Jim Thorpe – All American: A Thin Hollywood Line of Truth?

Abstract

Jim Thorpe – All American by Michael Curtiz (1951), with Burt Lancaster as main actor, is an interesting example of a sports biopic for all historians seeking both to build ties between reality and fiction, and decipher the construction and/or diffusion of certain collective representations. As such, it constitutes a ‘trace’ of time which contributes a posteriori to a ‘realization’. For the interest of the film lies less in the reconstitution or mere duplication of the sporting past than in its ‘reconstruction’. By placing this film in the context of the United States in the 1950s, and considering it from the contemporary angle of visual studies, it is easier to understand the place of American Indian sportsmen in North American society. In fact, even when reconstructed by the Hollywood machine, Thorpe’s sporting prowess led to indictment by a society that could not, and did not want to, really integrate its minorities. Behind this happy-end story and the rehabilitation of the champion, a reflection of deeply rooted racism in fine reared its head, driven by a self-righteous white community towards American Indians.