KNUTE ROCKNE, ALL AMERICAN (1940)

One of the most famous biopics of all time. Even movie fans who've never seen this know the quote, "Win just one for the Gipper." The movie doesn’t live up to its reputation but it is an almost archetypal example of the Hollywood biography, with all its strengths and weaknesses. Pat O'Brien is Rockne, the son of Norwegian immigrants, who saves his money and eventually goes off to college at Notre Dame. In his mid-20's, he's a little older than his classmates but he fits in well and shines in both athletics and academics. When he graduates, he takes a job at the school as a assistant to a chemistry professor and helps coach the football team, but coaching quickly becomes his career and he leads Notre Dame to historic greatness on the field. The movie does show us a bit of his family life, but it concentrates on his coaching: his introduction of the forward pass; his molding of George Gipp, a legendary halfback who died just days after his last football game (the movie is maddeningly unclear as to his ailment, but apparently he had a severe strain of strep throat that turned into pneumonia); his creation of the "Four Horsemen" and their backfield shift. Rockne keeps promising his wife and kids a Florida holiday, and when they finally do get away, he is called to California for some matter, takes a plane (against his wife's intuitional advice), and is killed when the small plane crashes in bad weather in Kansas.

O'Brien is heavily made up to resemble the real Rockne, and he comes off a bit like Van Johnson trying to look like Spencer Tracy. He's very good in the part, but in his early scenes, he looks way too old for a college freshman in his mid-20's, looking more like the father of his teammates than a slightly older contemporary. Ronald Reagan is Gipp, better known as the Gipper; he's only in the movie for about ten minutes, but he does show some star quality in his brief time on screen, and his deathbed scene, even though it’s a chiche by now, is effective. The only other actor to get much screen time is Donald Crisp who is fine as Father Callahan, president of Notre Dame. Gale Page, as Rockne's wife, doesn't get a chance to do much of anything; John Qualen, Hollywood's go-to man for Nordic types, is Rockne's dad; Albert Basserman, known best as the kidnapped diplomat at the center of Hitchcock's FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT, is Rockne's chemistry professor. There is an interesting scene near the end in which Rockne testifies before a committee investigating some scandalous accusations against college football (imagine, a school giving a star athlete some breaks in the classroom!); he makes a speech defending sports as a justifiable collegiate activity, explaining it as a healthy way for young men to work out their natural urge for conflict. The movie's main weakness (and the weakness of most Hollywood biopics) is its rote recitation of the highlights of Rockne's life at the expense of deeper character development; its strength is that you find out just enough to make you want to look for more. [TCM]