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Aggressive America: Media nationalism and the ‘war’ over olympic pictures in sport's ‘golden age’

2005; Routledge; Volume: 22; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/09523360500286718

1743-9035

Mark Dyreson,

Doping in Sports

During the 1920s the Olympic Games became a valuable commodity in the burgeoning global sports market. Sensing an opportunity to increase revenues dramatically, theorganizing committees for the 1924 Paris Games and 1928 Amsterdam Games created exclusive monopolies to sell still and motion picture rights of Olympic events. This new arrangement radically altered the traditional relation between the media and sportspromoters. Media conglomerates in the US and in other nations vociferously protestedthe new practice. In the US newsreel companies and press agencies sought the help of thefederal government to break the new monopoly on picture rights. The resistance failed. Olympic organizers seized ownership of visual images of the modern Games, paving the way for the lucrative television contracts that later enriched the International Olympic Committee. Notes [1] The term ‘golden age’ originated with P. Gallico, ‘The Golden Decade’, Saturday Evening Post, 204 (5 Sept. 1931), 12–13. Gallico later penned a popular history of the sporting craze's heroes, The Golden People (New York: Doubleday, 1965). For an interpretation of the ‘golden age’ in American culture see M. Dyreson, ‘The Emergence of Consumer Culture and the Transformation of Physical Culture: American Sport in the 1920s’, Journal of Sport History, 16 (Winter 1989), 261–81. [2] F.L. Allen, Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the Nineteen-Twenties (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1931), pp.79–80. For histories of the development of American sport during the ‘golden age’, see S. Cahn, Coming on Strong: Gender and Sexuality in Twentieth-Century Women's Sport (New York: Free Press, 1994); J. Carroll, Red Grange and the Rise of Modern Football (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1999); R. Creamer, Babe: The Legend Comes to Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974); R. Crepeau, Baseball: America's Diamond Mind: 1919–1941 (Orlando, FL: University Presses of Florida, 1980); L. Englemann, The Goddess and the American Girl (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988); B. Evensen, When Dempsey Fought Tunney: Heroes, Hokum and Storytelling in the Jazz Age (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1996); M. Oriard, King Football: Sport and Spectacle in the Golden Age of Radio and Newsreels, Movies and Magazines, and the Weekly & Daily Press (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2001); R. Roberts, Jack Dempsey: The Manassa Mauler (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1979); R. Smith, Play-by-Play: Radio, Television, and Big-Time College Sport (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001); H. Seymour, Baseball: The Golden Age, Vol. II (New York, Oxford University Press, 1989); M. Sperber, Shake Down the Thunder: The Creation of Notre Dame Football (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1993); T. Vincent, The Rise and Fall of American Sport: Mudville's Revenge (New York: Seaview Books, 1981); D. Voight, American Baseball: From the Commissioners to Continental Expansion, Vol. II (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 1983). [3] M. Dyreson, ‘Selling American Civilization: The Olympic Games of 1920 and American Culture’, Olympika: The International Journal of Olympic Studies, 8 (1999), 1–41; M. Dyreson, ‘Scripting the American Olympic Story-Telling Formula: The 1924 Paris Olympic Games and the American Media’, Olympika: The International Journal of Olympic Studies, 5 (1996), 45–80; S.W. Pope, Patriotic Games: Sporting Traditions in the American Imagination, 1876–1926 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp.54–8. [4] B. Murray, The World's Game: A History of Soccer (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1996), pp.42–64. [5] A. Markovits and S. Hellerman, Offside: Soccer and American Exceptionalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001). [6] M. Dyreson, ‘Globalizing the Nation-Making Process: Modern Sport in World History’, The International Journal of the History of Sport, 20 (March 2003), 91–106. [7] M. Dyreson, ‘Icons of Liberty or Objects of Desire? American Women Olympians and the Politics of Consumption’, Journal of Contemporary History, 38 (July 2003), 435–60. [8] Dyreson, ‘Selling American Civilization’; Dyreson, ‘Scripting the American Olympic Story-Telling Formula’. [9] On sport and race in the United States during the 1920s, see D. Wiggins and P. Miller (eds.), The Unlevel Playing Field: A Documentary History of the African American Experience in Sport (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2003), pp.143–201. On shifting colour lines in baseball, boxing and football, see J. Tygiel, Baseball's Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy, rev. edn (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); Roberts, Jack Dempsey; and Oriard, King Football. [10] A. Senn, Power, Politics, and the Olympic Games (Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 1999), p.74. [11] That tradition certainly has an older lineage in the United States. M. Dyreson, Making the American Team: Sport, Culture, and the Olympic Experience (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1998). [12] R. Barney, S. Wenn and S. Martyn, Selling the Five Rings: The International Olympic Committee and the Rise of Olympic Commercialism (Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press, 2002), p.30. [13] The official report of the Los Angeles Games made it clear that ‘the Committee made no charge of any sort to any photographers’. Still, to restrict the number of credentialled picture-takers at the 1932 Olympics, the organizers allowed only four newspaper syndicates and four newsreel companies the right to film. Acme Newspapers, Associated Press Photos, International News Photos and Wide World Photos comprised the still photography concessionaires. Pathé News, Paramount News, Fox-Hearst (Movietone-Metrotone) and Universal Newsreel were the exclusive motion-picture providers. See Xth Olympiade Committee, The Games of the Xth Olympiad, Los Angeles, 1932 (Los Angeles, CA: Woffler, 1933), p.169. [14] Barney, Wenn and Martyn, Selling the Five Rings. [15] On connections between the origins of modern sport and the American mass media in the nineteenth century, see M. Adelman, A Sporting Time: New York City and the Rise of Modern Athletics (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1986); G. Gems, Windy City Wars: Labor, Leisure, and Sport in the Making of Chicago (Lanham, MD.: Scarecrow Press, 1997); W. Goldstein, Playing For Keeps: A History of Early Baseball (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989); E. Gorn, The Manly Art, Bare-Knuckle Prize Fighting in America (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986); S. Hardy, How Boston Played: Sport, Recreation, and Community, 1865–1915 (Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press, 1982); M. Isenberg, John L. Sullivan and His America (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1988); G. Kirsch, The Creation of American Team Sports: Baseball and Cricket, 1838–72 (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1989); P. Levine, A.G. Spalding and the Rise of Baseball: The Promise of American Sport (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985); P. Marks, Bicycles, Bangs, and Bloomers: The New Woman in the Popular Press (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 1990); D. Mrozek, Sport and American Mentality, 1880–1910 (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1983); M. Oriard, Reading Football: How the Popular Press Created an American Spectacle (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1993); Pope, Patriotic Games; B. Rader, Baseball: A History of America's Game (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1992); S. Riess, City Games: The Evolution of American Urban Society and the Rise of Sports (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1989); S. Riess, Sport in Industrial America, 1850–1920 (Wheeling, IL: Harlan Davidson, 1995); R. Rosenzweig, Eight Hours for What We Will: Workers and Leisure in an Industrial City, 1870–1910 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); R. Smith, Sports and Freedom: The Rise of Big-Time College Athletics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988); D. Somers, The Rise of Sports in New Orleans, 1850–1900 (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1972). [16] Oriard, King Football, pp.39–49; Smith, Play-by-Play, pp.7–47; Allen, Only Yesterday, pp.79–80. [17] Oriard, King Football, pp.49–52. [18] Smith, Play-by-Play. [19] Only ‘scattered news briefs’ about the 1924 and 1928 Olympic Games were heard on the radio (Barney, Wenn and Martyn, Selling the Five Rings, p.53). See also the very interesting essay by J. McCoy, ‘Radio Sports Broadcasting in the United States, Britain and Australia, 1920–1956, and Its Influence on the Olympic Games’, Journal of Olympic History, 6 (Spring 1997), 20–5. [20] Senn, Power, Politics, and the Olympic Games, p.121. [21] G. Van Rossem (ed.), The Ninth Olympiad: Being the Official Report of the Olympic Games of 1928 Celebrated at Amsterdam, trans. Sydney W. Fleming (Amsterdam: J.H. De Bussy, 1928), p.115. [22] The Belgian Olympic Committee blamed the Antwerp Festivities Committee, which had produced the summer-long series of Olympic ‘fetes’ in an effort to stage a scaled-down version of a world's fair, with drawing people and revenues away from the Olympic events. The festivities committee had achieved much more financial success by staging events such as mock air combats between Belgian and French pilots than the Olympic Committee had by putting on the sporting competitions. Some in the Belgian press also speculated that certain entrepreneurs had made small fortunes on the Olympics and the associated festivals by raiding the coffers of the Belgian Olympic Committee and pilfering the public subsidies granted by the government for the games. R. Renson, The Games Reborn: Antwerp, 1920, The VIIth Olympiad (Antwerp: Pandora, 1996), pp.78–84. [23] The French economy, dependent on German financial compensation for capital, had become mired in a deep depression when Germany, ravaged by its own economic problems, failed to pay the mandated reparations on time. When Germany fell behind on reparations, France occupied the key industrial belt in the Ruhr and threatened to construct an independent state in the Rhineland. A war scare gripped Europe and the world. Fears of a general European economic collapse hampered global markets. That same year, the Seine River flooded, damaging large sections of Paris. In the wake of the flood, the Ruhr crisis and the faltering economy, French government authorities decided that they could not guarantee the economic and security resources necessary to host the Olympics. A panicked Baron de Coubertin quietly made arrangements to ship the 1924 Olympics to Los Angeles if war or financial collapse rendered Paris unable to host the games. The crises passed. As 1924 began, Paris readied itself for an Olympian celebration. A. Guttmann, The Olympics: A History of the Modern Games (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1992), pp.41–4; Senn, Power, Politics, and the Olympic Games, pp.38–40; E. Phillips, The VIII Olympiad: Paris, 1924; St Moritz, 1928 (Los Angeles: World Sport Research & Publications, 1996), pp.10–16. [24] ‘Picture Rights Let For Olympic Games’, New York Times, 28 Nov. 1923, 11; ‘Olympic Body Will Supply Photographs of the Games’, New York Times, 10 Jan. 1924, 24. [25] ‘Le Service Photographique’, in Comité Olympique Français, Les Jeux de la VIII Olympiade, Paris, 1924: Rapport Officiel (Paris: Librairie de France, 1924), pp.797–8. [26] ‘Le Cinéma’, in Comité Olympique Français, Les Jeux de la VIII Olympiade, pp.798–9. [27] ‘Comment on Current Events in Sports’, New York Times, 13 Dec. 1923, 22. [28] For an enlightening account of the rugby tourney, see J. Lucas, ‘France Versus the USA in the 1924 Olympic Games: Efforts to Assuage Transnational Tension’, Canadian Journal of Sport History, 19 (May 1988), 15–27. [29] ‘American Team May Refuse to Compete’, Pittsburgh Press, 9 May 1924, 41; ‘Pro Charge Annoys US Rugby Players’, New York Times, 8 May 1924, 15; ‘US Rugby Players Threaten to Quit’, New York Times, 9 May 1924, 24; ‘French to Admit US Camera Men’, New York Times, 10 May 1924, 11. [30] ‘France Denounces Olympic Outbreak’, New York Times, 20 May 1924, 18; I. Treat, ‘Another War Victim’, The Nation, 118 (25 June 1924), 739; ‘Insult May Be Ignored’, Pittsburgh Press, 19 May 1924, 24. [31] Comité Olympique Français, Les Jeux de la VIII Olympiade, pp.798–9. [32] Van Rossem, The Ninth Olympiad, pp.115–17. [33] Ibid. [34] Ibid., p.116. [35] R.M. Tobin (US Ambassador to the Netherlands) to the Secretary of State (F.B. Kellogg), 15 June 1928, State Department Records Division, Record Group 59, Foreign Relations Microfilm Files, National Archives and Record Administration II, College Park, Maryland. (Hereafter NARA II). [36] Those six corporations were the major newsreel companies in the United States during the 1920s. Pathé originally began as an American branch of a French cinema consortium but was fully ‘Americanized’ by the ‘golden age’. R. Fielding, The American Newsreel, 1911–1967 (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1972), pp.138–204; R. Fielding, The March of Time, 1935–1951 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), pp.3–17. [37] ‘Protest UFA Monopoly’, New York Times, 24 Jan. 1928, 5. [38] Letter from C.J. North, Chief, Motion Picture Section, Specialities Division, Department of Commerce, to Maurice Kann, Editor, The Film Daily, 26 Oct. 1927; Letter from C.J. North, Chief, Motion Picture Section, Specialities Division, Department of Commerce, to Major F.L. Herron, Motion Pictures Producers & Distributors of America, Inc., 26 Oct. 1927; Letter from C.J. North, Chief, Motion Picture Section, Specialities Division, Department of Commerce, to Major F.L. Herron, Motion Pictures Producers & Distributors of America, Inc., 5 Nov. 1927; Records of the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, Record Group 151, Box 1312, File: Motion Pictures–Netherlands, NARA II. [39] Memo from C.J. North, Chief, Motion Picture Section, Specialities Division, Department of Commerce, to Transportation Division, US Department of Commerce, 5 Nov. 1927; Cablegram from C.J. North, Chief, Motion Picture Section, Specialities Division, Department of Commerce, to J. Van Wickel, Commercial Attaché, The Hague, Netherlands, 5 Nov. 1927; Cablegram from J. Van Wickel, Commercial Attaché, The Hague, Netherlands, to C.J. North, Chief, Motion Picture Section, Specialities Division, Department of Commerce, 7 Nov. 1927; Records of the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, Record Group 151, Box 1312, File: Motion Pictures–Netherlands, NARA II. [40] ‘Plan to Charge $60,000 for Olympic Rights Draws US Protest and May Bar Films Here’, New York Times, 16 May 1928, 30. [41] Letter from C.J. North, Chief, Motion Picture Section, Specialities Division, Department of Commerce, to J. Van Wickel, Commercial Attaché, The Hague, Netherlands, 10 Nov. 1927, Records of the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, Record Group 151, Box 1312, File: Motion Pictures–Netherlands, NARA II. [42] Tobin to the Secretary of State, 15 June 1928, NARA II. [43] Letter from C.J. North, Chief, Motion Picture Section, Specialities Division, Department of Commerce, to Major F.L. Herron, Motion Pictures Producers & Distributors of America, Inc., 6 Feb. 1928; Letter from C.J. North, Chief, Motion Picture Section, Specialities Division, Department of Commerce, to J. Van Wickel, Commercial Attaché, The Hague, Netherlands, 6 Feb. 1928; Letter from C.J. North, Chief, Motion Picture Section, Specialities Division, Department of Commerce, to G.R. Canty, US Trade Commissioner, Paris, France, 15 Feb. 1928; Records of the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, Record Group 151, Box 1312, File: Motion Pictures–Netherlands, NARA II. [44] Tobin to the Secretary of State, 15 June 1928, NARA II. [45] Ibid. [46] Letter from C.J. North, Chief, Motion Picture Section, Specialities Division, Department of Commerce, to J. Van Wickel, Commercial Attaché, The Hague, Netherlands, 18 July 1928, Records of the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, Record Group 151, Box 1312, File: Motion Pictures–Netherlands, NARA II. [47] Letter from C.J. North, Chief, Motion Picture Section, Specialities Division, Department of Commerce, to Major F.L. Herron, Motion Pictures Producers & Distributors of America, Inc., 13 July 1928; Letter from C.J. North, Chief, Motion Picture Section, Specialities Division, Department of Commerce, to Major F.L. Herron, Motion Pictures Producers & Distributors of America, Inc., 18 July 1928; Letter from C.J. North, Chief, Motion Picture Section, Specialities Division, Department of Commerce, to J. Van Wickel, Commercial Attache, The Hague, Netherlands, 1 Aug. 1928; Records of the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, Record Group 151, Box 1312, File: Motion Pictures–Netherlands, NARA II. [48] Letter from C.J. North, Chief, Motion Picture Section, Specialities Division, Department of Commerce, to G.R. Canty, US Trade Commissioner, Paris, France, 20 June 1928, Records of the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, Record Group 151, Box 1312, File: Motion Pictures–Netherlands, NARA II. [49] J. Hay, Popular Film Culture in Fascist Italy: The Passing of the Rex (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1987), pp.201–32; M. Landy, Fascism in Film: The Italian Commercial Cinema, 1931–1943 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), pp.10–11; P.V. Cannistraro (ed.), Historical Dictionary of Fascist Italy (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982), pp.313–14. [50] Van Rossem, The Ninth Olympiad, p.118. [51] ‘Detectives to Aid Olympic Photo Ban’, New York Times, 27 May 1928, 141. [52] ‘Dutch Committee Duped’, New York Times, 27 May 1928, 141. [53] Van Rossem, The Ninth Olympiad, p.118. [54] ‘The Olympics’, Time, 12 (13 Aug. 1928), 28. [55] Letter from N.D. Golden, Acting Chief, Motion Pictures Section, Specialities Division, US Department of Commerce, to Major F.L. Herron, Motion Picture Producers & Distributors of America, Inc., 7 Aug. 1928, Records of the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, Record Group 151, Box 1312, File: Motion-Pictures–Netherlands, NARA II. [56] Letter from N.D. Golden, Acting Chief, Motion Pictures Section, Specialities Division, US Department of Commerce, to G.F. Canty, Trade Commissioner, Paris, 14 Aug. 1928, Records of the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, Record Group 151, Box 1312, File: Motion-Pictures–Netherlands, NARA II. [57] ‘Movietoning Celebrities’, New York Times, 18 Nov. 1928, X6. [58] Xth Olympiade Committee, The Games of the Xth Olympiad, p.169. [59] A. Krüger, ‘Germany: The Propaganda Machine’, in A. Krüger and W. Murray (eds.), The Nazi Olympics: Sport, Politics, and Appeasement in the 1930s (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2003), pp.17–43. [60] ‘Olympics–Ltd.’, Time, 52 (26 July 1948), 65. [61] Barney, Wenn and Martyn, Selling the Five Rings, pp.51–77. [62] C. Francis Jenkins, the inventor of the ‘prismatic ring’, made that prediction to the American Chemical Society. See ‘Jenkins Predicts Radio Movies’, New York Times, 8 April 1925, 23.