September 5th | 5 Movies

The National Football League’s 104th season kicks off September 7 with the defending Super Bowl champs the Kansas City Chiefs taking on the Detroit Lions at Arrowhead Stadium.

And TCM is getting in the spirit on September 5 when Alicia Malone hosts an evening of five gridiron films featuring three comedies based on popular books and two biopics.

The evening begins fitfully with a look at the Detroit Lions of the 1960s. Paper Lion (1968), is based on George Plimpton’s 1966 best-seller chronicling his time at the Lion’s training camp. The tall, lanky Harvard grad, who founded The Paris Review while still in school, had made a name for himself writing pieces for Sports Illustrated in which he attempted various types of professional athletic ventures such as pitching in an All-Stars game or even going three rounds in the ring with Sugar Ray Robinson. That didn’t end well for Plimpton.

But when it came time to do a story on trying out as a pro quarterback, only the Lions agreed to have him in training camp. However, Plimpton had to sign a waiver that the team wouldn’t accept responsibility if anything happened to him.

Paper Lion changed the career of Alan Alda who plays Plimpton. Best known for his Broadway work as well as being the son of Robert Alda, the actor brings a lot of charm and comedic styling to his performance. And just four years later, Alda would become a TV superstar as Hawkeye Pierce on the CBS series M*A*S*H, which ran for 11 seasons.

However, Plimpton’s son Taylor wrote in a 2012 New Yorker piece that Alda didn’t score a  touchdown as his dad. “Alda’s version was always angry or consternated, like a character in a Woody Allen film, while my dad, though he certainly faced hurdles as an amateur in the world of the professional, bore his humiliations with comic lightness and charm-much of which emanated from that befuddled, self-deprecating professor’s voice.”

Model Lauren Hutton made her film debut as Plimpton’s photographer girlfriend. Though she’s fine in her part, the role is two-dimensional and forgotten. Several of the Lions more than hold their own opposite Alda including Alex Karras who would go on to have a long acting career.

Roger Ebert said of Paper Lion, “I don’t know what to make of ‘Paper Lion’ as a movie…It will not be immortal, I guess…but as wish fulfillment, it’s crackerjack.”

The raucous R-rated 1977 comedy Semi-Tough, based on Sports Illustrated journalist Dan Jenkins’ 1972 best-seller plays out more like a pigskin version of Design for Living (1933). Though there is game footage and the requisite hedonistic behavior, Brian Dennehy of all people plays a dumb jock who doesn’t know how to handle women, it’s mostly a rom-com about two football stars in love with the same woman.

Directed by Michael Ritchie and adapted by formerly blacklisted writer Walter Bernstein,  Semi-Tough revolves around two football buddies, the carefree Billy Clyde Puckett (Burt Reynolds) and Marvin “Shake” Tiller (Kris Kristofferson, fresh from 1976’s A Star is Born) and the woman in their life, the bright, much-married Barbara Jane Bookman (Jill Clayburgh), who happens to be the daughter of the team’s owner Big Ed Bookman (Robert Preston).

Barbara Jane also happens to be their roomie. Though Billy Clyde secretly loves Barbara Jane, she becomes engaged to Shake. The caveat is that Shake wants her to take a self-awareness course called B.E.A.T which made him more self-confident as a person and a player. Billy Clyde also decides to take the course in hopes of wooing Barbara Jane for himself.

Bernstein and Ritchie made numerous changes from the book skewering fads of the day such as Werner Erhard’s est. Unfortunately, today’s viewers may not know what the filmmakers were satirizing. Though critics were divided on the merits of the film, Bernstein did receive a WGA nomination for Best Comedy Adapted from Another Medium.

The film belongs to Reynolds, who had played football at Florida State University. In fact, he was riding high in 1977 with the box office smash Smokey and the Bandit followed by Semi-Tough. Reynolds had such a naturalistic approach to comedy and self-assuredness as an actor, there’s little wonder he was a top star in the 1970s.

Just as Reynolds is the heart and soul of Semi-Tough, so is Nick Nolte in 1979’s North Dallas Forty. The comedy-drama was directed and co-adapted by Ted Kotcheff from Peter Gent’s 1973 semi-autobiographical novel about his experiences as a wide receiver in the 1960s for the Dallas Cowboys.

Nolte’s aging wide-receiver Phil Elliott who plays for North Dallas Bulls still has the best hands in the business, but he’s been so beaten down by the game he goes through an ordeal just to get out of bed in the morning. He relies on painkillers, shots and booze to get him through the day and perform on the playing field. And his non-conformist attitude with his coaches and the head office constantly gets him in trouble.

The football players depicted in North Dallas Forty are practically feral. It’s all sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. Decades before the #MeToo movement, it’s jaw dropping to see how women are treated by the players. No doesn’t mean no to these men.

Nolte was no stranger to the football field telling the Los Angeles Times he played football “15 hours a day until his hands were rubbed smooth.”  He also played football at Arizona State and Pasadena City College amongst others.

The football sequences are impressive. Kotcheff and director of photography Paul Lohmann captured the games from the players’ perspective by placing the camera near the action.

Reviews were good with the New York Times’ Janet Maslin stating the “cynicism and comedy of the film don’t always mix…But the director Ted Kotcheff has arrived at an unexpectedly delicate balance by the time the film is over.”

After a horrible turn in 1977’s The Deep, Nolte more than redeemed himself in North Dallas Forty, earning nominations from the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Society of Film Critics awards. Country singer Mac Davis also was singled out for his engaging performance as the team’s good old boy quarterback.

The evening ends with two Warner Bros.’ bio-pics on the gridiron legends Knute Rockne and Jim Thorpe.

Knute Rockne, All American from 1940 chronicles the life and career of one of the greatest football coaches of the 20th century. During his 1918-30 tenure at Norte Dame, the team won 100 games and three national championships. He tragically died in a plane crash in 1931 at the age of 43.

Shot on location in South Bend, Indiana, Knute Rockne ended up being the signature role of Pat O’Brien, who brought warmth and enthusiasm to his portrayal. Originally, the studio was interested in having James Cagney star as Rockne, but he had been a supporter of the anti-Franco Republican force during the Spanish Civil War. The anti-Franco forces were considered anti-Catholic, so Notre Dame nixed that. And Cagney’s BFF won the role.

Ronald Reagan also pursued the role of George Gipp, aka the Gipper, the team’s star player who died of pneumonia three weeks after his final game. Though he doesn’t have a lot of screen time, Reagan made an indelible impression uttering to go out and “win one for the Gipper.”

Knute Rockne features vintage footage of classic Notre Dame games and an appearance of the renowned college football coach Pop Warner and an uncredited turn by Jim Thorpe.

Directed by Oscar-winner Michael Curtiz, 1951’s Jim Thorpe - All American tells the sad, sad story of the Native American who excelled at football and track and field at Carlise Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania. He won Olympic Gold medals in the pentathlon and decathlon at the 1912 games only to have the Olympic committee strip him of his medals in 1913 because he played semi-professional baseball. He ended up playing pro football and baseball until 1929. Thorpe fought a losing battle with alcohol, worked a series of odd jobs, often in uncredited movie roles and married three times and had eight children.

Burt Lancaster, replete with darkened hair and skin, certainly captures Thorpe’s athleticism and bitterness and is especially powerful during his drunken rants. He only has one wife (Phyllis Thaxter) in the film and turns to alcohol after his young son dies.

Thorpe, who was a consultant on the film and appears in an uncredited role, was according to Lancaster in “pretty dire financial straits. My only personal contact with him during the filming was when he did drop-kicking. As he realized later in life, his downfall as an athlete was largely brought on by weaknesses of his own nature;  a feeling that the world was against him, unreasonable stubbornness, and the failure to understand the necessity of working as a member of a team.”

According to Alan K. Rode in his Michael Curtiz biography, Thorpe was a “sorrowful figure. Although humble and good humored, he had frequently been taken advantage of.” And many thought it was happening again when it was learned that the studio was offering a “pittance” to Thorpe for the rights to his story. Robert F. Kennedy wrote a letter to Warner Bros. to complain: “We feel that your monetary arrangements with Mr. Thorpe were as an extreme case of exploitation as we have ever heard. To put it bluntly-it is disgusting.”

Thorpe ended up receiving $12,500. He died two years later of a heart attack. Thorpe’s Olympic medals were restored 29 years after his death leading Lancaster to say: “I felt a certain cynicism that he didn’t get them before.“