An Olympic Champion, a Symbol and an Awkward Partner With Fame
By MIKE HALE
American Experience
Jesse Owens
On PBS stations on Tuesday night at 8 (check local listings).
If all you know about Jesse Owens is Hitler, four gold medals and, oh yeah, didn’t he run against a horse?, then the “American Experience” documentary “Jesse Owens” (Tuesday night on PBS stations) will fill some gaps in brisk and entertaining fashion.
The sections about Owens’s pre-Olympic career will introduce you to his epochal day at the Big Ten track and field championships in 1935, when he set or tied four world records in less than an hour, an achievement that dwarfs, in purely athletic terms, what he achieved at the Berlin Olympics the next year.
They also give some much deserved attention to Eulace Peacock, a fellow African-American sprinter who beat Owens in 7 of 10 head-to-head races in 1935 and was favored by some to best Owens in several Olympic events. If not for a bad hamstring, the histories of sports and World War II might read differently. The Eulace Peacock story cries out for its own film.
“Jesse Owens,” directed by Laurens Grant and written by the frequent PBS collaborator Stanley Nelson (“Freedom Riders”), is a smooth and handsome production that suffers from its brevity: about 52 minutes, after credits and promos. There’s not much time to get below the surface, and Owens’s troubled post-Olympic life gets particularly quick treatment.
That may also reflect a desire to stay on message, the message being that Owens represents, as the sociologist Harry Edwards puts it, the shoulders on which Jackie Robinson stood. No doubt Owens is an almost preternaturally graceful and heroic figure, asserting his will despite isolation and scorn even greater than Robinson had to face.
But a more interesting and complex documentary would take a closer look at Owens’s accommodations with the systems that both celebrated and oppressed him, and his lifelong reluctance to be seen as a spokesman for change, issues that are noted briefly in “Jesse Owens.” Mr. Edwards appears frequently on screen, but no mention is made of the public battle between him and Owens over Owens’s criticism of the black-power salutes delivered at the 1968 Olympics, or of the Owens quotation, “The only time the black fist has significance is when there’s money inside.”
What Ms. Grant does put on screen, though, is unimpeachable. Perhaps no athlete has looked as beautiful in motion as Owens, and the copious film of him running and jumping is mesmerizing, even when his opponent is a horse.
“Jesse Owens” includes several examples of the demeaning exhibitions in which he took part after his Olympic success did not translate into cash. It also features, memorably, one of the commercial endorsements Owens garnered after his reputation was revived in the 1960s: his face next to a can of Dinty Moore stew, with the tagline “The man who ran against a horse.” Don Draper never would have let that happen.
By MIKE HALE
American Experience
Jesse Owens
On PBS stations on Tuesday night at 8 (check local listings).
If all you know about Jesse Owens is Hitler, four gold medals and, oh yeah, didn’t he run against a horse?, then the “American Experience” documentary “Jesse Owens” (Tuesday night on PBS stations) will fill some gaps in brisk and entertaining fashion.
The sections about Owens’s pre-Olympic career will introduce you to his epochal day at the Big Ten track and field championships in 1935, when he set or tied four world records in less than an hour, an achievement that dwarfs, in purely athletic terms, what he achieved at the Berlin Olympics the next year.
They also give some much deserved attention to Eulace Peacock, a fellow African-American sprinter who beat Owens in 7 of 10 head-to-head races in 1935 and was favored by some to best Owens in several Olympic events. If not for a bad hamstring, the histories of sports and World War II might read differently. The Eulace Peacock story cries out for its own film.
“Jesse Owens,” directed by Laurens Grant and written by the frequent PBS collaborator Stanley Nelson (“Freedom Riders”), is a smooth and handsome production that suffers from its brevity: about 52 minutes, after credits and promos. There’s not much time to get below the surface, and Owens’s troubled post-Olympic life gets particularly quick treatment.
That may also reflect a desire to stay on message, the message being that Owens represents, as the sociologist Harry Edwards puts it, the shoulders on which Jackie Robinson stood. No doubt Owens is an almost preternaturally graceful and heroic figure, asserting his will despite isolation and scorn even greater than Robinson had to face.
But a more interesting and complex documentary would take a closer look at Owens’s accommodations with the systems that both celebrated and oppressed him, and his lifelong reluctance to be seen as a spokesman for change, issues that are noted briefly in “Jesse Owens.” Mr. Edwards appears frequently on screen, but no mention is made of the public battle between him and Owens over Owens’s criticism of the black-power salutes delivered at the 1968 Olympics, or of the Owens quotation, “The only time the black fist has significance is when there’s money inside.”
What Ms. Grant does put on screen, though, is unimpeachable. Perhaps no athlete has looked as beautiful in motion as Owens, and the copious film of him running and jumping is mesmerizing, even when his opponent is a horse.
“Jesse Owens” includes several examples of the demeaning exhibitions in which he took part after his Olympic success did not translate into cash. It also features, memorably, one of the commercial endorsements Owens garnered after his reputation was revived in the 1960s: his face next to a can of Dinty Moore stew, with the tagline “The man who ran against a horse.” Don Draper never would have let that happen.
