Not sure if there has been a thread done on this yet, but I have just seen the documentary 'Unforgiveable Blackness - The rise and fall of Jack Johnson'. It was a captivating watch, and great insight, particularly into perhaps, an unrivaled rise in the face of adversity, in the history of boxing. If anyone has seen this yet, please let me know what your thoughts are.
It was done by Ken Burns, a bleeding heart who seems to be on a crusade to right the wrongs of the past in most of his documentaries and never met a racial angle he didn't love (see his jazz and baseball docs[he could find the racist angle in the way a light turns from green to red and beat it to death]). To his credit, he makes interesting- albeit agenda driven- films. I liked Unf. Blackness for the most part, but there was some shoddy research. For instance, did you know that this was Sam Langford? This content is protected
jm, I've read the book. Very enlightening. Jack Johnson , by most boxing people was considered one of the all-time great heavies. In fact Jack Blackburn, Louis's astute great trainer who knew Johnson well, and detested jack Johnson, once revealed that he believed Lil Artha, would have beaten his beloved Joe Louis. For what it's worth...To think I as a pup once shook Johnson's paw along with my dad, not long before he died in a car crash driving to the Louis/Conn bout. Cheers...
Not sure whether or not you are being sarcastic/joking, but this is not Sam Langford. It is Joe Walcott, the original Joe Walcott, that is. Did the Burns doc incorrectly claim this was Langford?
Surf, you are so correct about Ken Burns who HAS to inject race into every thing he films. In his baseball series as well as his book on Jack Johnson. Liberalism gone amuck. Yes that photo is of Barbados Joe Walcott of course...
His 5'2" frame naturally makes him look more muscular with less to fill out, but considering the times and looking how he did, he'd probably put on muscular weight almost uncontrollably from basic nutrition and training. He'd be flat out scary. Sam Langford too.
Burns is a well respected doc film maker who has the formula down necessary to guarantee sponser financing and distrubution, two exceptional hurdles in the documentary business ... that being siad I've always found his docs to be a bit flat and uninteresting, not to mention long ... UB is a nice work by a non-boxing fan .. SB is correct in the bleed heart angle which is fine to a degree but again it was simply a bit flat in parts ... I have no idea why he choose not to use any of the available footage of JOhnson where we can actually hear the real JOhnson talk ... it seemed to be a very strange decision on his part ... Whatever, it is a nice work with some decent film work and a fine production but to me broke absolutely zero new ground on the topic. The book is by a different author and overall better.
