Jim Thorpe...All American...Still my favorite track and field movie

Okay all you old timers. Let's go back a bit.

The year was 1951 and a wonderful track and field movie was released that is still one of my favorite flicks about an extraordinary human athlete.

Burt Lancaster portrays the legendary Jim Thorpe, the native American who battled racism and captured gold medals at the 1912 Olympic Games. It was Lancaster's 1960 flick "Elmer Gantry" in track clothes. Born in Oklahoma in 1988, a descendant of Chief Black Hawk, Thorpe rose to stardom in the Stockholm Olympics by winning all but one event in the pentathlon and running away with the decathlon as well.

My goodness, he was such a versatile athlete.He ran the 100-yard dash in 10-flat, the mile in 4:35, long jump at 23-6, high jump at 6-5, and pole vault at 11 feet...and that's just to name a few events. He ran hurdles, ran intermediate distances, threw the discus, heaved the shot and threw the javelin. He went on to play pro baseball and football. And in his biggest battle of all, he fought of discrimination until the day he died in 1953.

Trouble seemed to always follow Thorpe, and he was stripped of his Olympic medals when it was discovered he had played on a professional baseball team for a mere sixty dollars. Thank goodness, Thorpe's medals were reinstated by the International Olympic Committee in 1983, thirty years after his death.

Buy the movie and get the full impact of Thorpe's saga. By the way, Billy Gray, from "Father's Knows Best" TV fame, portrays a young Thorpe in the movie. And the great character actor Charles Bickford portrayed Pop Warner, Thorpe's coach and father figure, who was the first person to take notice of Thorpe and his athletic ability at the Carilse Indian School in Pennsylvania.

Thorpe had an Indian name which meant "Bright Path". Thorpe certainly created his own path...his own journey in history by running, throwing, catching, jumping, hitting and vaulting his way to glory.