User Reviews

This is a fine film you might want to compare with the television series SHAKA ZULU (1985). Most black men I know are a version of Jesse Owens or Hank Aaron. They do their best, let God take the rest and keep on steppin'. Dorian Harwood captures the essence of what Jesse Owens was all about. A man who ached to fight racism and oppression on its own terms, but in the end did what was best for everybody, often leaving himself out in the process.

The Jesse Owens Story is a testament to the brotherhood of man. Jesse Owens gave freely of his time and energy to anyone he could help, perhaps to a fault, and he was open to be helped by anyone regardless of their ethnic persuasion and cultural background. The scenes between Jesse Owens and Kai Wulff as Luz Long competing against each other in the Long Jump during the 1936 Olympics is a case in point. He didn't just speak of these things, he walked his talk. I'm sure he was not a perfect person, as we left that notion behind in the Garden of Eden. But he was definitely a role model for the ages.

The beauty of this film is that it's just the facts, ma'am. It would have been oh so tempting to turn this story into a hagiographical account. But thankfully, director Richard Irving and the producers Harve Bennett, Harold Gast and Arnold F. Turner successfully resisted this temptation. What we get here is an even-tempered and even-handed story that holds the myth of Jesse Owens and the hype about him up to the light in order to give the viewer a truer and more accurate perspective about the man himself. Time and again you see Owens struggling to do the right thing and ending up defying convention. Sometimes to the consternation and chagrin of others, but more often than not to the applause of cheering crowds.

The images of Debbi Morgan as Jesse Owens teenage girlfriend and supportive wife, Ruth Solomon Owens, come easily to mind. The Aristotelian, peripatetic discussions between George Kennedy as coach Charles Riley and Owens as a college student, could have been better handled by cinematographer Charles Correll, interweaving more of the sights and sounds of people and things in the environment, but this is a minor quibble at this time. What comes across most forcefully in the narrative is how Jesse Owens was always willing to subordinate his pride to the higher aim and goal of social and cultural advancement and the toll this took on his character and personality over the span of his life. This is especially vivid in scenes where Owens confronts James Sikking as Avery Brundage, Tom Bosley as Jimmy Hoffa, Levar Burton as Professor Preston during the 1968 Olympics when it was implied he was an Uncle Tom, and George Stanford Brown as Lew Gilbert, who is mystified as to why Owens is making such a big deal about not paying his taxes.

For a long time I wondered about this myself. But as I got older, an understanding of this finally dawned upon me. There comes a time in every black man's life when you feel you are putting out far more than you are getting back. It can appear that others are experiencing far more reward with far less effort and it can feel like people are using you for their own gain and of course this smacks of exploitation. As in the case of Jesse Owens, it can be something you can't quite put your finger on. But what starts out as a vague feeling can become a grim certainty over time. Something in you can cry out to stop giving your energy to structures and systems designed to diminish you as a man and as a being. You can feel as Owens says in this film that you have paid your dues and now it's time for somebody else to put out.

Anyway, I would like to share this anecdote with you now. I was fortunate enough to meet Jesse Owens at a Masters Convention for Motivational Speakers at Cobo Hall here in Detroit. My mother and father were occasionally selling sets of World Book Encyclopedias to family and friends and wanted to get me into it full time. So I took my 'A' Volume down to the event hoping I would get some of the Motivational Superstars to autograph it inside for inspiration. At any rate, after hearing Jesse Owens give us his Gold Medal speech and his remembrances about Hitler, we were invited later over to his table where he was signing autographs. Being young and cocky at that time and somewhat full of myself, I blurted out to him to write something really inspirational for me that would last a lifetime. I remember him looking down and sighing. Here was somebody else asking more from him than they themselves were willing to give. I remember the lady next to him telling me that this was Jesse Owens and could write anything he wanted. But he took my red flair tipped pen and started writing in my 'A' Volume and it was all about freedom and honor and the greatness of America and he wrote for a long time. I remember holding up my 'A' Volume of the World Book Encyclopedia with immense satisfaction and then gratefully thanking him.

Once again, Jesse Owens had delivered the way he always did. Later on, I listened to Reverend Bob Richards, the Olympic Pole Vaulting Champion speak, and when I presented to him my 'A' Volume, he was happily surprised to see all that Jesse Owens had written inside. He simply added to this 'Amen!' and signed his name. Champions are like that, you know. They are not afraid to assert that you can be a champion, too.

Now I'm telling you all this so that you will understand that Jesse Owens was everything they said he was and then some.

I was wandering through a little discount store in Rainier, Oregon when I ran across a two tape (VCR). There are only two people who stand out in Ohio State Athletics aside from the Football and Basketball programs, Jesse Owens and Jack Nickolas, so, as an OSU Alumnus I had to purchase this tape, even though it was a VCR.

It wasn't hard to tell quickly that it was a "made for TV" movie, with all the actors who played characters from classic TV series such as Alice, Happy Days, Dallas/Northern Exposure, etc. Most of them were playing very different characters from what we've come to know them as, with Tom Bosley playing Jimmy Hoffa being probably the biggest departure from the character we've come to know him as, "Howard Cunningham" of Happy Days.

The movie is set up as a sort of loose frame narrative, as James Cleveland "Jesse" Owens' past is dug up by a court-appointed investigator and, is based on his 1966 tax evasion conviction. This is probably the biggest historical error of the movie, as a major part of the story line is the open contempt the court investigator, an African-American shows for Owens due to his "Uncle Tom" reputation resulting from the 1968 Olympics, where he was asked to mediate after the Tommie Smith and John Carlos "Black Power" protest.

As an alumnus of the Ohio State University, the movie left me with mixed feelings, as it should have. Li stinging to the soundtrack cut of the Ohio State Glee Club sing "Carmen Ohio" in the background as Jesse Owens reads the letter from the administration informing him he was expelled due to poor grades was tough, especially the line "How firm thy Friendship". But, as they pointed out at the end, he was eventually given an Honorary Doctorate and he truly is given the full legend at Ohio State.

The movie is definitely worth owning for anyone connected to tOSU for the campus scenes and the history, even if it is a little out of sequence.