Category: Movies

Ruben “Hurricane” Carter “in a Land Where Justice Is a Game”

The arrest and conviction of former boxer Ruben “Hurricane” Carter inspired one of Bob Dylan’s great protest songs and an award-winning performance by Denzel Washington.

Hurricane Ruben “Hurricane” Carter, who had been suffering from prostate cancer,  passed away on April 20, 2014 at the age of 76. Carter, who was born on May 6, 1937 in New Jersey, was a former boxer who was accused of murder in 1966.

Carter spent 19 years in prison in New Jersey before a court reversed his conviction in 1985 and set him free.  His story inspired a great Bob Dylan song and a movie starring Denzel Washington.  While both the song and the movie took some liberties with Carter’s story, they both captured truths about the criminal justice system.

Bob Dylan’s “Hurricane”

Carter’s case became a rallying cry for the Civil Rights Movement.  Bob Dylan and Jacques Levy wrote a song about the wrongful conviction.  And then Dylan released “Hurricane” as a single in November 1975.

Dylan played what many fans consider his last great protest song during almost every performance of the 1975 Rolling Thunder tour. “Hurricane” went on to become a top 40 hit, despite its length and level of detail in telling a story.

Denzel Washington’s Hurricane

Ruben Carter’s life appeared in a major film too.  In 1999, Denzel Washington portrayed Carter in the movie Hurricane, which was directed by Norman Jewison.

Washington gave a wonderful performance as Carter, winning a Golden Globe and earning a nomination for the Best Actor Academy Award.  In this scene near the end of the film, Denzel Washington as Carter makes a final plea to the court.

The Real Story

The movie and the song took some dramatic license with the facts of Carter’s life. For example, many noted that Dylan’s song overstated Carter’s ranking in the boxing world (“He could-a been/ The champion of the world”).

Further, some critics argue that the song and movie made Carter too much of a saint and martyr.  Even Carter revealed a more complex story in his own autobiography written in prison, The Sixteenth Round: From Number 1 Contender to Number 45472, and later in a 2011 autobiography, Eye of the Hurricane: My Path from Darkness to Freedom.

Ultimately, the federal judge who reversed Carter’s conviction noted the unjust role of race in the case. And, like all folk songs, the message of Dylan’s song became important on its own.  Although the singer tells a story about one man, the song told the truth about wider problems in the criminal justice system.

After getting out of prison, Carter devoted his life to helping people in prison who were wrongfully convicted. From 1993 until 2005, he worked as Executive Director of the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted, and he founded a nonprofit organization, Innocence International. RIP.

Photo of Carter in 1958 via public domain.

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    Jackie Robinson Takes the Field

    Jackie Robinson On April 15, 1947 as a soft breeze blew across Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, Jackie Robinson took his position at first base to play his first official Major League Baseball game for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Robinson was 28 years old, having served in the U.S. Army and played in the Negro American League before Dodger general manager Branch Rickey recruited Robinson in 1945 to join the Dodger organization.

    On this date against the Boston Braves, Robinson broke the color barrier that had existed in baseball for more than fifty years.  The last such player before Robinson was catcher Fleetwood Walker who played for the American Association’s Toledo Blue Stockings in 1884.

    Robinson’s major league career that began that day would not be easy. But Robinson triumphed over the hate he encountered, both as a man and as a player, making him the greatest hero of any sport.

    Many were hostile to him, but many others admired Robinson at the time. The radio even played a song about him in 1949, “Did You See Jackie Robinson Hit that Ball?”

    Baseball eventually recognized his accomplishments too. On this date in 1997, Major League Baseball retired his number 42, making it the first number retired for all teams.

    Robinson’s Major League Debut

    To go back and relive that sunny day at Ebbets Field on this date in 1947, listen to this 2007 NPR interview with writer Jonathan Eig, who wrote a book about Robinson’s first year called Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson’s First Season. The interview discusses the historic game played this date in 1947.

    Movies About Robinson

    In 2013, a very good movie bearing the name of Robinson’s number 42 was released. But another earlier movie from 1950 told his story starring Jackie Robinson himself in The Jackie Robinson Story.

    Below is the entire film, although the sound quality is not great. The recreation of his Major League debut begins around the 54-minute mark. The movie condenses events to give Robinson a triple on a day the first baseman went hitless.  In the real game, he did score the go-ahead run after reaching on an error.

    Another Rookie Debuting On This Date

    Finally, here is a trivia question about that April 15, 1947 game. On that date, one other rookie besides Robinson took the field for the Dodgers that day, who was it?

    As explained in the video above, the other rookie was Spider Jorgensen.  Jorgenson was called up on such short notice that he did not have a glove. But his new teammate Jackie Robinson loaned Jorgensen one of his gloves.

    Using that glove, third-baseman Jorgensen fielded a ball hit by Boston’s Dick Culler, throwing it to Robinson at first base to make the first out of the game.  The Dodgers won by a score of 5–3.

    At the end of the 1947 season, the Dodgers won the National League Pennant.  And Robinson won the Rookie of the Year Award, which is now called the Jackie Robinson Award.

    1950 photo of Jackie Robinson and The Jackie Robinson Story via public domain. Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    Anniversary of “The Grapes of Wrath”

    Grapes Wrath 75 John Steinbeck‘s novel The Grapes of Wrath was published on April 14, 1939. The book, which recounts the struggles of the tenant farmers Joad family moving from Oklahoma to California, went on to win the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. It also helped Steinbeck win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962. Steinbeck’s book seeped into popular culture, aided by a great John Ford movie as well as songs.

    Less than a year after the novel’s publication, 20th Century Fox released John Ford’s vision of The Grapes of Wrath in January 1940. The film starred Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell, and John Carradine, and it contained some differences from the book, and in particular the ending.

    While the book was written as an indictment of the greed that led to the Great Depression, the conservative Ford maintained some elements of that vision while also giving the story a somewhat more optimistic ending. The Grapes of Wrath thus became one of those instances where a novel and its movie version both attained greatness even with some significant differences.

    The film would go on to inspire others. In particular, the speech by Tom Joad (Fonda) would inspire both Woody Guthrie and Bruce Springsteen to write songs. Check out our post about the story behind Guthrie’s “Tom Joad,” a song written at the request of a record company during an all-night session after Pete Seeger helped Guthrie find a typewriter.

    Bruce Springsteen used his stark “The Ghost of Tom Joad” as the title track of his somber 1995 album. In 2014, though, he released a new version of the song on High Hopes that features the raging angry guitar of Tom Morello, highlighting the defiance in Tom Joad’s speech. While Springsteen’s original acoustic version captures the sadness of the novel, his rock version of the song might be more comparable to John Ford’s vision. Check out this performance featuring Springsteen, Morello, and the E Street Band from Allphones Area in Sydney, Australia from March 2013.

    What is your favorite version of “The Grapes of Wrath”? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    What Do “Hoosiers,” “The Purple People Eater” and “Star Wars” Have in Common?

    Sheb WooleySheb Wooley, who is famous for writing and recording his 1958 chart-topping song “Purple People Eater” and for much more, was born April 10 in 1921.  His website captures the range of Wooley’s talents by saying he has been a “cowhand, rodeo rider, country and western singer, Hollywood actor, writer, and comedian.”

    Over many decades Wooley appeared in classic films like High Noon (1952) and The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976). And he was on TV’s Rawhide.

    Wooley in Hoosiers

    I was most surprised to discover that I already knew the singer of “Purple People Eater” as an actor for his role in Hoosiers (1986), a movie I have seen many times. In Hoosiers, Wooley played Cletus, the school’s principal who hires Norman Dale, played by Gene Hackman.

    Later in Hoosiers, Cletus (Wooley) helps Dale as an assistant coach before Cletus’s health prevents him from continuing.  Then, Dale recruits Shooter (Dennis Hopper) to take Cletus’s place.

    There was not a good scene with Wooley available on YouTube, but you can catch a little bit of him sitting on the bench in a suit with Gene Hackman (around the 30-second mark).

    “Purple People Eater”

    Below is Sheb Wooley in June 1958 singing about the “Purple People Eater,” who ate people but came to earth because “I wanna get a job in a rock ‘n roll band.” The song got its inspiration when Wooley heard a joke from a neighborhood kid.

    The song “Purple People Eater” later inspired a 1988 movie of the same name. Of course, the film also had a role for Wooley.

    Like most depictions of the song’s subject, the movie showed the monster as being purple.  But the song’s lyrics reveal that purple is the color of the people that the monster likes to eat, not the color of the creature: “I said Mr. Purple People Eater, what’s your line / He said it’s eatin’ purple people and it sure is fine.” Check out Wooley singing his hit song.

    Wooley also wrote the Hee Haw theme (“Hee-hee, hee-haw-haw . . “).  And he often appeared on the country music-comedy show too.

    For his acting roles in Westerns, check out this post on some of his classic movie lines.  Below is a short bio film about Wooley and his diverse talents.

    Wooley and “The Wilhelm Scream”

    Finally, Wooley’s voice possibly may be heard in many more classic films, including Star Wars. This connection and “The Wilhelm Scream” takes some explaining. . . .

    Wooley’s connection to more than a hundred other films goes back to the early 1950s. Wooley played Private Wilhelm in the 1953 western The Charge at Feather River. In a scene where Wilhelm is shot, he lets out a scream that has been used as stock scream footage in numerous films.

    The scream has become known as “The Wilhelm Scream,” although Wikipedia notes that the scream had actually appeared in an earlier movie, Distant Drums (1951). Wooley played an uncredited role (Private Jessup) in Distant Drums, and he is listed as a voice extra for that film.

    Thus, Wooley “is considered by many to be the most likely voice actor” for the scream, according to various sources, including Wooley’s website. The scream is so well-known that sometimes filmmakers add it because they think it is funny and many times it is inserted as an inside joke.

    Thus, through this scream, Wooley has indirectly appeared in numerous movies.  The films cross a broad spectrum, including Them! (1954), Star Wars (1977), Return of the Jedi (1983), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Batman Returns (1992), Reservoir Dogs (1992), and Toy Story (1995).  This video collage collects a number of uses of the Wilhelm Scream, beginning with Wooley’s famous scream in The Charge at Feather River and Distant Drums.

    This video provides more of a history of the Wilhelm Scream, including the discovery of a recording that in 2023 finally confirmed that the source of the scream was without a doubt, Sheb Wooley.

    Wooley passed away on September 16, 2003, but his humor, his movies, and his other work lives on. And his scream will probably continue to appear in more new movies to the delight of filmmakers and audience members alike.

    Photo of Wooley via public domain.

    What is your favorite part of Wooley’s diverse career? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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    What If “Pulp Fiction” Were a 1980s Video Game?

    Pulp Fiction Video Game
    If you have ever wondered what the movie Pulp Fiction (1994) might look like if it had been a video game in the 1980s, CineFix has answered your question. In the following video, CineFix shows the classic Quentin Tarantino film presented in 8-bit video game glory (with a touch of 16-bit). Check it out.

    The video is part of CineFix’s 8 Bit Cinema series.

    I like the old school option to change characters. What is your favorite part of the video? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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