HBO's Louis documentary misfires with betrayal theme
It's a story endemic to the fight game: Boxer rises to the top and makes millions, only to squander it all, then suffer a long and very public decline.
HBO tells it again for Black History Month in "Joe Louis: America's Hero … Betrayed," debuting at 7 p.m. Saturday on the premium-cable channel. Yet, in spite of the deliberately controversial title, it doesn't make that strong a case for betrayal, except in depicting Louis as a black man betrayed by his times.
Louis was a product of his era, and although he transcended many of the limitations black athletes were prone to, he was also bound by the inescapable limitations of that era.
Louis rose to the top of the heavyweight ranks in the mid-'30s precisely by being a reactionary response to the more confrontational Jack Johnson 20 years before. He wasn't brash; he didn't glory over fallen white opponents. He was dour, staid, respectful.
Yet his achievements made him a hero in the black community. Activist comic Dick Gregory talks of how blacks would gather to hear his fights on the radio, "and it was better than Christmas. 'Cause on Christmas you couldn't be guaranteed you was gonna get anything."
Louis let himself down when overconfidence and poor training led to his loss to Max Schmeling in 1936, but he stormed back to claim the heavyweight title by beating Jim Braddock at Comiskey Park in 1937. (But at such a cost. His manager, Mike Jacobs, sold Braddock a piece of Louis' profits for the next 10 years in order to get him to agree to the fight).
Still, when Louis fought Schmeling the next year in a rematch at Yankee Stadium, he transcended race and came to represent America in its impending confrontation with Nazi Germany. He clobbered Schmeling in the first round. Sports columnist Jimmy Cannon called Louis "a credit to his race -- the human race."
Even so, that portion of his career has already been covered, and covered better, by PBS' "American Experience."
This 75-minute HBO documentary is more concerned with the "betrayal," which it sees as the way Louis worked four years for the government in support of the war effort during World War II, only to be hounded by the IRS for back taxes for years afterward.
At that, however, it goes soft on Louis. It never really goes into whether he genuinely owed those back taxes -- no doubt he did -- but instead suggests they should have simply been forgiven due to his work for the government and his stature. In that, it's less than convincing.
It gets into some warts and blemishes, such as Louis' free-spending ways -- even if he tended to spend on other people -- and his weakness for chorus girls, but it gives Louis a soft ride otherwise.
Like many a champion boxer, Louis was a tragic figure in the end. His need for money kept him fighting long after he should have been retired and accepting the accolades he deserved. And because he remained in the public eye during his long decline -- bottoming out as a greeter at Caesar's Palace in the '70s -- he came to be seen as pathetic rather than heroic.
The next generation of black heroes had little use for him, as Muhammad Ali called him "an Uncle Tom."
Yet the documentary rightly points out that Louis was as much a racial pioneer as Jackie Robinson, arguing persuasively that Robinson breaking baseball's color barrier in 1947 would have been unthinkable without Louis having already made the case for the worthiness and equality of black athletes.
The story is all too familiar, but the attempt to juice it up by saying Louis was "betrayed" doesn't ring true. It doesn't serve to enhance Louis' reputation, either. He was a great athlete, an important figure, but in the end just another victim of a nasty game.
In the air
Remotely interesting: Channel 50 will air the Class 1A and 2A girls basketball finals this weekend. The 1A semis are at noon today, the 2As at 6:30 p.m. Then the 1A consolation and championship games are at 11 a.m. Saturday, followed by the 2As at 6:30 p.m. … Comcast SportsNet Chicago has the St. Patrick at St. Joseph boys game at 7 p.m. today.
CBS lends Billy Packer to the newly renamed CBS College Sports Network to do the Memphis-Tulsa game at 8 p.m. Wednesday. … The Dish Network is moving the NFL Network to a costlier package at an additional $12 a month.
End of the dial: The Seattle Mariners' Dave Niehaus is the 2008 winner of the Ford C. Frick Award for broadcasting excellence. Niehaus, 73, will be honored at the Baseball Hall of Fame induction ceremonies July 27 in Cooperstown, N.Y.
The White Sox will make their spring radio debut with an exhibition game against the Rockies at 1:55 p.m. Wednesday on WSCR 670-AM. The Cubs will bow on WGN 720-AM against the Giants at 2 p.m. Thursday. … Billy Gardner talks about the Wolves when he visits "Sportsline" with hosts Gary Zahara and Danny Carlino at 11 a.m. Sunday on WNDZ 750-AM.
-- Ted Cox