A well-remembered film from my youth and one I've been keen to re-watch since recently reading a biography of Jack Johnson on whose life this thinly-veiled movie is based. I'm also a lover of boxing movies although truth to tell, his climactic fight with "The Kid" (read Jess Willard) apart, there isn't a whole lot of fight action in the movie.
In this and other ways, it rather betrays its theatrical origins, like the obvious act-closing scene when Jefferson (read Johnson) bays "I'll be here" at the moon and other slightly overheated scenes, especially the intimate scenes between the champ and his white girlfriend, not to mention other over-dramatised incidents particularly the "Rocky"-esque final rounds of the last fight and the Ophelia-like demise of Eleanor just before it.
The film also perhaps too obviously reflects its own times as it too blatantly looks to reach out from the screen to chime in with the Civil Rights arguments of the then present-day rather than of Johnson's own time. I might also argue against the downbeat ending as presented here and personally think the film could have easily just concentrated on his historic fight with the Brady (read Jim Jeffries) character as a more upbeat finish even as I appreciate that this would have omitted the tragedy of what followed as the FBI, press and the white-controlled boxing hierarchy all combined to strip Jack of his hard-won title. Here, you see almost nothing of the fight action in Reno between the two combatants, far less Johnson's final knock-out of the returning ex-champ, himself out to recapture the title belt for the white race.
It wouldn't be the first time of course that either Broadway or especially Hollywood would rewrite history for its own ends and maybe I'm being somewhat revisionist myself in my feelings today about the film. It still manages to pack a punch in many ways especially Jack's clever escape from the police with the help of the local black baseball team or the staging of the last fight, with the crowd scene around the ring vividly resembling the actual footage of it in Cuba back in the day.
What's not in doubt either are the excellent lead performances from James Earl Jones and Jane Alexander or the recreation of the era by director Ritt.
This really is a movie, good as it is, that I think could benefit from a modern-day adaptation less devoted to the original play and in so doing give Johnson back his real name and slightly less histrionically tell his remarkable story to a new generation.
That, at least, is the great (white) hope of mine I take way from this still worthy movie.
