TV MOVIE REVIEW : 2-Part ‘King of the Olympics’ Is as Grueling as a 26-Mile Marathon

Yes, it’s true. That pious, lecturing stuffed shirt Avery Brundage, for years the rigid, uncompromising head of the International Olympic Committee, had a secret mistress who bore him two sons.

That’s the scoop on “King of the Olympics: The Lives and Loves of Avery Brundage,” a two-part drama airing at 8 tonight and next Monday on KCOP Channel 13 (9 tonight on Channels 3 and 8). If you’ve ever yearned to experience a 26-mile marathon, here’s your chance without having to leave your TV set. This four-hour biography is that punishing.

Brundage died in 1974 at 87, a few years before the private life that he had hidden for three decades became public knowledge as the result of estate litigation brought by his sons.

The public Brundage was controversial and undiplomatic, his statements and actions sometimes leaving him open to charges of racism and anti-Semitism. He was also a slave to what he called the “Olympic ideal,” believing in the spirit of clean sports competition and that the Games should and could be free of commercialism, professionalism and politics. Some of his ideas were as quaint as they may have been well-meaning.

He grouses here when World War I causes the cancellation of the 1916 Games, for example, then really gets ticked off when the Germans engage in gas warfare. “What is this compassion for men killing each other?” Brundage (David Selby) asks. “Why don’t they play sports?” Sure. All right, you Germans and French, everybody into the pool.

Except for some nicely simulated old newsreels, “King of the Olympics” is mostly flat, slow and unconvincing, and is marred also by odd structuring and narrative gaps.

Selby has some nice moments, but looks too old as the young Brundage and too young as the old Brundage. Renee Soutendijk plays his secret love Linnea Dresden in this story written by Wlliam Wood and directed by Lee Philips.

Others will have to determined where truth and fiction separate in this biography. The approach is evenhanded, yet even so, Brundage still comes across as muted.

And uncompelling.