“During one seven-minute sequence in the film, Syracuse University’s racially mixed football team faces an angry white crowd at West Virginia, where fans shout slurs and throw garbage, and even the referees are corrupt.” From How “The Express” Fumbled the Ernie Davis Story, Syracuse.com, October 17, 2008
EDITOR’S NOTE: The author of this article is a West Virginia University alumnus and fan, born in Syracuse, NY, and an Orangemen football fan (team nickname back then) as a youth. Syracuse University is not implicated in the analysis presented in this article.
Before I get to the controversial segment of The Express, let’s put the film in a broader perspective. It is based on the life of Ernie Davis, a phenomenally talented running back who played at Syracuse University in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The film’s title comes from Davis’s nickname, “The Express,” attributed to him during his high school playing days in Elmira, NY.
Davis was not “just another running back.” An All-America, he became the first African American to win college football’s coveted Heisman Trophy. He was also the middle star in a string of accomplished running backs who played for Syracuse from 1953-66. That group included Jim Brown, Davis, and Floyd Little, all of whom wore jersey number “44.”
They–and others around the country–were among the first African Americans to participate in major college sports–an enterprise that was racially restricted for the longest time.
Southern African American players couldn’t play for their respective home-state schools back then, and “Up North” wasn’t always much better. Consider this. The great Jim Brown, an accomplished high school star, wasn’t offered a scholarship to play at Syracuse during his first year in 1953. The reason, plain and simple, was race. Nevertheless, local boosters from Brown’s Manhasset, Long Island, hometown paid his first-year tuition and room and board, and they also lobbied the coaching staff to give him a chance. The sole African American on SU’s football team at the time, Brown got that chance and made the most of it, too, named an All-America in football and lacrosse. After graduating, Brown went on to have an All-Pro career with the Cleveland Browns, gaining over 12,000 yards and being elected to the NFL Hall of Fame. He is widely considered one of the best pro football players ever.
Jim Brown helped recruit Ernie Davis and was truthful about circumstances he’d face playing college football. Davis was only one of three African Americans on the SU team–fellow running back Art Baker and lineman John Brown were the other two–and that made them easy targets.
Like Jim Brown before him, Davis excelled on the field. In his first year on the varsity (1959), he helped SU win a national championship by beating #2 Texas in the Cotton Bowl, even though Davis played the game with a hamstring injury. Davis opened the scoring that day via an 87-yard run-after-catch delivered by halfback/quarterback Ger Schwedes.
Davis continued performing, gaining over 3300 all-purpose yards during his SU career and rushing for an average of 6.6 yards per carry from 1959-61. The #1 overall NFL Draft choice in 1962, Washington quickly traded Davis to Cleveland, where the plan was to team Brown and Davis in the Browns’ backfield. Sadly, that tantalizing opportunity never happened. Davis was diagnosed with leukemia and passed away at 23 years of age, never having played a down of pro football. Still, the Browns retired his assigned jersey number #35, and the Elmira high school where Davis played (having merged with another local school) honored him by adopting “Express” as its athletic nickname.
The Express does a generally good job of chronicling Davis’s story, which is an inspiring story about him and a troubling story about racism in America. At issue is whether the executive producers went too far in making the point that playing back then was incredibly challenging for African Americans.
One segment in particular, constituting multiple scenes, has drawn widespread ire. In the film, the undefeated Orangemen travel to Morgantown, West Virginia, in October 1959 to play the West Virginia University Mountaineers in a night game at Mountaineer Field. As you will see in the following clips, Davis and his teammates face racial taunts in a raucous and threatening environment. Dennis Quaid plays Ben Schwartzwalder, WVU football alumnus and SU’s head coach. Rob Brown is cast as Ernie Davis.
Did those scenes accurately depict what happened that day? The answer is no. Here’s why.
–The teams did not play in Morgantown in 1959; the game was played in Syracuse at Archbold Stadium. Even if it had been played in Morgantown, it couldn’t have been played at night because field lights weren’t available at Mountaineer Field.
—No newspaper accounts of the game mention taunting or other racist acts, even though a crowd engaging in racist behavior and targeting players would have been headline-worthy.
–Eyewitness accounts from players who played the game contradict the film’s presentation. For example, Dick Easterly, a Syracuse quarterback on the 1959 team and a SU Athletic Hall of Fame member, told Syracuse.com, “The scene is completely fictitious.”
–The screenwriter who authored the screenplay told Times-West Virginia that the WVU-Syracuse game was not in the script he submitted to the film’s executive producers. However, he did say that he had included a similarly thematic segment associated with a 1958 game played at the University of North Carolina. But SU-UNC did not play that year, and the two teams did not compete in football until 1995. Moreover, the entire slate of UNC’s 1958 home games was played against all-white (segregated) Southern teams.
–There is mention of a mild confrontation in the book upon which the film is based, Robert C. Gallagher’s, The Express: The Ernie Davis Story. The incident Gallagher describes in the 1959 SU-WVU game involved an ankle twist inflicted by a Mountaineer player who (according to the author) apologized to Davis right after the play. Gallagher did not report other incidents.
–There is evidence of a notable and racially-connected incident involving the Syracuse team in 1959, but it did not involve Ernie Davis. In the Cotton Bowl game, Larry Stephens, a Texas lineman, directed a racial taunt at SU’s John Brown, and a fight ensued just before halftime.
—Following the film’s release in movie theatres, the film’s executive producers adjusted the film’s Blu-Ray edition, first made available to the public in 2009. The changes included two written disclaimers added at the film’s end. At the 2:09:34 mark of the 2:09:56 long film (that is, 23 seconds before the end), these words appear on the screen: “While this picture is based on a true story, some characters have been composited or invented, and several incidents fictionalized.” The screen then goes black, and after a pause, the final film’s words appear, starting 10 seconds before the close.
Screengrab from the film, The Express, available via Amazon Prime
Did The Express go too far? Fictionalized isn’t the right word. Fabricated is.
And the sad thing about including the segment in the film is that it shines a light on the wrong topic. Commentators should not have to spend time verifying whether the segment happened; instead, we should devote attention to what African Americans went through back in the day and continue to go through today. I’m reminded of that point daily, including when I wrote this piece. ESPN.com ran a story about tennis, Racist abuse of athletes has ‘only gotten worse,’
While the film’s intent is worthy, fabricating the scenes does something else. It threw WVU’s coaches/players, fans, and West Virginians under the bus, a maneuver that was unnecessary and also hurtful and duplicitous.
The larger question is this: How much interpretive freedom should Hollywood production companies have when they base films on non-fictional characters, organizations, and events? When asked about that issue with reference to The Express, headliner Dennis Quaid gave a twisted answer, “Sometimes, if you get all the facts right, you miss the truth.” Quaid made the observation in 2008 to Houston Chronicle reporter David Barron as part of Barron’s reporting, “The Express stretches the truth.” “In attempting to make points that summarize the nature of Davis’ life, character, accomplishments, and example,” Barron wrote, “director Gary Fleder and screenwriter Charles Leavitt succumbed to a common malady affecting sports films. They sometimes exaggerated in subtle ways and sometimes with hilarious overkill. And, on occasion, they flat-out lied.”
And it is happening today, not to WVU, but to Michigan State. Once again, a story that inspires without sacrificing commentary about the less attractive features of the time gets lost in an unnecessary and insulting sidebar. This time it’s about how the forthcoming film Black Spartans characterizes MSU’s African American players of the 1960s.
Editor’s Note: More on that story in Part 2, which is forthcoming. The author worked at Michigan State University from 1978-2012 and is a Spartan football fan.
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The Express (2008), Relativity Media and Davis Entertainment, Production Companies; Universal Pictures, Distributor; Derek Dauchy and Arne Schmidt, Executive Producers; John Davis and Adam Coplan, Co-Producers; and Charles Leavitt, Screenwriter (released October 18, 2008).
Other references used to write this article include
Ger Schwedes, Phoney ‘Express.‘ Syracuse Post-Standard (October 17, 2008)
WVU Today, WVU Officials: The scene in “The Express” did not happen; it’s an unfair and damaging stereotype. WVUToday Archive (October 10, 2008)
Bob Hertzel, WVU still wishes to set record straight after unflattering portrayal in ‘The Express’ | timeswv.com (December 10, 2018)
