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AJ McKenzie
  • 2 days ago
Greatest athlete of the first half of the 20th century
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Twitter: AJMckenzie94847
Transcript
00:02whoops
00:07whoops
00:08what
00:08what a skank
00:09aww brr
00:10Ablicek steals it! Ablicek stole the ball!
00:13down goes Frazier! down goes Frazier! down goes Frazier!
00:20you got a stroke, a beat you, a beat you, a beat you, a ball is in
00:23I'm going to take it!
00:31that's a blow
00:32run
00:33won their sixth NBA championship
00:36here's a swing
00:37this has got to be an all-round unbelievable
00:40don't believe what I just saw
00:55In 1951, radio broadcaster Bill Stern reported the greatest athlete of the first half of the 20th century was sick
01:03and penniless.
01:05Stern told his listeners, if you don't have any money, send him a car. Let him know you still think
01:10about it.
01:11After another five decades, Jim Thorpe's life still plays like frontier fiction.
01:16He was born in a one-room cabin in Oklahoma Territory just 12 years after the Battle of Little Bighorn.
01:29He has a kind of mythic quality. His life story was very dramatic.
01:34He kind of touches on all of the American themes about the frontier.
01:39He's kind of a half a modern sports figure and half a kind of Paul Bunyan American mythic figure.
01:48There must be something in the Thorpe legend for people to still be talking about him 50 years after he's
01:54dead.
01:55The way he played the game so embodied the warrior spirit that Americans cherish in their athletes,
02:05that it has carried Thorpe all these years and makes him in many people's minds as alive and vivid as
02:14he was back then.
02:23Can you imagine the day that there was no road, there was no electricity, no newspaper, nothing?
02:31The specific source of Thorpe's warrior spirit was a Native American tribe that had been pushed by the white man
02:38into what is present-day Oklahoma.
02:42The second thoughts have been in this country here for untold thousands of years.
02:50The dance itself is the...
02:55As long as you're a tribe and as long as you stick together, you're going to always be a tribe.
03:01But the minute you begin to differ, you're going to get weak. You're going to drop off one at a
03:06time.
03:11In May of 1888, Jim and his twin brother Charlie were the progeny of Hiram and Charlotte Thorpe.
03:18Their father was half Irish and their mother one-quarter French.
03:22But it was her Native American blood with which she identified.
03:26By Indian tradition, when a child is born, sometimes the first thing that the mother sees became his name.
03:34In this case, the sun rising in the morning, a bright sun coming down a pathway. Bright path.
03:41Grandpa's house was on the banks of the North Canadian River, and he bred horses.
03:47And Dad's job as a young boy was to run those horses down and bring the horses in.
03:53Despite his love of horses, Jim walked through more shadow than light in his early years.
03:59At eight, he lost Charlie's pneumonia.
04:02Six years later, his mother died of tuberculosis.
04:06Increasingly difficult for his alcoholic father to manage,
04:09Jim was sent to a succession of Indian schools in Oklahoma and Kansas.
04:14It was extremely difficult after his twin, Charlie, died.
04:20He had a hard time with school.
04:22In fact, the school that he was going to at the Indian agency,
04:26that every time Hiram would take him to the school, he would run home.
04:30Life was spent, you know, completely in and out of institutions
04:34and sort of bouncing back between a very disorganized and unpleasant family life
04:40and harsh institutional life.
04:43It was much more like out of a Charles Dickens novel than out of contemporary America.
04:49We were thrust into this new world, and it caused incredible turmoil
04:54in multitudes of our young children.
04:57When the children first went to Indian schools,
04:59traditionally you had the long hair, and that was a state of manliness,
05:03and there were negotiations by the tribal leaders,
05:06don't cut our young men's hair.
05:08And by the time the buggies and the wagons drove off campus,
05:12they had the young Indian boys in the chair, and they were cutting their hair short.
05:16The idea was that Jim Thorpe, although legally a Native American,
05:23was going to be absorbed into the mainstream.
05:25His father wanted him to be educated in the white man's ways.
05:32When he went to the first Indian school, he ran away.
05:36When he went to the second Indian school, he went away.
05:38He didn't like being put into regiment.
05:41The fact that he was constantly in motion, I think,
05:45was reflective that he was comfortable in no place.
05:47Jim Thorpe grew up in that era of freedom,
05:49that expression, to run, feel his feet pounded against the earth,
05:52the beat of his heart.
05:53He knew himself, and he didn't want to lose that.
05:56His father finally called up Indian customs people that he knew,
06:00and said, I can't manage my son, Jim Thorpe.
06:03You've got to do something with him.
06:06Really?
06:08In 1904, Thorpe was shipped east to Carlisle,
06:11a federally funded all-Indian school in Pennsylvania.
06:14Oh, he made his name in Carlisle.
06:17Where he was subjected to a harsh regimen,
06:20aimed at obliterating the last vestiges of his Native American heritage.
06:24People should go down and look at Carlisle.
06:26Those are holding cells.
06:28Those are, you know, confinement dungeon cells down there.
06:32That's where they put the kids.
06:33Chief of the Onondaga tribe.
06:35That's like around where Syracuse is or something like that.
06:39Onondaga, New York.
06:42Probably the same thing.
06:45Well, they love Indians in a sort of a stand back way.
06:50It's like a wolf, you know.
06:51They love the wolf, but they're afraid of him.
06:54They fear him.
06:56And they kill him.
06:59You were torn between two worlds.
07:01Thorpe had Indian blood, non-Indian blood.
07:03And you're in conflict.
07:05Am I Indian? Am I not Indian?
07:06I tend to think Jim Thorpe turned to sport,
07:09where you're accepted on equal terms.
07:11And you learn to walk in two worlds with one spirit.
07:19If he wanted to do something athletically,
07:22he didn't need coaching.
07:23He needed just to kind of observe it.
07:25He would watch and he would stare and he would see how things happen.
07:29And then he could go out and do it himself.
07:32He was walking with a couple of friends from the school over and there were a couple of guys struggling
07:36in the high jump.
07:39And he watched it and Thorpe handed a couple of books to his friend and went over and jumped over
07:45five feet, eight inches in the high jump, the same height these guys had been struggling at.
07:49He had never high jumped before and he was in street clothes.
07:52Thorpe was enlisted on the track team by legendary coach Pop Warner in 1907.
07:58Two years later, the first layer of what would become a national mythology was created when he almost single-handedly
08:05beat the opposition.
08:06There were six members of the Carlisle team that went to Lafayette.
08:11Dad participated in actually seven events.
08:14And of the seven events, he won six gold and one bronze.
08:18Frequently, during these track meets, Jim would compete in eight of the events.
08:23At the conclusion of these events, on the average, he would have garnered six gold medals.
08:29Yes.
08:30He wanted to play football, but Pop Warner didn't want him to play.
08:34V. Pop Warner.
08:35You know Pop Warner football?
08:37That's him.
08:39And look at the shape he's in.
08:41Because he didn't want his star track band to get hurt.
08:44Finally, Pop just said, well, okay, we'll give you a tryout.
08:47Threw the ball at him and says, okay, you're going to go through tackling practice and this is the first
08:52team and go.
08:53And he ran through the whole team.
08:55Pop all over his team members and saying, I want you to hit him and put him down and make
09:00him stay down.
09:01And they gave him the ball again and he ran through the team again.
09:03So Pop Warner made him a team member after that.
09:07Thorpe gained All-America honors in 1911 when his athletic genius raised Carlisle to the top echelon of collegiate football.
09:15Harvard laid claim to the national championship.
09:18But before they could do that, they had to play Carlisle.
09:21And the Carlisle Indians beat them.
09:23Jim, with a badly swollen ankle, ran for 173 yards and kicked four field goals.
09:29The last being 48 yards to win the game 18-15.
09:33These guys would come charging in on Dad.
09:35And Dad would just drop the ball and kick anybody that was close to him.
09:38So he put some of these guys in the hospital and he had such a bad reputation for that that
09:42nobody wanted to charge in on him.
09:45With absolutely no preparation, no background, no training, no coaching, he came off a reservation and just ran everybody ragged.
09:53In May of 1912, Thorpe entered the Olympic trials in New York City.
09:58His goal was to qualify in the pentathlon and decathlon.
10:02But when he won three of five pentathlon events, the U.S. committee had seen enough.
10:08The Olympic officials said, listen, this is silly.
10:10We don't even need you to demonstrate how good you are.
10:12And so they sent him home and never even conducted the trial.
10:15So he might be the only person in U.S. Olympic history to be named to the U.S. decathlon
10:20team on the basis of his reputation.
10:22The athletes at that time were drawn from the universities.
10:27Who could go to the universities then?
10:29Only the very rich, very elite.
10:31So it was unusual that to have somebody of this humble beginning participate in the Olympics to start with.
10:39You might have been able at that point to hold sport up as the great democracy where an athlete is
10:48judged and celebrated by his ability to perform the job.
10:52Shouldn't that be what all of America is?
11:01ESPN class movement was not universal.
11:03It really was a movement based in Western Europe, but really didn't reach out to the rest of the world
11:09by 1912.
11:11It really needed a bit of momentum.
11:15On the boat going over to the 1912 Olympics, Mike Murphy, one of the coaches, finds Thorpe in a hammock
11:23and says, Jim, aren't you going to practice?
11:25And Jim with his eyes closed goes, I'm just picturing how far I'm going to jump.
11:29Jim Thorpe, not only trained physically on that ship, but I think he was one of the few athletes training
11:35mentally.
11:37Today, visualization, imagery.
11:41When the 5'11", 180-pound Native American arrived in Stockholm, his exotic appearance and long, shambling strides intrigued the
11:50Swedes.
11:51Coming into the stadium, very few people knew anything about Jim Thorpe.
11:57They noticed he was an Indian.
11:59So, of course, in the newspapers, he was sometimes called just the Indian.
12:06He was, for the time, a big person.
12:10And he walked around the infield with his chest out.
12:13The Swedish fans began to call him a horse because he had kind of like a gait of a horse.
12:19And they would go every day to the stadium to see the horse.
12:22And damn if the horse didn't win every day.
12:25Jim Thorpe, who had never competed in a decathlon in his life, starts off with a pentathlon and in one
12:33day wins.
12:34And the very next day, while the rest of the athletes were recovering, goes out and places fourth in the
12:43high jump.
12:44Having won gold in the pentathlon, Thorpe tested his awesome versatility in the 10-event decathlon.
12:51He dominated the first event in the decathlon, which was the 100 meters.
12:55His shot put was better than anybody else's in the field.
12:58So, by the time you get to the fourth event, it's pretty much over.
13:02It's all over.
13:03He won by 700 points.
13:05And that's kind of like winning 15 to nothing in a baseball game or 45 to nothing in a football
13:10game.
13:11To give you an idea of how good he was in the decathlon, his total points were being achieved in
13:171924, 28, and 32.
13:19As many as 20 years later, they were only doing what Thorpe did.
13:22His performance in Stockholm was one of the highlights of Olympic history.
13:26Afterwards, King Gustav said to him, sir, you are the greatest athlete in the world.
13:31To which he replied, thanks, King.
13:34Well, being crowned the greatest athlete of the world by the King of Sweden, I think, is one of the
13:38great moments in her life.
13:40The title, World's Greatest Athlete, goes along with the Olympic champion in the decathlon.
13:44And it is a legitimate, standardized test of a person's athletic ability throughout history.
13:49He was world-class in probably five or six events, barring none.
13:52I wonder what happened to him.
13:54The greatest decathlete to ever live.
13:56Two days after the track portion ended, he actually played an Olympic baseball game.
14:01Baseball was kind of an exhibition event in 1912, and the Americans got their best athletes, and they put Jim
14:07Thorpe out there in right field.
14:09Thorpe had won two gold medals and the admiration of the world.
14:14After a rousing European tour arranged by the American Athletic Union, he steamed home to an avalanche of praise.
14:21When the boat docked in New York, they were given a ticker tape parade, and Thorpe was put in the
14:27back of an open automobile and driven down Broadway, and people simply called his name and shouted his name.
14:34Thorpe is purported to have said, geez, I never knew a guy could have so many friends.
14:38He was lionized beyond anybody's wildest dreams.
14:44He came back believing that the accoutrements of that celebrity would accrue to him for his whole life.
14:55And unfortunately, he came back having represented a country that wasn't entirely willing to let him be a full citizen.
15:05After the Olympic victories, the president of the United States identified him as a great citizen of the United States.
15:12But in actuality, he was not a citizen, because being born in Oklahoma Indian Territory, he did not enjoy citizenship
15:20in 1912.
15:21He was a ward of the state, and American Indians did not receive citizenship for another six years.
15:29But the president of the United States didn't know this.
15:35Although he couldn't vote, Thorpe eclipsed the president in the American imagination,
15:40as newspapers, magazines, and two-penny novels mixed fact with fiction to create the unreal image of a noble savage.
15:48What was undeniably real, however, were the 25 touchdowns and 198 points he scored for Carlisle, as he again earned
15:56All-American.
15:58He just kind of tore.
16:00Okay, no, there's no reason I'd know that they said the president, they didn't say the president's name.
16:08That was President Taft.
16:10Imagine being a person of color then and having to go from nice President Taft.
16:15We have a statue of him here at Hampton, our HBCU, and he's white.
16:21So he had to be pretty good.
16:23Imagine going from Taft to Woodrow Wilson.
16:28Whoa.
16:30That's a shame.
16:36He wore up the collegiate football season, and now everybody wanted Carlisle on their schedule.
16:43It's probably fair to say that he was the best-known athlete of the day.
16:48He was first and foremost an athlete, and I think the Indian element added perhaps to the publicity and to
16:55the glamour and to the attention he got.
16:57He brought to the sport his aggressiveness, his warrior attitude toward the game.
17:03It was really his style of play which captured people's imagination in a game which was incredibly violent.
17:111912 had been a year of unimaginable success for Thorpe, a springboard onto the international stage.
17:17With his future stretching before him like the bright path his mother envisioned at his birth,
17:22Thorpe could not make out the shadows lurking in the glare of his fame.
17:26January of 1913, the roof to Thorpe's brave new world began to tremble.
17:32The Worcester Telegram reported that he was paid when he played minor league baseball,
17:37which meant by Olympic rules he was a professional when he competed in Stockholm.
17:42What?
17:45Professional?
17:46Did he play baseball in the Olympics?
17:48I don't remember.
17:48But he wasn't a professional for all those sports.
17:51If you're a professional in a different sport, how does that make you a professional in another sport?
17:58Paper went with the story and made a big deal of it that the AAU had to respond.
18:04They responded with kind of shock and dismay as if, my God, this was really something wrong,
18:09and we didn't know about this one.
18:11This was pretty well understood.
18:12The papers in that part of the country knew that he had actually played baseball,
18:16and a lot of them didn't say anything when he made his tryouts for the Olympics
18:21and became a member of the Olympic team.
18:25They could have said something at that time, but nobody did.
18:28I asked him, I said, did you guys know that you were playing pro sport?
18:33And he said, well, you've got to remember how things were in 1909.
18:36We had a rough time speaking English to let them know what the law was.
18:39But Coach Warner knew the language and the law, even if Thorpe didn't.
18:44Pop Warner, recognizing that Jim Thorpe was this great athlete,
18:49called a friend of his and asked if he would watch Jim for the summer,
18:53keep him in training, let him play on his ball team.
18:56Jim Thorpe went to Rocky Mountain, North Carolina in 1909,
19:00was paid $2 a game.
19:02Pop Warner knew exactly what was going on.
19:06Carlisle boys had been coming into the Carolinas, perhaps elsewhere too,
19:10and receiving pay for their baseball for years.
19:15When Dad came into it, they really didn't tell him
19:18that what he should do is use an assumed name.
19:21They took advantage, really, I think, of Dad,
19:23in that they knew his fame and they wanted to use him as a drawing attraction.
19:29I don't think it ever occurred to Thorpe to lie.
19:32I don't think he ever had any intention of going back to Carlisle.
19:35So when people said, who's pitching today for Rocky Mountain,
19:39you know, the announcer simply said Jim Thorpe.
19:41He played seven of the nine positions.
19:43At one time or another, he played every position
19:46other than second base and catcher.
19:49He even pitched both ends of a doubleheader on several occasions.
19:53Thorpe was not the only Native American athlete
19:56that Pop Warner brokered for profit.
19:58He was in the business.
20:00Warner was smart enough to have a national recruiting network,
20:03so any time in any reservation a good athlete popped up,
20:07Warner found out about it, and they recruited him for Carlisle.
20:11So Carlisle was very good in pretty much every sport.
20:13There was always this fascination of going somewhere to see the Indians play.
20:18There were quite a number of Indian schools in the West,
20:20and Pop Warner would take the best players from those teams,
20:23and if they played under their Indian name,
20:26he would bring them to Carlisle and have them play under their Anglo name.
20:31If they played under their Anglo name,
20:33he would have them play under their Indian name.
20:35Plus, he bet on the games.
20:36Warner was using that team.
20:38He was making $100,000, $200,000 a year off his athletes.
20:43This was a team very separate from the...
20:46Six figures back in the 1910s.
20:49School, these were players who were only in the most liberal sense students.
20:54The school had no facilities.
20:56What it was was an independent team made up of American Indians
20:59who associated themselves with the school
21:02and toured the country and were really successful.
21:06Carlisle's athletic department came under question
21:09when the AAU, seeking to save face in the European track and field community,
21:13demanded an explanation for Thorpe's alleged professional status.
21:17The school administration and the Colts Pop Warner,
21:20they decided they wanted to get rid of this stigma,
21:23and they had Jim write a letter saying that I'm a poor, ignorant Indian.
21:28I didn't know this was wrong, and I confess.
21:30And they forced him to do that.
21:32The Stockholm organizers got the letter with the results of that investigation.
21:38The Stockholm organizers were asked to rearrange, so to say, the results.
21:45This was a time to kind of make a stand against the use of a lot of college boys,
21:50you know, in summer baseball.
21:53And so the AAU simply used Jim Thorpe.
21:56They would look for a scapegoat.
21:58They stole his medal from him, and never,
22:01I don't think they ever gave it back in his lifetime.
22:04They found a good one.
22:07They stripped Thorpe of his medals and trophies valued at $50,000.
22:12The irony of this divestiture was huge and sad,
22:16as Thorpe, not the AAU, not Carlisle, not Warner, was held up as an example.
22:21I remember asking him the question, I mean, well, what did you think about,
22:25you know, those medals being taken away?
22:26And he said, Grace, he said, I never once wrote a letter,
22:30I never once tried to get those medals back.
22:32And then he clammed up, he wouldn't say another word.
22:34I would doubt if a white athlete would have been subjected to the same discipline.
22:40It's possible that it would have happened, but I think race played a factor.
22:45It made it easier for those men to make that decision.
22:52Anticipating that the hue and cry would likely be less for a man of another race.
22:57It was only 20 years before that that the last of the Indian Wars.
23:01And the Indian was real look down upon.
23:04I wonder if the moment he stepped down from the victory stand at the Olympics
23:12wasn't the high point of his life.
23:13I wonder, quite frankly, if Jim Thorpe would have been better off staying in Sweden.
23:30This was an athlete that America would have learned about solely through the newspapers.
23:34There was no broadcasting.
23:36Very few people ever saw Jim Thorpe perform.
23:40Jim Thorpe's reputation and stature as the greatest athlete of the first half.
23:45I think it's remarkable that he became such a figure of prominence,
23:51basically on his own ability, his own performance, and through word of mouth in this country.
23:57Although Thorpe left Carlisle under a cloud of official disapproval in 1913,
24:03much of the public still regarded him through the glow of his mythical aura.
24:08He was doing athletic feats that nobody previously had done in a number of different sports.
24:15I really believe that Jim Thorpe was a physical mutation.
24:21Max Bear wanted him to be a boxer.
24:24He actually sparred with Max a few times, and Max said that he could have been a champion.
24:29He even went to Boston one time and won a ballroom.
24:34Thorpe was well into his 40s.
24:37He was in his mid-40s when Max Bear came on the scene.
24:42So, for him to say that...
24:45Hanson Contest.
24:47Jim Thorpe, ballroom dancer.
24:50Someone that asked if he could do something, and he'd just get up and do it.
24:53He didn't ever feel that he had to train to become a good athlete.
24:59He was a natural athlete.
25:02Accordingly, Thorpe spread his athletic wings in the professional arena.
25:06Already playing baseball for the New York Giants, Thorpe lent his fame and talent to a fledgling pro football team
25:13called the Canton Bulldogs in 1915.
25:16It was a game that had probably hit its biggest bumps in the 19-teens.
25:21Pro football was gambling infested.
25:24They didn't tackle, games were fixed, and ringers were brought in, and all kinds of charges were made against pro
25:34football.
25:35Pro football was regarded, I think, by the press somewhere in the vicinity of pro wrestling as an exhibition, really.
25:44Thorpe legitimized pro football.
25:45He was the first major successful hero who played under his own name.
25:51He paved the way for other great collegiate football players to start playing in the NFL, and now feel like
25:58they had to hide from it.
26:00The average crowd when Jim Thorpe was not playing in that era was 1,200.
26:04When Jim played, it was between 8,000 and 10,000.
26:08From 1915, when he first signed with the Canton Bulldogs, through 1919, there was just nobody that could compare with
26:14him.
26:14There were guys that could kick as well, or run almost as fast, or with almost as much power, or
26:22play defense almost as well.
26:24But no one could do all those things so well at Thorpe.
26:29Jim Thorpe caught that ball from the center, and he stepped his right foot back to the left foot and
26:34stepped, and I think that ball is still in orbit.
26:37I never saw a ball go as high and far so quickly in my life.
26:40They were running after him, tried to tackle him, you know, and they said it was like running up against
26:46a brick wall.
26:48They hated the idea of having to tackle him.
26:50And Newt Rockne took a pretty good shot on Jim.
26:53Thorpe didn't see him coming, and he clobbered Thorpe pretty good.
26:57So Thorpe went back to the huddle and said, give me the ball again.
27:00Ran the same play, and he knocked Rockne out with his knee.
27:05In 1920, Newt Rockne, Newt Thorpe, at 32, was named playing president of the newly formed American Professional Football Association,
27:15the precursor to the NFL.
27:17Was he a figurehead president?
27:18I suspect to some extent he was.
27:21I'd be pretty difficult to run a league and be the premier star of the league at the same time.
27:26Jim Thorpe offered no leadership capacity whatsoever in guiding the national football league through its early days.
27:33He couldn't sit behind a desk.
27:35They had no allure, but Jim Thorpe was there.
27:38He was the star that they could build the thing around.
27:41In the 1920s, Thorpe concentrated on pro football, at one point founding the Oorang Indians, the league's only all-Native
27:49American team.
27:50But it was during the summers, beginning in 1913, that he launched his baseball career with the New York Giants.
27:56Jim was offered $6,000 to play for the New York Giants baseball team.
28:02Jim McGraw said if he can only hit in batting practice, the fans will come out to see him.
28:07I think John probably thought there was potential, but I think the biggest thing that John wanted was the publicity
28:14of having Jim Thorpe on the baseball team.
28:19Tip O'Neill said that his father took him to see Jim Thorpe play for the New York Giants when
28:24he was seven years old.
28:26And he said, I remember Jim squaring off to bunt, the third baseman charging in, Jim seeing that, and in
28:32a split second lashing a line drive over the third baseman's head.
28:35I played against Jim Thorpe, and he hit a line drive back at me.
28:41If I hadn't gotten that ball up about that quick, we'd have had a funeral.
28:49But Thorpe's displays of baseball greatness were seldom.
28:52He batted only .252 in six major league seasons.
28:57He was an okay player.
28:59I mean, but he was aging when he started.
29:02This athlete, that there was an expectation that he would dominate the game, and he never did dominate.
29:07He just wasn't a superstar, and since he was a superstar persona, somehow it didn't work.
29:15McGraw and him didn't get along.
29:17Dad was such a happy-go-lucky character, and I don't think John understood the Indian way.
29:24Dad wasn't one to take abusive orders.
29:27John McGraw hired Private Eyes to tail his players around.
29:33He documented the drinking habits of everybody on his team, and he did have some problems with how he perceived
29:40Thorpe to be acting.
29:42Jim would go out and come back pretty well lit.
29:46He'd say, well, oh, John, maybe he won't like this, but I'd like to drink.
29:55That was one of his troubles all through his life.
29:58He wanted to do things his way.
30:01And he didn't take kindly to anyone trying to tell him what he should do and how he should do
30:08it.
30:08In later life, I would say that he needed someone that would have the authority to keep him straightened out.
30:17Yep.
30:19When Thorpe left football in 1928, he was forced to find a new purpose in life at 40.
30:26Here is a man whose only expression was on the field of competition.
30:33And like soldiers who can't deal with peacetime, here's a man who couldn't live without sports.
30:44He graduated into a world when professional sports was in its infancy, and you couldn't really make a living doing
30:51that.
30:51He just spent his whole life drifting and bouncing and never kind of finding that good spot for himself that
30:58really lasted.
30:59There was no kind of organized entity to say, hey, let's take care of Jim Thorpe.
31:05Dad was, in his earlier days, pretty much of a free spender.
31:08He loaned people a lot of money.
31:11That was one of his, really his major problems, that he wasn't able to keep what money that he was
31:18making.
31:19He never fit into the white society that a lot of people felt.
31:23Pity poor Jim Thorpe.
31:24He doesn't have a regular 9-to-5 job.
31:27He didn't want a 9-to-5 job.
31:29Meeting Jim Thorpe was like meeting a drifter.
31:32I don't know any better way to say it.
31:34Jim Thorpe worked as a greeter at a sports bar in downtown Los Angeles.
31:40In fact, Jim Thorpe would always be overshadowed by the celebrities who would come in to talk sports.
31:46Over the next two decades, Thorpe, dogged by his celebrity, drifted through dozens of cities,
31:53earning his way in a variety of pickup jobs that included a dance referee, bouncer, security guard, and deckhand on
32:00a freighter.
32:01During the Depression, I do remember picking up the paper one time and seeing him digging ditches or something out
32:08in California
32:08to make some money, to make a living.
32:11He'd be turned down for jobs.
32:13People would say, well, you're Jim Thorpe.
32:16Well, I can't have you doing menial labor.
32:20It was used as a movie extra at $5 a day.
32:23If you watch carefully, in white heat, that third person is Jim Thorpe.
32:31He turned himself into a kind of a cartoon Indian.
32:34You don't need to watch carefully to see that.
32:37You can tell Jim Thorpe from a mile away.
32:39He acted in big parts in movies, you know, wearing this kind of ridiculous giant headdress and buckskins,
32:46which he never really wore in real life.
32:48He started talking in a kind of pigeon Indian English.
32:52I don't think he believed the myth, but he tried to live out the myth.
32:55Jim Thorpe performed at the highest level in any game he ever played.
33:01And then, because of his race, in large part, once his playing career was over,
33:08he was cast aside by an America that had no place for him beyond the athletic stage.
33:16That's a tragedy.
33:17He is someone who is a great individual who we could have shared with children and with others, and we
33:25lost him.
33:26He was left alone in a society that took his medals away, in a sense,
33:29in a society that was continually violated.
33:32And that didn't cause bitterness in the man, but it devastated him.
33:38Thorpe's transient lifestyle resulted in a second divorce in 1941.
33:43Three years later, in Los Angeles, he was arrested for drunk driving.
33:47The judge told him,
33:49You are a legend to our youth.
33:51It is a pity that this should have occurred.
33:55His problem was not so much every day getting drunk,
33:59but he'd remain sober for six months,
34:02and then he'd go off on a bender,
34:03and you wouldn't see him for two or three weeks.
34:05He would drink to excess to the point where he would completely blank out.
34:11My mother has been called many times to come and get him.
34:14He could be in New York.
34:15He could have been down in Florida.
34:17He didn't even know where he was.
34:20He always told me, he said,
34:21I can quit any time I went to you, which wasn't the truth.
34:24I found out that he was a hero to most people.
34:29And to hear anything against him,
34:32they just didn't want to accept.
34:36I think the thing that ruined all of his marriages were it was the alcohol.
34:42He took me and pleaded with me to talk to my mother,
34:47you know, not to get a divorce.
34:49This is very hard for me.
34:55And it was after that
34:58that I didn't see him, you know, for several years.
35:05Well, Jim, in all your years in sports,
35:07what stands out as your greatest thrill?
35:09Well, I don't know.
35:10I enjoyed fishing a whole lot and hunting.
35:14What Jim Thorpe did basically at that time
35:16was bringing his incredible talent,
35:18bringing it to the media.
35:19It was marketable.
35:20It was a story.
35:21It was a personality.
35:23He went back to the Shriners game
35:25and put on an exhibition at halftime
35:27with standing on the 50-yard line,
35:29drop-kicking the football.
35:31Not somebody holding it for him,
35:32just drop-kicking the ball
35:33and kicked eight out of ten from the 50-yard line
35:37and Dad was 58, 59 years old then.
35:39Everybody every now and then would be surprised
35:41how well he could kick a football at this age
35:44and things like that.
35:45He still could do all those things.
35:47But from the time come with the picture,
35:50he didn't even get in the picture.
35:52They were there to use him.
35:55Having sold the film rights to his life
35:58years earlier for $1,500,
36:00Thorpe was hired as technical advisor
36:02to the 1951 movie starring Burt Lancaster.
36:06They have one of the greatest breakaway runners
36:07in the country,
36:08All-American for two years.
36:11We've got an All-American too.
36:17I remember driving him and dropping him off
36:20for him to go pick up the bus
36:21and the bus stop was right in the middle
36:25of the theater
36:27and the marquee was right above
36:29and I remember waving at him
36:31and right up there it says
36:33Jim Thorpe, All-American
36:34and that's the last that I saw him dead.
36:41He was in Willie Pep's bar
36:44and I was having a little brew
36:46and Willie kept his eyes shifting over
36:49to this direction
36:51and I wondered,
36:53I thought, well,
36:53it must be a pretty girl,
36:55you know,
36:56but it wasn't.
36:57It was Jim Thorpe.
36:58The greatest all-around athlete
36:59America has ever produced.
37:01Ladies and gentlemen,
37:03Jim Thorpe, All-American.
37:05All-American.
37:05All-American.
37:22Jim, I want you to know
37:29this is indeed an honor
37:30to welcome you to our show here tonight.
37:32As an athlete,
37:33I'm grateful for the strength God gave me
37:35and as an American
37:36and I'm grateful for the opportunity
37:38our great country
37:40and wonderful country
37:41has given them.
37:45When we return to SportsCentury,
37:47Jim Thorpe is laid to rest
37:49in a town he never knew
37:50while his medals remained
37:52far from home.
37:55An Associated Press poll
37:58voted Thorpe
37:59the greatest athlete
38:00of the first half of the century,
38:01easily outdistancing Babe Ruth,
38:04who finished in second place.
38:05That's not saying a lot.
38:09People had enormous sympathy
38:11because they saw Thorpe
38:13as a simple person,
38:16an uneducated Native American
38:19who was used by the United States
38:24for his athletic ability
38:26and then cast aside.
38:31On March 28th, 1953,
38:35Thorpe suffered his third heart attack
38:36and died in a Lomita, California
38:39trailer park.
38:40He was 64.
38:44But with his death,
38:45an old battle for justice
38:47was reignited.
38:48pretty sure he was 65.
38:51In 1913, Damon Runyon
38:52launched a national campaign
38:54to restore Jim Thorpe's honors.
38:57In 1935, FDR.
39:00In 1950, Branch Rickey.
39:02In 1973, Gerald Ford.
39:04And thousands of people
39:06in between.
39:07When Grantland Rice petitioned
39:09Avery Brundage
39:09to restore his medals,
39:12Avery Brundage would write back,
39:14it's a dead issue.
39:16They continued,
39:17even after his death,
39:19to get Jim Thorpe.
39:23Brundage assumed the IOC presidency
39:25in 1952,
39:26holding total power
39:28over the organization
39:29and its decisions
39:30for the next two decades.
39:32While Brundage was alive,
39:33Jim Thorpe was never going
39:34to get his medals back.
39:35That's for sure.
39:36If you believe the fact
39:37that he could have been
39:38very good friends with Hitler,
39:40then you've got to believe
39:41the fact that his philosophy of life
39:43was an Aryan racial supremacy theory
39:45of the white race.
39:46And Jim Thorpe was not white.
39:48Avery Brundage,
39:49was literally a creature
39:51of the 19th century.
39:53Jim Thorpe didn't fit
39:55what Avery Brundage felt
39:57should have been the image
39:59of the greatest Olympic athlete
40:01in the world.
40:02Jim Thorpe won both the pentathlon
40:04and the decathlon
40:05in Stockholm.
40:06Avery Brundage competed
40:08in both events
40:09and had expected
40:11to beat Jim Thorpe.
40:12And Avery Brundage
40:14managed Jim Thorpe's
40:16removal from competition
40:18as revenge.
40:20Oh, oh, oh.
40:20I think Avery will understand.
40:21So he's a salty
40:24POS.
40:26That's why he screwed Jim Thorpe over.
40:29He was racist too,
40:30but this was personal.
40:38I really don't think
40:39that Avery was holding
40:42any grudges.
40:43I think the man
40:44had his beliefs
40:45that you shouldn't be a pro
40:47when you're participating
40:48in the Olympics.
40:49And I think he went by
40:50those rules and regulations.
40:52In Switzerland today,
40:53the return of some awards
40:54which were confiscated
40:5670 years ago.
40:58In 1983,
41:0011 years after Brundage
41:02relinquished his hold
41:03in Olympic morality,
41:04Thorpe's two gold medals
41:06were returned to the family.
41:07His legacy was now intact.
41:09The story of Jim Thorpe
41:11played the entire century.
41:13The public saw him
41:14as someone who had been
41:16abused in a sense
41:17and they owed it to him.
41:18I'm sure that our father
41:20is with us here today
41:22and I'm sure that he would
41:24say one thing also
41:25and that's thanks.
41:29Part of Jim Thorpe's mystery
41:30is that he did not play
41:32for Notre Dame.
41:33He played for the Carlisle Indians
41:34and there's something
41:36wonderful about a man
41:38coming out of Oklahoma,
41:40out of Pennsylvania,
41:43exploding onto the world stage.
41:45The opportunity to become
41:47a great athlete
41:48is almost non-existent
41:50if you're Native American.
41:51When Jim Thorpe did it,
41:53the fact that he did it
41:54in and of itself
41:54was one of the most
41:55extraordinary achievements
41:56of the 20th century.
41:58Jim Thorpe, as an ideal,
42:02represents what we as Americans
42:04think we are as a people.
42:06I think Jim Thorpe
42:10represents a lot
42:11of the American myth
42:13despite the fact
42:13that it was the American myth
42:14that wound up crushing him.
42:17The crush continued
42:19even after his death.
42:20Thorpe's body was originally
42:22designated for burial
42:23in his home state of Oklahoma.
42:25But when a memorial
42:26was vetoed by Governor
42:28William Murray,
42:29Thorpe's widow
42:30and third wife Patricia
42:31was left with his
42:32homeless remains.
42:34What?
42:35His wife, in a sense,
42:36kind of put the body up
42:37for sale
42:38and convinced a town
42:40up in northeast Pennsylvania
42:41to simply change their name
42:43to Jim Thorpe, PA
42:44in exchange for the body.
42:47She's looking at television
42:49and on television
42:51there's a little town
42:52called Machunk
42:53and it showed
42:54these beautiful mountains
42:56and the rivers
42:57and the creeks
42:57and all going through
42:58and the trout streams.
43:00She thought,
43:01isn't that beautiful?
43:03In 1954,
43:06Machunk assumed
43:07the identity
43:07and accepted the body
43:09of a man
43:09who had never been a resident.
43:11But it wasn't just any man.
43:15I think it's pretty amazing
43:16that a town
43:17thinks enough
43:18Jim Thorpe
43:18to request his body
43:20and be willing
43:21to change the name forever.
43:24That he should end up
43:26being buried
43:26in a played out
43:28coal town
43:28in Pennsylvania
43:29is sad.
43:30A man
43:30who should be honored.
43:33His life ended
43:35in disgrace.
43:36There's an awful lot
43:37of Native American
43:38organizations out there
43:40who would like
43:41to see the body
43:41return to his home
43:43in Oklahoma
43:43and kind of laid to rest.
43:45Until that happens,
43:46I think the story
43:47will continue to play.
43:54He didn't live long enough
43:57for people to see
43:59what he wanted
44:01in his will.
44:03He died too suddenly.
44:07Under a hot August sun,
44:10citizens and students
44:11gathered at the 1997
44:12groundbreaking
44:13of the Jim Thorpe
44:15Elementary School
44:16in Santa Ana, California,
44:18just 30 miles
44:19from where he died.
44:20Also in attendance
44:21that day
44:21was 75-year-old
44:23Grace Thorpe,
44:24who said she was happy
44:25that her father's spirit
44:27would live on
44:28through the students.
44:29Only 16 of the 870
44:31expected to enroll
44:32were Native Americans.
44:34Finally,
44:35it seemed,
44:36Jim Thorpe
44:36was an American hero.
44:38For Sports Century,
44:40I'm Chris Fowler.
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