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''Champion of champions, the greatest of them all.'' That's the way Budd Schulberg describes the hero of ''Joe Louis: For All Time,'' a documentary shown on the Arts & Entertainment Network. Peter Tatum is the director and Brock Peters is the narrator for the ABC Video Enterprises production. Mr. Schulberg, author of ''The Harder They Fall,'' wrote the script for this film profile of the heavyweight boxer. He cannot be accused of exaggeration.
Joe Louis Barrow (1914-1981) was born the son of sharecroppers in Alabama. The heavyweight champion at the time was Jack Johnson, a black man who, Mr. Schulberg writes, walked into ''a buzzsaw of prejudice,'' triggering ''a crusade to bring the championship back to white America.'' Joe Louis was raised in Detroit. On his way to violin lessons one day, he was sidetracked by a friend to a local gym. White America would have another, far longer wait. By 1933, Mr. Louis was establishing his reputation in Golden Gloves bouts and was ready to join forces with Jack Blackburn, the trainer who would become a significant influence in his life.
Mr. Schulberg believes that the heavyweight champion, larger than life, ''allegorically comes to symbolize his particular era.'' Mr. Louis, certainly, seemed to be the perfect champion for his time. In public, his unfailing decency and dignity gave even the most rabid bigots pause. His color took on international political significance when in 1936 he was knocked out by Max Schmeling, a boxer saddled, unfairly or not, with the trappings of Hitlerian Germany and its theories of Aryan supremacy. Before the rematch in 1938, which Mr. Louis ended after two minutes of the first round, the American champion was invited to the White House, where he remembers President Roosevelt feeling his biceps and remarking: ''These are the type of muscles needed to beat Germany with.''
With plenty of archival footage, the documentary follows Mr. Louis's rise to the top, ticking off names bound to stir veteran fight fans: Jim Braddock, Max Baer, Primo Carnera, King Levinsky, Two-Ton Tony Galento and, in 1941, Billy Conn, who came very close to toppling the champion.
The documentary also traces Joe Louis's decline. Mr. Louis was hounded for years by the Internal Revenue Service, finding himself, as Mr. Schulberg puts it, ''on a golden treadmill -the more he earned, the more he owed.'' For a while, desperate to make money, he appeared on the wrestling circuit, surely the bottom of the barrel for a champion boxer.
He also had personal problems. Although he carefully avoided scandalous headlines, Mr. Louis became ''a magnet for Sugar Babies,'' which led to marriage problems. Later he would be ensnared in drug problems and a bout of paranoia that would lead to enforced hospitalization.
Mr. Louis ended up wearing a large cowboy Stetson as a host for a Las Vegas hotel and gambling casino. A stroke left him noticeably impaired, but he had survived with his basic decency intact.
''For All Time,'' made in 1984, ends with a testimonial dinner mounted by friends who wanted to welcome him back from years of darkness. Frank Sinatra wheels him into the ballroom. Muhammad Ali, Sugar Ray Robinson and Larry Holmes acknowledge their debt to the champion of champions. Mayor Tom Bradley of Los Angeles recalls how, for so many black citizens, Joe Louis was for so long ''our symbol of achievement,'' embodying a sense of dignity.
Mr. Louis was, by Executive Order, buried in Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors. He deserved them. And he deserves this splendid documentary written by Budd Schulberg. |
