The Great White Hope demonstrates why a great play doesn't always become a great motion picture.
Based on the real Jack Johnson, the first black man to win boxing's world heavyweight championship, The Great White Hope is the story of Jack Jefferson (James Earl Jones), the first black man to win boxing's world heavyweight championship. I'm not entirely sure why they fictionalized a true story. Maybe it was out of respect for Johnson's real life or maybe Howard Sackler, who wrote the play and adapted it for the big screen, just didn't want people complaining about any dramatic license that he took.
Anyway, Jack Jefferson fights his way to the top of the boxing world and then wins the title when the man who retired as champion returns to the ring to defend the white race against the black interloper. For a while, Jack's on top of the world. He's got the title belt, money and his white fiancée Eleanor (Jane Alexander). His only worries are his common law wife Clara, the authorities trying to find something to arrest him on, and the chance that someone might just try and kill him, either for being a black champion or bedding a white woman. The feds eventually do nail Jack on a charge of taking a woman across state lines for the purpose of having sex with her, a law meant for pimps and prostitutes but turned against Jack and Eleanor.
Jack and Eleanor flee the country and he tries to make a living as a fighter in Europe. That doesn't work out. Both because some countries don't want anything to do with him and because Jack isn't content to just fight a series of bums and collect a paycheck. Jack has to be the best in the world and everyone has to acknowledge it. Unable to fight, his money run out, Jack ends up driving away everyone he cares about until the feds finally corner him in Mexico and a terrible tragedy forces Jack to take a deal. He'll throw a fight and lose the title to a white fighter and they'll drop the charges against him. But during the match in Cuba, Jack just can't go through with it. He lets the white boxer beat on him for 10 rounds but won't go down. Then his pride rears up and Jack tries to win, but he's been hurt too bad and goes down for the count.
The only real problem with The Great White Hope is that a lot of the story I just told you never ends up on the screen. Except for the final scene in an open air stadium where an ocean of white men in ties and hats cheer in bloodlust to see the black champion beaten, everything in this film could fit neatly on a theater stage. But the motion picture frees a story from the limitations of the stage. You can change scenes, move actors around and do all number of things impossible in live theater. On stage, you usually have to hear a lot of the story. In a movie, you can see all of the story. With The Great White Hope, it's a movie where you hear most of it. Jack Johnson's life is a great tale but when you compare this with other boxing movies like Rocky or Raging Bull, you can see how clinging to the form and function of the play forces Sackler and director Martin Ritt to leave out things they don't need to leave out.
While the plot is somewhat cramped, the sterling performances more than make up for it. Hal Holbrook shines in a small role as an overly clever district attorney who doesn't want to bring Jack Jefferson down but feels he must. Jane Alexander is also quite fine as a woman truly and deeply in love with her man but still not entirely free from what it means to be a white woman loving a black man in the dawning of the 20th century.
First and last, though, The Great White Hope is James Earl Jones' movie and he dominates it from beginning to end. His Jack Jefferson is a towering figure of joy and unrelenting strength. He shows us the heart of a man who genuinely loves life and revels in it. Then he shows us inside that heart an angry insistence that he go through life on his terms and no one else's. Not the white promoters, not the black people who cheer for him, not even the terms of the woman he loves. Jack's constant smile is both an expression of his deep happiness and a baring of his teeth at everyone and every thing in the world.
The Great White Hope also does a decent job for a piece of entertainment at giving people a deeper look into American racism. This film is about how racism is not just hate, though epithets like the N-word get thrown around a lot, but is also about an idea that the world is white people up high, black people down low and how both whites and blacks internalize that idea until they don't even realize how it shapes their thoughts and emotions.
This film has most of the problems of plays that turn into movies, but it also has the major advantage of such work. Plays can overcome a lot of problems if they give an actor the sort of material with which he can stand up and thunder. James Earl Jones thunders in The Great White Hope and you'll enjoy watching him storm.
Based on the real Jack Johnson, the first black man to win boxing's world heavyweight championship, The Great White Hope is the story of Jack Jefferson (James Earl Jones), the first black man to win boxing's world heavyweight championship. I'm not entirely sure why they fictionalized a true story. Maybe it was out of respect for Johnson's real life or maybe Howard Sackler, who wrote the play and adapted it for the big screen, just didn't want people complaining about any dramatic license that he took.
Anyway, Jack Jefferson fights his way to the top of the boxing world and then wins the title when the man who retired as champion returns to the ring to defend the white race against the black interloper. For a while, Jack's on top of the world. He's got the title belt, money and his white fiancée Eleanor (Jane Alexander). His only worries are his common law wife Clara, the authorities trying to find something to arrest him on, and the chance that someone might just try and kill him, either for being a black champion or bedding a white woman. The feds eventually do nail Jack on a charge of taking a woman across state lines for the purpose of having sex with her, a law meant for pimps and prostitutes but turned against Jack and Eleanor.
Jack and Eleanor flee the country and he tries to make a living as a fighter in Europe. That doesn't work out. Both because some countries don't want anything to do with him and because Jack isn't content to just fight a series of bums and collect a paycheck. Jack has to be the best in the world and everyone has to acknowledge it. Unable to fight, his money run out, Jack ends up driving away everyone he cares about until the feds finally corner him in Mexico and a terrible tragedy forces Jack to take a deal. He'll throw a fight and lose the title to a white fighter and they'll drop the charges against him. But during the match in Cuba, Jack just can't go through with it. He lets the white boxer beat on him for 10 rounds but won't go down. Then his pride rears up and Jack tries to win, but he's been hurt too bad and goes down for the count.
The only real problem with The Great White Hope is that a lot of the story I just told you never ends up on the screen. Except for the final scene in an open air stadium where an ocean of white men in ties and hats cheer in bloodlust to see the black champion beaten, everything in this film could fit neatly on a theater stage. But the motion picture frees a story from the limitations of the stage. You can change scenes, move actors around and do all number of things impossible in live theater. On stage, you usually have to hear a lot of the story. In a movie, you can see all of the story. With The Great White Hope, it's a movie where you hear most of it. Jack Johnson's life is a great tale but when you compare this with other boxing movies like Rocky or Raging Bull, you can see how clinging to the form and function of the play forces Sackler and director Martin Ritt to leave out things they don't need to leave out.
While the plot is somewhat cramped, the sterling performances more than make up for it. Hal Holbrook shines in a small role as an overly clever district attorney who doesn't want to bring Jack Jefferson down but feels he must. Jane Alexander is also quite fine as a woman truly and deeply in love with her man but still not entirely free from what it means to be a white woman loving a black man in the dawning of the 20th century.
First and last, though, The Great White Hope is James Earl Jones' movie and he dominates it from beginning to end. His Jack Jefferson is a towering figure of joy and unrelenting strength. He shows us the heart of a man who genuinely loves life and revels in it. Then he shows us inside that heart an angry insistence that he go through life on his terms and no one else's. Not the white promoters, not the black people who cheer for him, not even the terms of the woman he loves. Jack's constant smile is both an expression of his deep happiness and a baring of his teeth at everyone and every thing in the world.
The Great White Hope also does a decent job for a piece of entertainment at giving people a deeper look into American racism. This film is about how racism is not just hate, though epithets like the N-word get thrown around a lot, but is also about an idea that the world is white people up high, black people down low and how both whites and blacks internalize that idea until they don't even realize how it shapes their thoughts and emotions.
This film has most of the problems of plays that turn into movies, but it also has the major advantage of such work. Plays can overcome a lot of problems if they give an actor the sort of material with which he can stand up and thunder. James Earl Jones thunders in The Great White Hope and you'll enjoy watching him storm.