Jim Thorpe, All American

An overdue post on the great Native American athlete Jim Thorpe (1887-1953), who also had a presence in Hollywood.

Thorpe was raised in the Sauk culture, as part of the Sac and Fox Nation, in what was then Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). His father was half Irish, half Sac and Fox; his mother was Potawatomi. As a child, Thorpe endured the death of his nine year old twin brother, and later, that of his mother. He was troublesome at school, and a frequent runaway. His life came together when he enrolled at the famous Carlisle Indian Industrial School, where his talent was recognized and developed by coach Pop Warner. When still a youth Thorpe competed in track and field, football, baseball, lacrosse, tennis, boxing, handball, and even ballroom dancing. Football was his favorite sport. He was named an All American athlete three times during this period, and won numerous other trophies and awards for his feats.

In 1912, Thorpe won two gold medals at the Stockholm Olympics, in the pentathlon and decathlon events.  He was the second Native American to compete in the Olympics, but the first to win a gold medal. Frustratingly, he was stripped of the medals shortly thereafter when it came out that he had previously been paid for playing semi-pro baseball, which was against the rules. It seems obvious that there was racist motivation in this indignity. It’s not that Thorpe hadn’t broken the rules, but there was an additional technicality (the time frame in which he did it) that actually made it legal to what he did. (What one is always left to wonder in such cases is would the officials have gone looking into the background of white competitors with equal vigor. Those with experience of the world tend to doubt it). Thorpe’s medals were later posthumously reinstated. Anyway, he was still a star after the scandal, and none of his remarkable abilities had fled. He became a professional athlete in short order, remaining a legend in the national arena by playing competitive pro football, baseball, and basketball until 1928.

Starting in 1931, Thorpe began a second career as a bit player and extra in Hollywood movies. Most of the pictures he appeared had athletic themes, or were westerns in which he portrayed Native Americans. He was in nearly 75 movies over the next two decades, including Hold ‘Em Jail(1932)andSilly Billies(1936) with Wheeler and Woolsey, King Kong (1933), One Run Elmerand Alibi Ike(both with Joe E. Brown in 1935), She (1935), Barbary Coast (1935), Captain Blood (1935), Klondike Annie (1936), Pick a Star (1937), Geronimo! (1939), Knute Rockne, All American (1940), Mexican Spitfire Out West (1940), They Died With Their Boots On (1941), Road to Utopia (1945), and Wagon Master (1950).

In 1951 Michael Curtiz directed the screen version of Thorpe’s life story, Jim Thorpe, All American, starring Burt Lancaster (with Charles Bickford as Pop Warner). Watching this movie on television about 25 years later was of course how I first learned about Thorpe, just as I first learned about such figures as Houdini and Gentleman Jim Corbett from old bio-pics. To its credit, the movie doesn’t shy from the controversy surrounding his medals. If I recall correctly, the movie is a mixed bag, with a sprinkling of “how, ugh, I run like the wind!” stuff, not to mention a white actor playing a native character. But it also displays many of the traits we associate with the liberal feel-good picture. He’s a man of color, we’re on his side, we feel that he is wronged. It’s probably one of the first movies ever saw that aroused in me feelings of indignation over that kind of injustice.

My interest in Jim Thorpe was also enhanced by the fact that in Rhode Island we had had our own Native American Olympic track star hero. Go here for a post on Narragansett champion Tarzan Brown. Brown passed away right around the time I first saw Jim Thorpe, All American. It’s inevitable that I connect the two.