Coming to HBO this Monday, August 26: GLICKMAN
James L Freedman’s tribute to legendary sportscaster Marty Glickman made its debut at Santa Barbara earlier this year. The doc went on to screen at Jewish festivals in San Francisco, Atlanta, San Diego, and Austin, and enjoyed a limited theatrical release earlier this month.
Freedman, who produced Glickman’s late-night sports program when the former was only a high school senior, crafts an affectionate celebration of the man noted by many interviewees as a pioneer in the field of sports announcing, on radio, in the nascent realm of network television, and, significantly, on cable at HBO’s birth. While utilizing a somewhat stilted narrator to bridge the gaps, Freedman also makes good use of archival audio and video of Glickman, allowing his late subject – who passed in 2001 at the age of 83 – ample room to tell his own story in his distinctive and down-to-earth style. Loosely organized into different chapters, headed by an evocative quote delivered either by Glickman or one of his admirers, the film is surprisingly comprehensive without being overwrought, relating the life of a Jewish-American New Yorker who was a talented athlete, making it to the 1936 Olympics before a successful college football career at Syracuse, and who later developed into a consummate sports announcer. The discrimination he experienced at the Berlin Olympics leaves a particularly singular impression – a fellow runner and Glickman, the only Jewish athletes on the US team, were pulled from their event to appease Nazi leadership fears that their win might undercut Nazi propaganda about Jewish inferiority. One is struck by the parallels to the current controversy around the upcoming Sochi games and Russia’s homophobic laws, making for an unintended but very topical connection. For a figure who here touchingly reflects on racial, religious, and gender equality and camaraderie in the arena of sports and sportscasting, that resonance seems especially fitting.
what (not) to doc 