuszak (The Goonies, 1985), Michael Strahan (Magic Mike XXL, 2015), Tony Gonsalez ( xXx: Return of Xander Cage, 2017), Bill Goldberg (American Satan, 2017) and Joe Namath (I Am Burt Reynolds, 2020).
