1936 Berlin Olympics Boycott

"The Black Eagles"
The Pittsburgh Courier, July 11, 1936
by Holloway

Jesse Owens: “If there is discrimination against minorities in Germany, then we must withdraw from the Olympics.”

Jeremiah T. Mahony, President of the Amateur Athletic Union: "There is no room for discrimination on grounds of race, color, or creed in the Olympics."

Journalist Heywood Broun: "I think that one of the most useful kinds of protest that can be made against the fascist regime of Hitler lies in our staying away from the Olympic Games in Berlin."

Ernest L. Jahncke, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of the Navy and IOC Member: "Neither Americans nor the representatives of other countries can take part in the Games in Nazi Germany without at least acquiescing in the contempt of the Nazis for fair play and their sordid exploitation of the Games."

Judge Jeremiah T. Mahony: “The Nazi government wants more than American participation in a sporting contest. It wants to bring the American dollar into the very weakened Nazi treasury. And it wants to picture Htler with Uncle Sam standing behind him and saying ‘We are with you, Adolf!’”

The Philadelphia Tribune: “The AAU shouts against the cruelties of the other nations and the brutalities in foreign climates, but conveniently forgets the things that sit on its own doorstep.”

OSU Track Coach Larry Snyder: “Why should we oppose Germany for doing something we do right here at home?”

United States Olympic Committee President Avery Brundage: “The very foundation of the modern Olympic revival will be undermined if individual countries are allowed to restrict participation by reason of class, creed, or race. Certain Jews must understand that they cannot use these games as a weapon in their boycott against the Nazis."

Frederick Rubien, Secretary of the U.S. Olympic Committee: "The Germans are not discriminating against Jews. The Jews were eliminated because they are not good enough athletes."

Coach Larry Snyder: “Jesse Owens is sitting on top of the world today. If he continues to participate in this activity (the boycott) he will be a forgotten man.”

Jesse Owens: “I see no reason to get into a controversy about the Olympics. The games have been awarded to Germany, all preparations have been made, and now some people want to have American withdraw just because some of the German polocies are not approved by them.”

Ernest Jahncke was expelled from the IOC for his comments. He remains the only person ever expelled from the IOC.

Sources:
Triumph (Jeremy Schaap)
Nazi Games (David Clay Large)
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Washington Post

This Is The Times!

The improv comedy troupe "The Times" circa 1955.
Clockwise from left: Barney Silver, Danny Michaels, Desmond Brown, Julia Baker.*

In January of this year I presented what was then the one act play Centennial! to the Playwrights' Unit. It is now the first act of a play tentatively called Cleveland Centennial which includes a revised and expanded version of This Is The Times as the second act.

Times began as a potential outreach tour script, one which dealt with the effect of the House Committee on Un-American Activities on ordinary citizens, with an emphasis on those in "show biz." A very early version was presented as a staged reading in late 2008. It included a great deal of verbatim text from HUAC testimony celebrities such as Peter Seeger, Judy Holliday, Paul Robeson and Arthur Miller, but what tied it together was this troupe of Cleveland-area performers.

Dropping the House Committee testimony brought the bare-boned story of The Times down to about forty minutes. Fleshing out that tale has represented my work of late, and tying the two pieces together. Begging the Unit's patience, we read the first act, which they had already heard in a similar version, and the new second act.

It came as a great relief to me that this earlier piece, The Times, was received more or less with satisfaction. GH stated flatly that he felt Times was its own complete play, which did not require the "backstory" of Centennial. That's good, and directs me to concentrate now on Centennial, to make it its own play, worthy of standing alone.

Two stand alone plays, different styles of performance, with a common thread.

I was asked the big questions, the basic questions. What is the question asked at the beginning of Centennial that must be answered? Where is the seed that is planted in the first act that grows to fruition in the second? To put it another way, where is Chekhov's gun and when does it go off? I can answer these questions. Oh yes, I can. And I will finish it before 2012.

"Whatever the idea behind the Living Newspaper in the beginning, circumstance and influence of one kind or another have modified it. A literally rough estimate of it at the moment would be: 'Combine the newspaper and the theatre and to hell with both traditions.' In the beginning we thought we would dramatize current news, it never occurring to us at the moment that the current news at hand was likely to be very weak stuff." - Morris Watson, 1936

TKT pointed out the difference in tone reader LJH took in performing the character of The Voice of the Living Newspaper. She was, as I had requested, like a big, bold, sassy headline with most of her delivery, but then there are places where she interacts with "citizens" and there is much more interesting, with character. LHJ herself suggested that the Voice might take a more active role in showing people (the audience) around, if the point is to showcase Cleveland. I feel at this point this piece is too stagey where it should have more attitude, just as it strives to be too deep where it should be handled with a lighter touch.

Who is the main character? If it is Cleveland itself, who will care? MO said the history stuff was just boring ("I don't care about the shit I can Google.") that he sat through waiting for the stuff that's about people. With the Voice as a real person, history could become character stuff.

I need to revisit the character of Avery Brundage. He's such an ass.

It came as a relief to hear BP point up that the political business does have contemporary resonance. What was surprising to me, before the reading, was how much was biting in 2010 which seems dated only one year later.

There's a lot of work, but it's not the 'drop everything and start again' kind of work. I've got it. I can see it. I will get it there.

*Actually Mark Cipra, Daniel McElhnaney, Darius Stubbs and Elizabeth Wood, in December 2008.

Avery Brundage

In 1936 the President of the United States Olympic Committee was Avery Brundage, former Olympic athlete, successful building magnate, and complete dick.

The best thing that can be said of him is that without his tireless effort to lick Hitler's butt-crack, Jesse Owens would not have had the opportunity to be an Olympic legend. This is ironic, because Brundage was also a tireless racist.

"The fact that no Jews have been named so far as to compete for Germany doesn't necessarily mean That they have been descriminated against on that score. In forty years of Olympic history, I doubt if the number of Jewish athletes competing from all nations totaled one percent of those in the games. In fact, I believe one-half of one percent would be a high percentage." - Avery Brundage, July 26, 1935

Among other accomplishments, Brundage struggled to keep Jim Thorpe from having his Olympic medals posthumously returned. While this may have had nothing at all to do with the fact that Thorpe kicked Brundage's ass in the decathalon and the pentathalon in the 1912 games, though it is a documented fact that Brundage was the one who reported Thorpe's paid exhibition baseball games to the Olympic committee.

Brundage had a soft spot for totalitarian regimes - Fascist and Communist - arguing against boycotting the 1936 Winter and Summer Games in Germany, or later as IOC President opposing the Eastern Bloc tradition of paying their athletes (because as he said, it was their way of life) while stringently opposing professional athletes in the West.

And women. He believed women should not be Olympic athletes. Avery Brundage was all kinds of asshole.