Trouble Along the Way

Submitted by Edward Khil on

Right now on TCM, John Wayne in a 1953 film, according to an amazon.com editorial review,

"plays a gleefully corrupt football coach who buys players in an attempt to build up the football program overnight at a small Catholic school."

A representative quote from one of the characters in the film:

Steve Aloysius Williams: Oh, it's a fine game, football - noble game. Originated in England in 1823. An enterprising young man named William Weber Ellis - who studied for the ministry, by the way - found his team behind in a soccer game, so he picked up the ball, and ran through the amazed opponents for a thoroughly illegal touchdown. And that's how football was born - illegitimately. So, it moved to America where someone took advantage of a loophole in the rules, and invented a little formation called the Flying Wedge. So many young men were maimed and killed by this clever maneuver that President Roosevelt - Theodore Roosevelt - had to call the colleges together and ask them to make the game less brutal. He was, of course, defeated in the next election. In spite of this setback, football became an industry. The price of a good running back often surpassed the salary of a professor. And when some righteous committee unearthed this well-known fact, there was always a coach that took it on the chin. I just got tired of picking myself up.

I turned it on midway through, and thought I was watching Nick Saban in black-and-white.  Four stars are out of five.