Field of Screens

You might have seen the ubiquitous Dennis Rodman in the audience during this year’s Academy Awards telecast. But do you really think he’ll be up there on the stage next March, pierced and painted in dozens of new places, accepting an Oscar for his latest effort, “Double Team”?

Rodman, who plays opposite Jean-Claude Van Damme in the film, which opens Friday, is just the latest in a long line of athletes--one that appears to be growing exponentially of late--who wants to graduate from the playing field to the big screen.

And why not? Sport has always been the forum where the hero and the villain meet with vigor. Who would doubt that, were there VCRs in those days, Ben-Hur would be making a series of Safe Chariot videos and be starring on “American Gladiators.”

But though sports figures have been making movies since the silent film era, they seem to be more and more prevalent there today. Witness “Space Jam,” which is in the midst of grossing hundreds of millions of dollars worldwide. It stars Michael Jordan essentially playing himself among Warner Bros. cartoon characters.

“We constantly underestimate how popular Michael Jordan is around the world,” “Space Jam” director Joe Pytka told Charlie Rose one recent night.

“The fact that the National Basketball Assn. is so popular and has a female following and, despite the fact that the league is overwhelmingly black, has a strong attraction to the majority white population, movies like this are piggybacking on the brilliance of NBA marketing,” said Robert Sklar, professor of cinema in the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University.

“But vehicles are good words for these movies,” Sklar said. “That word implies that there is some other quality put into a movie rather than the intrinsic subject matter. This is not Holly Hunter playing a 19th century driven woman.”

No former athlete has ever been in real danger of pushing Laurence Olivier off his pedestal. Just in case you’ve forgotten, the following are a few reminders of the acting talents, such as they are, among athletes. We’re taking a purists approach here, deleting bodybuilders (sorry, Arnold), martial-arts types (chop this, Jean-Claude) and professional wrestlers (though we are partial to Andre the Giant in “The Princess Bride” and Captain Lou Albano and Roddy Piper in “Body Slam”). Only real jocks need apply.

Babe, His Own Self. While Babe Ruth himself was hardly a silent type, he was only halfway through his career--three years away from his famous 60-home run season--when he starred in the silent baseball-oriented film “Heading Home,” in 1924. Babe appeared as himself in the Lou Gehrig biopic “The Pride of the Yankees.” He may not have gotten an Oscar nomination, but Gary Cooper, as his rival Gehrig, did.

In the Swim. Buster Crabbe and Esther Williams came off competitive swimming careers to have long lists of movie credits, but Johnny Weissmuller was the most astounding swimmer of the early 20th century, accumulating 67 world records and winning multiple gold medals in the 1924 and 1928 Olympics. Then he became the most famous movie Tarzan (though not the first--that was Elmo Lincoln), reigning from 1932-42.

Axeling Into Our Hearts. Most of our recent champion figure skaters have gone to the announcing booth or the pro touring circuit. But the most prolific ice queen of all, Sonja Henie, also became a powerful movie box-office draw. Henie won 10 consecutive world figure-skating championships and three Olympic golds between 1927-36. For the next several years, she skated, danced and cuddled with some top Hollywood swains like Cesar Romero, Adolphe Menjou and Tyrone Power.

A little less auspicious was the movie career of 1960 Olympic champ Carol Heiss, who appeared the next year in “Snow White and the Three Stooges,” which aficionados say could be the worst Stooges movie ever.

Also crossing over: Olympic gymnasts Mitch Gaylord (“American Anthem,” 1986) and Kurt Thomas (“Gymkata,” 1985).

Early Leatherheads. The National Football League didn’t exist when Paul Robeson completed his All-American football career at Rutgers. He went to law school and studied voice and acting and eventually became one of the most revered (for his talent) and reviled (for his leftist politics) entertainers of his age. Without a doubt the best actor among ex-athletes, Robeson’s best work includes the silent “Body and Soul” (1926) and the second incarnation of “Show Boat” (1936).

Other early football players who made it into movies include All-American running back Johnny Mack Brown, who was a star in a dozen westerns in the 1930s and ‘40s, and Tom Harmon, the Michigan All-American who mostly played football players in second-rate movies. Tom’s son, Mark, was a quarterback at UCLA before getting a bit part in the 1978 Jane Fonda flick, “Comes a Horseman,” and has hunked it up on the tube and screen ever since.

OJ and His Place in Cinematic History. “It’s hard to say where O.J. Simpson was in his career, but he did, indeed have a movie career going,” said NYU’s Sklar. “Those ‘Naked Gun’ films were popular and celebrated comic ineptness, which may say something about O.J.’s talents.” Simpson’s other film work included “The Towering Inferno” (1974) and “Capricorn One” (1978), but the O.J. flick with the most prophetic title was one of his lesser-known efforts: “No Place to Hide.”

The Football Factor. Football players of the ‘60s and ‘70s have had a decent amount of success on the screen. Primary among them was Jim Brown, one of the first to move from fullback to filmland. Although his best role may have been in “The Dirty Dozen,” 30 years ago, he has stayed in view consistently ever since.

Bernie Casey was a wide receiver for the 49ers before he was in “Guns of the Magnificent Seven” (1969) and has been in two dozen other films in the last quarter-century. Fred Williamson, “The Hammer” when he was an NFL linebacker, started out in an Oscar-winning film (“MASH,” 1970) and now has some three dozen tough-guy roles to his credit.

Bubba Smith has made a career of doing “Police Academy” films, hanging on so well that by “Police Academy 5” (1988) he got top-star billing. Rosie Grier, lately known as O.J.’s prison confessor, earned a place in Michael Sauter’s book “The Worst Films of All Time” by co-starring in “The Thing With Two Heads” (1972), in which he and Ray Milland played the two-headed result of a botched transplant experiment. Another behemoth of that era, Alex Karras, was highly amusing in both “Blazing Saddles” (1974) and “Victor/Victoria” (1982).

Hoop-DE-Do. Rodman and Jordan aren’t the only NBA stars to try a big-screen career. The Lakers’ almost-king-of-all-media, Shaquille O’Neal, made his film debut in “Blue Chips” (1994) and showed off his 7-foot-plus frame as a hip-hop genie in last year’s “Kazaam.”

Who will ever forget Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as the co-pilot in the wacky parody “Airplane!” (1980)? Only those who don’t remember Julius (Dr. J) Erving in “The Fish Who Saved Pittsburgh” (1979) or former Denver Nugget Alex English in “Amazing Grace and Chuck” (1987).

The Light Heavies. Surprisingly, three world champions of the obscure Light Heavyweight class have had movie careers. Archie Moore got good notices for playing Jim in the 1960 version of “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” in the midst of his nine-year light-heavy reign. Willie Pastrano was the champ from 1963-65 and then was the star of the biker flick “Wild Rebels” (1971). But Maxie “Slapsie” Rosenbloom (champ 1930-34) had a 20-year career as a comic second banana to folks like Bob Hope, Abbott & Costello, Martin & Lewis and Shemp Howard, in his solo, post-Stooge phase.

Punch Up That Script. With all due respect to the appearances of Muhammad Ali and George Foreman in this year’s Oscar-winner “When We Were Kings,” most heavyweight champs have been stiffs on the silver screen. Joe Louis’ biggest role was as an embarrassingly shuffling GI in the Irving Berlin musical “This Is the Army” (1943). Ken Norton got in the middle of the 1970s blaxsploitation era with roles in “Mandingo” and “Drum.” Max Baer Sr. actually starred opposite Myrna Loy in “The Prizefighter and the Lady” the year before he became heavyweight champ in 1934. Ironically, the man Baer eventually defeated to win the championship, Primo Carnera, was supposed to be in the flick too, but he refused to be cast as the loser in the film’s climactic fight.

Actually, heavyweight Palookas did better on the screen. Randall “Tex” Cobb has parlayed being beaten to a pulp in the ring with roles in such films as “The Champ” (1979) and “Raising Arizona” (1987). Tommy Morrison, the fighter who has revealed being infected with HIV, was high in the credits in “Rocky V” (1990).

One-Shot Wonders. Kenny Moore, an Olympic marathoner, played Mariel Hemingway’s male love interest (she also had a female lover) in “Personal Best” (1982). Bruce Jenner, Olympic decathlon champ, played a tax attorney in 1980’s “Can’t Stop the Music.” “[Jenner] flops around like a cold fish out of water,” wrote Michael Sauter about the film, which did have the distinction of introducing the Village People and their anthem, “YMCA,” which itself has become a ballpark organ standard.