Jim Thorpe—All-American (1951)

(On Cable TV, September 2021) As much as I wanted to completely embrace Jim Thorpe—All-American’s message of admiration for a Native athlete who overcomes the odds in order to become an exceptional athlete in track-and-field, baseball and football, the fact remains that Thorpe is here played by the very Irish-ethnic Burt Lancaster. While I do like Lancaster a lot and can see how he could pass (faintly) as a Native with darker hair and skin, any contemporary appreciation of Jim Thorpe—All-American has to contend with inappropriate casting, made even worse by the constant depictions of racism against Thorpe. If you can manage to get past that, the film itself isn’t too bad — there’s a near-constant promotion of sports as American religion, but Thorpe’s life is filled with dramatic peaks and valleys. It’s a great introduction to an exceptional well-rounded athlete (the film doesn’t even dwell on the other sports he played well) that has been largely forgotten since then, even if the film irons out many of the less appealing aspects of his life. Still, getting past the inappropriate casting — even knowing how few opportunities there were for Native American actors at the time and Lancaster’s commercial appeal — is a big, big hurdle. Ultimately, Jim Thorpe—All-American ends up creating a lot of questions that run against the message it’s trying to preach, making it vexing at best.