O'Donnell: O'Bradovich remembers hanging with James Caan, and offers thoughts on Bears

WHEN THE CREDITS FIRST RAN for the enduring 1971 telepic "Brian's Song," three members of that era's Chicago Bears entourage drew individual listings for playing themselves in the principal cast.

They were: then assistant coach Abe Gibron, quarterback Jack Concannon and Ed O'Bradovich.

With Gibron and Concannon long since waived into The Dome-less Stadium Up Yonder, that made it almost obligatory to find "O'B" when word of the death of James Caan broke.

Caan played Brian Piccolo. Billy Dee Williams portrayed Gale Sayers. Jack Warden was George Halas.

O'Bradovich had two speaking lines in the film - and now has a screening room of memories.

"Oh God, what a time that was," the WGN-AM (720) football analyst said.

"You know, they were in a big hurry-up schedule to get that movie done. So a lot of it was filmed at our training camp down in Rensselaer (Ind.). I have no idea why the guys running the show gave me any special attention."

AND ABOUT JAMES CAAN?

"Jimmy was incredible, just incredible," O'Bradovich recalled. "Billy Dee Williams seemed like a good enough guy, but he was all business. Hit all his marks during the filming in the day and was a ghost at night.

"But Jimmy, not Jimmy. At night, he was right there with the rest of us, knocking down beers and trying not to touch too much of the pizza on the table at the couple of joints we hung out at.

"He became one of us. He wanted to be and he fit right in. Some of us took to calling him 'Rook' and he loved it. If he had shown up at any of the Bears reunions in the last 50 years, any of us who were down there in Rensselaer with him would have welcomed him like a brother."

THE MOVIE ITSELF WAS almost mystical in its conception and the speed of its fulfillment.

Piccolo's testicular cancer was diagnosed deep in the Bears disastrous 1-13 season of 1969.

Seven months later, in June 1970, he was dead at age 26.

Four months after that, two hungry young producers named Tony Thomas, 22, and Paul Junger Witt, 28, were asked by ABC executives to develop a chapter about Piccolo from Sayers' autobiography "I Am Third" into a TV movie.

They hired screenwriter William Blinn to craft a treatment.

"It was the first and only time in my career that I read a movie outline and cried," Thomas later told Hollywood archivists. He had additional juice as the son of Danny Thomas and the baby brother of Marlo Thomas, then in the midst of her run as "That Girl."

"We rushed to script, we rushed to cast and we rushed to shoot. Sure we had a deadline to air (Nov. 30, 1971), but we also thought we had something very special on our hands."

THEY FOUGHT TO NURTURE that specialness.

The network wanted Burt Reynolds to play Piccolo. Thomas and Witt pushed back, deeming the superstar-to-be "too macho."

They wanted Caan, whose lone significant cinematic credit was 1969's "The Rain People," written and directed by the equally unknown Francis Ford Coppola.

But Caan didn't want the football project. He surmised that a made-for-TV movie would take him off the big screen's A-list forever. He finally gave in after reading the script.

LOU GOSSETT JR. was cast as Sayers. One week before principal photography was to begin, the former New York Knicks prospect blew out an Achilles "training" for the film.

Callback for Billy Dee, who had read for the part.

Thomas remembered: "The dailies were fantastic. Then when we saw the first cut, without any music and far beyond its eventual 73 minutes, we thought it was the worst thing we had ever seen."

Film editor Bud Isaacs and composer Michel Legrand fixed that.

WITH THE HELP OF ED MCCASKEY expediting matters through the Sabol family and NFL Films, Isaacs got the rights to enough Bears footage to cut, paste and polish into the allotted time frame.

Legrand's score - notably the evocative theme "The Hands of Time" - pushed all the right emotional cues.

On the Tuesday night "Brian's Song" aired, close to 50 percent of all TVs in the America of three networks and little else were tuned in.

AS FOR O'BRADOVICH, his two lines survived the editing of Isaacs.

"I remember one was something like, 'Hey Pic, don't forget you're still a rookie," ol' No. 87 said.

"The other came during a running drill when they put me up against Caan, a running back. I look over at Gibron or Jack Warden and say something like, 'Hey, he's a running back. Why am I doing against him?"

THE 1971 BEARS SAW THE FILM approximately two weeks before it aired on ABC at a leased theater on the North Side.

There was more funereal feel in the air because three weeks before that, Lions WR Chuck Hughes dropped dead on the field during the final moments of a 28-23 Chicago win at Detroit.

"We were all shut up within five minutes or so of the beginning," O'Bradovich said. "And by the end, no one in the theater was saying a word. There wasn't a dry eye in the house. The thing was so well done."

CAAN AND O'BRADOVICH saw each other infrequently over the ensuing five decades.

"I'd say maybe 10 times max," O'B said. "But every time, it was the same Jimmy and it was like seeing a beloved old teammate.

"I'm telling you, most sports films aren't that good and back then, they were even worse. 'Brian's Song' was very different And nobody, and I mean nobody, could have played Brian Piccolo like Jimmy Caan did."

• • •

AND ED, WHILE YOU'RE ON the growl, what about the 2022 Bears?

"I'll tell you this. When (Matt) Eberflus gets those kids to camp, there better be none of this nice-guy crap, none of this how's your family and everything's going to be OK like the last guy (Matt Nagy). Save that (stuff) for a meditation class.

"From day one, Eberflus has to hold their feet to the fire and demand day-to-day, play-to-play accountability to restore Chicago Bears football. Play to win championships, not to limp into the playoffs at 9-8 or 8-9.

"Eberflus has to be no more Mr. Nice Guy. Be that after there's another Super Bowl trophy in the locker room."

But what if they go 17-0? Doesn't that take all the fire and Bears stone out of those classic postgame shows with you and Dan Hampton on WGN-AM?

"If they go 17-0, I will be on top of the highest tree along Lake Michigan screaming their praises. How long has it been since 1985?

"We know what a great football town this is. Now it's time to ditch this Kumbaya bull (stuff) and give the fans their money's worth."

• Jim O'Donnell's Sports and Media column appears Thursday and Sunday. Reach him at jimodonnelldh@yahoo.com.