Word: derek
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Saturday's Hero (Columbia] looks at U.S. intercollegiate football with the same critical eye that Hollywood sport films usually turn on prizefighting. As angry as it is timely, the movie takes the line that gridiron stars like Hero John Derek are the pawns of a game cynically run for the profit of the universities and the political capital of behind-the-scenes finaglers...
...picture hits the line too hard. As a poor, first-generation American hungering for education, glory, and acceptance in the uppercrust world typified by Jackson College, Halfback Derek gets buried in such a pile-up of broken illusions that the movie looks like a put-up job. Football brings him fleeting glory, leaves him no time to study, wins him only the snooty tolerance of Jackson's aristocrats and (until the fadeout) the well-born girl (Donna Reed) he loves. It crushes his body and his self-respect to feed the ambitions of a string-pulling alumnus (Sidney Blackmer...
...John Derek, as star halfback, overcomes a pretty-boy appearance with a straightforward though inarticulate performance; the others, nearly all perfectly cast, play their positions efficiently and unobtrusively. With its unsubtle emphasis and reliance on types, "Saturday's Hero" is obviously loaded, but it is just as obviously pointed in the right direction...
...story told by Biographer Derek Hudson is a tragic one. Tupper had his success young. In the '60s the public outgrew him, and he became a figure of fun. As people began to snicker, other disasters struck him too. He lost his savings in speculations. His publishers went bankrupt and failed to pay him. His wife became an alcoholic and was out of her head for a time. His eldest son ran hugely into debt, was kicked out of the army, and almost broke Tupper's heart when he was found suffering from delirium tremens in a prostitute...
...UNREPENTANT VICTORIAN (342 pp.] -Derek Hudson-Macmillion...