Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, February 8, 1991 TAG: 9102080703
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PAXTON DAVIS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
A few are quiet, gentle and modest; and, though those are not popular traits in these violent days of swollen, misguided and mostly fraudulent "patriotism," they stick to their principles.
Two of them died recently and ought to be remembered.
"Red" Grange was born Harold Grange, but no one ever seems to have called him that past his boyhood, and I never had any notion of his proper name till he died at 87.
To my generation of small boys he epitomized American football, already, in the early 1930s. He was a legend for not only his games for the University of Illinois, but also for being the key player in lifting professional football from a marginal enterprise for old-timers to a central place in American athletics.
As a poor boy in the '20s, an age when football scholarships scarcely existed, he almost missed attending high school, but the appeal of coach Bob Zuppke lured him into Illinois and a sensational career. He supported his college attendance by carrying ice.
It was an era of sports legends - Babe Ruth, Jack Dempsey, Bill Tilden, Bobby Jones - and Red Grange soon became one himself as a running back at Illinois, in three playing seasons building a touchdown record that lasted until last season. In 20 games he scored 31 times and ran for 3,637 yards. His most spectacular moment, which everyone knows, came when as a junior he made four touchdowns against Michigan in the first 12 minutes. It is hardly necessary to add that he made All-American each of his three playing years.
He turned pro after Illinois, joining the Chicago Bears and immediately bringing unprecedented crowds to professional football games, not only in Chicago but in New York, Los Angeles and elsewhere. His exploits as "The Galloping Ghost" - which is what he was invariably called by the sportswriters - put pro football on a paying basis it had never enjoyed, and eventually made it and Grange as popular as pro boxing and baseball had already become.
But the essence of Grange was not only his extraordinary running skill but also the modesty of his demeanor. He rarely took credit. He praised others for their assistance. He did not spend his time talking about himself. These seem to have become lost traits in coarser times.
Joel McCrea, who died not long ago at 85, played heroes on the movie screen, but though his career spanned 40 years and an astonishing range of films he never received the adulation other stars of his generation won.
On screen and off, however, he played a genial, unpretentious hero, and perhaps it was his freedom from bluster that cost him the attention of critics and moviegoers. In private life he was married to actress Frances Dee, was the father of several sons, and he lived away from Hollywood glamour on a working California ranch. He did not try to behave as if his screen and private self were indistinguishable, though to a surprising degree they were.
His roles were astonishingly varied, from the robust athleticism of "The Lost Squadron" to the quizzical curiosity of "Sullivan's Travels." He worked with almost every distinguished director of his time, Cukor, Hawks, Wyler, Sturges, even Hitchcock, and gave each the rare gift of presence and dependability. In the latter part of his career he specialized, like many another, in Westerns, and turned in a wonderful final performance, with Randolph Scott, as the bespectacled, Bible-quoting retired gunfighter in Peckinpah's "Ride the High Country."
He was a man devoid of the boast and brag so common today, as Red Grange was, and, like Grange, he - as well as his kind - leaves an empty place.
by CNB