As a self-confessed sports junkie, I enjoy sports films. To me authenticity is a vital component in sports movies, particularly when a film involves an individual of Jim Thorpe's stature. I don't think that it's sufficient, or worthy, to merely issue a general disclaimer professing that characters and events may be different than those portrayed in the film. It's my belief that the true greatness of a person's accomplishments are obscured when accuracy is not maintained. Thorpe's football accomplishments at Carlisle Indian Industrial School are legendary. A number of sequences in the movie deviate a bit from events that actually transpired. The movie chronicles a big game in the 1908 season between Carlisle and Penn. While it is accurate that Carlisle played Penn that season, the actual score was a 6-6 tie not the 13-13 tie asserted in the movie. In the film, Thorpe kicks a 50 yard field goal with 25 seconds remaining to tie the score. In actuality, Thorpe missed three field goals that day. The film contrives a rivalry between Penn's Tom Ashenbrunner and Thorpe. Problem is that there was no Ashenbrunner that played for Penn. In actuality, the Penn running back (star) was All-American Bill Hollenback. He was the Penn player who faced Thorpe that fateful October afternoon in 1908. In real life, Thorpe claimed that Hollenback was his toughest and fiercest rival. Pop Warner, Carlisle's coach, advises Thorpe that Allegheny College is searching for a coach, and that the school has narrowed the search to Ashenbrunner and Thorpe. Presumably, how they perform in the big game will determine who gets the Allegheny coaching gig. In reality, Bill Hollenback was hired by Penn State in 1909 to coach their team, not Allegheny. In retrospect, one must wonder if permission was denied by Hollenback to use his actual name in the film. Given the crowd shots, it could be implied that the Penn game was (seemingly) played at Carlisle and not Franklin Field. That implication is simply inaccurate. Carlisle routinely played road games against smaller, closer opponents (e.g. Muhlenberg College). Do any of these inconsistencies diminish Thorpe's achievements? I would claim they don't, but they certainly test the veracity of the film. If Ashenbrunner is fictitious, did Jim Thorpe actually set a particular record or complete in a certain Olympic event? As correctly indicated by various reviewers, Jim Thorpe was married three times, but only one wife is depicted in the film. The one son that we are introduced to in the movie, who tragically passes away, was actually one of eight children fathered by Thorpe and his three wives. Of course liberties must be taken so that a storyline has continuity and the audience is engaged. But omitting and altering facts is very disconcerting. Instinctively, I enjoyed Jim Thorpe All American. It's a likeable movie about an American hero. Burt Lancaster is a great actor, and his portrayal of Jim Thorpe is captivating. And Charles Bickford is a terrific coach/mentor Glenn S. "Pop" Warner. However, no matter how good Lancaster acted in his role of Thorpe, there will always be incessant issue of authenticity. That persistent foible of integrity was never overcome in this classic film.

Not being much of an athlete myself, it follows that I am no sports fan but, sometimes, movies dealing with that topic have managed to be engrossing for me nonetheless and, to some degree, the film under review is another such example. At 38, Burt Lancaster is absurdly overage playing renowned Native American athlete Jim Thorpe as a student but, overall, he is ideally cast as the man who became known as "America's greatest athlete of the first half of the twentieth century." I would not really know but Thorpe's feat of excelling in just about every sport he tried his hand (or feet) at – from racing to long jump, from javelin to high jump, from baseball to football, etc. – is probably unparalleled in the history of sports. As a biopic, it follows the standard pattern of similar Hollywood fare: from rebellious childhood to uneasy student to formidable athlete to Olympic champion, followed by first professional and later personal tragedy and the subsequent, gradual fall from grace (including divorce and public humiliation). Equally typical of the genre, however, is the heavy streamlining of the subject's life that, in this case, jettisons Thorpe's other two wives and his Hollywood career as an extra in several notable films like KING KONG (1933) and WHITE HEAT (1949). Prolific director Curtiz adds another biopic to his repertoire (even if it fails to scale the heights of the best of them) and the cast is rounded up by Charles Bickford (as Thorpe's coach and conscience), Phyllis Taxter (as his first wife), Steve Cochran (as his rival in love and football team-mate!), Dick Wesson (as his best friend) and Nestor Paiva (as his resigned but sensible Indian father). By sheer coincidence, just yesterday I came across Kon Ichikawa's acclaimed documentary of the 1964 Olympics, TOKYO OLYMPIAD (1965) and, under the circumstances, I could not pass up a chance to acquire it!

In a recent biography of Burt Lancaster I read that Lancaster had to learn the sport of football in order to play Jim Thorpe. It wasn't something he played growing up on the streets of East Harlem back in the Teens and Twenties. Of course Burt's natural athleticism stood him in good stead in this part. He got a better biographical treatment than Babe Ruth did who was the runner up in the competition for greatest male athlete of the century.Both Thorpe and Ruth certainly abused their bodies, the difference being that Thorpe did it primarily after his active sports career was over. Both films of their lives have the presence of Charles Bickford in it, playing the real life mentors both men had. In the Babe Ruth Story, Bickford played the real life Brother Matthias who was one of the Catholic brothers that ran St. Mary's School in Baltimore where Ruth grew up. Here in this film, Bickford played legendary football coach Pop Warner, whose own career as a pioneer in the sport began with his discovery of Thorpe while coaching at the Carlisle Indian school.I did a review of We Are Marshall when that film came out and in it remarked about how the NCAA relaxed its arcane rules when the tragedy involving the Marshall varsity football squad happened in order that the team compete the following year. Where was this crowd when Jim Thorpe needed them? Thorpe came from a poverty stricken background and between semesters at Carlisle, he had to do real physical manual labor just to put food on the table and pay his rent. He took an offer to play semi-professional baseball one summer, thereby causing unforeseen consequences down the road.Those consequences were while as a track and field star and winner of several medals in the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm, Thorpe was stripped of his medals and trophies and his records stricken from the books. Of course it was all reinstated 70 years later in 1982 after intense lobbying of the NCAA. New and somewhat human beings were in charge then. The episode damaged his soul for the rest of his life. It was like Sir Cedric Hardwicke ordering the name Moses stricken from all public records in Egypt.The film ends after Thorpe attends the 1932 Olympics and Pop Warner notes that the guy opening the Olympics held in Los Angeles that year was Vice President Charles Curtis. To date Curtis is the only man to be either President or Vice President to be not completely Caucasian, he was American Indian on his mother's side. It's about the only distinction Curtis had in office as Herbert Hoover's Vice President.The film ends around 1932 and the rest of Thorpe's life after the action in the story is his attempts to make ends meet. Money went through his hands like water, he did a lot of bit roles in films, playing Indians of course in westerns of varying quality. He died in debt in 1953, living off the income that he got from Warner Brothers selling his life story to them. I'm sure he wished his life had come out the way the film did.Still Jim Thorpe -- All American is a nice tribute to our greatest athlete ever.

This was a great film, and was Lancaster at his best, he seemed so strong in this roll, winning almost everything he took part in had to be a sight to see, Thorpe was a good American, andshould never had his medals taken away, but that was life in those days. I know that he must have been really low at that time and disgusted with all of sports, I would have like to have seen him play but that was way before my time. The ending was sad, but it kind of left you wondering what he did do after sports.