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Marketing Weissmuller to the World: Hollywood's Olympics and Federal Schemes for Americanization through Sport

2008; Routledge; Volume: 25; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/09523360701740398

1743-9035

American Sports and Literature

Building on plans developed in the 1920s, the US government used the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics to expand their scheme to Americanize the world through sport. Frustrated that the world did not share their passion for the American trinity of national pastimes, baseball, basketball and American football, the government experts turned once again to swimming in an effort to make their plan work. They found a powerful advertisement for Americanism in Johnny Weissmuller, the great US Olympic swimmer of the 1920s who in the 1930s migrated to Hollywood and achieved global stardom as Hollywood's iconic Tarzan. To expand the campaign federal officials from the US Departments of State and Commerce collected copious amounts of data on foreign sporting cultures in an effort to design a marketing plan to sell American civilization through sport. The federal designs reveal new contours in the American habit of crafting patriotism through the Olympics.