Knute Rockne, All American

NFL training camps are in full swing, so with that in mind I thought I'd blog about one of the football movies that's been sitting on my DVR for some time: Knute Rockne, All American.

The movie opens up in Voss, Norway, in the early 1890s, where Lars Rockne (John Qualen) is a carriage maker. He's been planning on emigrating to the United States, specifically to Chicago where one of those great world's fairs is going to be held. In the next scene, we see that Lars has in fact made it to America with his family, including young son Knute (played as a boy by Johnny Sheffield). One day, little Knute comes across a group of older boys playing the relatively new game of football, and he falls in love with it despite it being violent.

Rockne is a good student and could do well if he could go to college, but he can't afford it, so he has to work for several years beforehand. Eventually, adult Knute (Pat O'Brien) has saved up enough money to go to Notre Dame, a Catholic school in South Bend, Indiana. This was the relatively early days of college football, when the sport was in many ways even more corrupt than it is now. Despite his age, he gets roped into trying out for the football team.

College president Fr. Callahan (Donald Crisp) and chemistry professor Fr. Nieuwland (Albert Bassermann) tell Rockne that he could make an excellent chemist, working on synthetic rubber. Knute spends the summer working as a lifeguard instead, although that's important because he goes on to meet Bonnie Skiles (Gale Page), who eventually becomes Mrs. Knute Rockne.

College-aged Knute helps Notre Dame win the big game against Army, one of the big teams of the era because they could recruit the very best athletes of the day thanks to the prestige of the Army. This was through Rockne's insistence on using the forward pass as the mainstay of the offense, which had only been made legal about a half-dozen years earlier. The game puts Notre Dame football on the map.

It also eventually gets Rockne named coach, and he would coach the team until his death a decade or so later in a plane crash. Along the way, Rockne coached George Gipp (Ronald Reagan), who would get an infection that killed him at a young age. This is, of course, the whole legend behind "Win one for the Gipper" and why Reagan would become known as the Gipper. But the Rockne portrayed her also suffered from heart issues, along with serving as the face of college football when Congress and other politicians started worrying about the corrupting influence college football might have on young men.

I'm not certain how much of Knute Rockne, All American is what actually happened in real life. Knute's widow was still very much alive when the movie was made, and there was no way the movie was getting made without her approval, which I assume led to a really sanitized view of Rockne and the romanticization of college football in general.

Having said that, however, the movie is very good as far as Hollywood biopics go, thanks to a fine performance from O'Brien. Ronald Reagan is often remembered for this movie, but I think that's as much because of what he'd go on to be. Reagan does well with what he's asked to do, but he only gets a couple of scenes, and is absolutely not the lead here.

If you want another good example of the old-time Hollywood biopic, you could do a lot worse than to watch Knute Rockne, All American.