1951’s The Harlem Globetrotters film is one of those pieces that happen to have a collision of two pop-culture icons before they really hit. This film, obviously, features the Globetrotters, who had existed since the mid 1920’s, but were a little over a decade from their height of popularity. It also features the beautiful triple-threat performer Dorothy Dandridge, three years before she emerged in the popular culture with her star making role as the title character in Carmen Jones. It brings to mind an episode of the one season Burt Reynolds’ starring cop show- Dan August I saw not long ago from 1971, which featured both Harrison Ford and Billie Dee Williams as guest stars. Before either one had become famous and a decade before appearing together in The Empire Strikes Back.
The Harlem Globetrotters movie tells the story of a college student (Billy Brown, in his only film credit) who drops out of school to become a member of the well-known all African-American basketball team. His ego starts to get out of control until he makes a mistake that costs the team a win and the respect of his teammates who ask him to resign. Only to return, humbled, to prove he actually belonged there. Now that’s a very short version of the plot. He does have a girlfriend who questions his giving up school for basketball but is there for him when he returns after being asked to leave the team played by Dorothy Dandridge. The actual 1951 line-up of the Globetrotters play themselves in the film too. When the team is actually playing or doing their pregame tricks it’s very entertaining, but when the story was unfolding I had less interest. One issue was the lead actor, Billy Brown. He just wasn’t very good. I can’t find much about him but I have a feeling he was a basketball player cast so that he wouldn’t look completely out of place in scenes where he is actually playing with the Globetrotters. Thomas Gomez (a well-known character actor of the time) often played heavies, but here he plays the coach, and real-life founder of the ‘Trotters- Abe Saperstein and he’s quite good. Dorothy Dandridge, who had quite a few credits by this point, but nothing that had garnered her any national attention, is trying her best, in the role of the supportive girlfriend, and it doesn’t get much deeper than that. Not that anyone is given a whole lot to do. There wasn’t a lot of thought put into the script and what there was is given to Brown’s character. As a look into what life was like for the Globetrotters’ in early 1950’s (though they don’t encounter any racial discrimination in the film) it’s interesting to watch. As a well-made piece of cinema, it doesn’t work so well.
In the early years of the Globetrotters, and portrayed in this film, they participated in the World Professional Basketball Tournament which they won several times before they became strictly an exhibition team and started traveling the world in 1952. I am not sure, but I feel like the 1970’s was the height of the Harlem Globetrotters popularity. Perhaps it’s because that is the era of my childhood, but they were all over TV at that time. They even had a Saturday morning cartoon show. I was lucky enough to see them live as a child too, which was very exciting, and I still remember it. Their popularity has seemed to wane over the years, or at least that’s my impression, though they still tour and fill venues. The team is no longer strictly made up of African American men, but now comprised of members of different races and sexes.
Dorothy Dandridge began her career as part of a singing/dancing “sister act” in the vaudeville “chitlin’ circuit”. In the mid-30’s she began appearing in small parts in films, including an African Princess in a Tarzan movie, and would continue doing so, along with a nightclub act, until finally getting the title role in the big studio film Carmen Jones in 1954. Becoming the first black woman to be nominated for the Best Actress Academy Award. During production she began a love affair with director Otto Preminger, which ended after she became pregnant and forced to have an abortion by the married director who refused to get a divorce. This was the beginning of her falling into a depression that would eventually lead to her death in1965 of a possible overdose of an antidepressant drug. Eerily similar to her Hollywood peer Marilyn Monroe three years earlier.
I watched The Harlem Globetrotters on Amazon Prime and is available to stream on several services. It does not currently seem to be available on physical home video media.
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