MORE NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLES ABOUT MARTY GLICKMAN
50 YEARS LATER, BITTER MEMORIES OF THE BERLIN GAMES
By Arthur Pincus
Copyright New York Times Company Aug 10, 1986
WHILE others marched, Marty Glickman, Sam Stoller and 381 other American athletes sauntered into Berlin‘s Olympic Stadium on Aug. 1, 1936, in the parade of nations opening the Games of the XIth Olympiad. For Glickman, Stoller and all the athletes, the Olympics proved that the practice time and the games of youth were worthwhile, a chance to meet and maybe beat the world’s best.
Perched in his box, wearing his gray storm trooper’s uniform, Adolf Hitler looked on and the Games began. There were 120,000 people in the stands; overhead the Hindenburg sailed in an overcast summer sky. Richard Strauss led an orchestra and a chorus of 3,000 in a new Olympic hymn that Strauss had written for the occasion.
The Summer Games of 1936 were to be a testament to German recovery from the devastation of World War I, a chance for the Nazis to show their industrious face to the world.
The stadium was the centerpiece of a huge Olympic complex; the grass on the infield was clipped to perfection; the red clay track contrasted brilliantly with the arena’s gray concrete. Although the months preceding had brought talk of an American boycott to protest German persecution of Jews, the Americans were there that day.
Teams enter the Olympic stadium alphabetically; the host nation comes in last. So the German language put the United States(Vereinigten Staaten) just before the Germans. The Americans’ lack of military precision in their stride and their tradition of not dipping the Stars and Stripes to a foreign leader brought hoots and catcalls.
The track and field competition began the next day; when it ended a week later, Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller, the only Jews on the track team, were the only members of that team who hadn’t competed. On the day they were to begin trial heats in their event, the 400-meter relay, they were pulled from the competition. Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe replaced Glickman and Stoller, and the Americans won the relay in record time. But they would undoubtedly have won anyway had Glickman and Stoller been allowed to run; there were no super runners for other teams.
The pain of his chance denied still singes the memories of Marty Glickman, whose voice is so well-known to New York sports fans for his years broadcasting college basketball, the Knicks, the Giants and the Jets but whose athletic skill has faded in memory. He was back in Berlin last summer for the first time since 1936, serving as a consultant for the Jesse Owens invitation track meet this weekend.Despite having talked about the incident many times over the years, Glickman was unprepared for what happened that day he returned.
”My anger was overwhelming,” says Glickman, now 68 years old. ”When I walked out of the tunnel under the stands I began looking around, looking at this powerful place, looking at the box where Hitler sat. And then I started to shake, found myself wanting to shout out at the people who took away my chance and Sam Stoller’s chance to win an Olympic gold medal. I almost passed out with the rage.”
There were nine Americans in a bungalow in the Olympic Village in Berlin on Aug. 8, 1936 – two coaches, seven athletes. The coaches had made a decision and were letting their sprinters know that the American 400-meter relay team was being changed.
Glickman, born in Brooklyn to Rumanian immigrant parents, believes that their religion was the reason he and Stoller were denied their chance. The switch enabled Owens, a black American, to win his fourth gold medal.
”We thought we were going to go over the order and strategy for our race,” Glickman recalls. ”But Lawson Robertson, who was the head coach of the track team, said he had been hearing rumors that the Germans were hiding great runners to stop us in the relay.
”Well, Jesse had already won the 100 meters and the 200 meters; Ralph Metcalfe had finished second to Jesse in the 100 and Mack Robinson had finished second to Jesse in the 200. How could the Germans have any runners to beat us?”
Glickman, about to enter his sophomore year at Syracuse University, and Stoller, soon to be a senior at the University of Michigan, were stunned. They had finished fifth and sixth in the United States Olympic trials, and tradition said that the first three sprinters in the 100 at the trials would compete in the Games in the 100; the next four would make up the 400-meter relay team.
That was the assumption after the trials; that was the assumption as the team traveled to Europe on the luxury liner Manhattan; that was the assumption as they trained throughout those days of pomp and circumstance in Berlin. Stoller and Glickman had practiced in the relay with Foy Draper and Frank Wykoff, both products of the University of Southern California, where the coach was Dean Cromwell, who was serving as Robertson’s assistant.
In a practice 100-meter race to set the relay team, Stoller was first, Glickman second, Draper third. It seemed that if anyone needed to be replaced it was Foy Draper.
When Robertson announced his decision, Owens, who had already won the 100 and 200 meter dashes and the broad jump, stood up to speak.
Glickman recalls him saying: ” ‘Coach, I’ve won three gold medals. I’m tired. Let Marty and Sam run. They deserve it.’
”Cromwell pointed his finger at Jesse and said ‘You’ll do as you’re told.’ ”
That was the end of it. Owens and Metcalfe replaced Stoller and Glickman on the 400-meter relay team. They won by 15 yards with the Germans third. They set a world record despite having the two faster runners, Owens and Metcalfe, run the first two legs and the two slower runners, Draper and Wykoff, finish the race. Owens and Metcalfe were black; Draper and Wykoff were white.
Mack Robinson, the only other person at that meeting still alive, wonders, too, about the motives. ”They had the two fastest runners in the world, Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe,” he said in a phone conversation from California. ”But Wykoff ran across the finish line. What does that tell you?”
Two days before the meeting in the bungalow, Robertson had been asked who would make up the relay team. Would Jesse Owens get a chance to win his fourth gold medal and the little oak tree seedling given to each winner?
”Owens has had enough glory and collected enough gold medals and oak trees to last him a while,” Robertson had said.
Then Robertson named his relay team: Marty Glickman, Sam Stoller, Frank Wykoff and either Foy Draper or Ralph Metcalfe. So what happened? Were the American coaches forced to make a change to keep two Jewish runners from the victory stand in Berlin? Did the change also enable a white American to flash across the finish line and take a little of the sting away from the Nazi hosts? They had already seen Owens win the broad jump, the 100 and the 200. There were other black American gold medalists: Cornelius Johnson, Archie Williams and John Woodruff.
For what purpose were Marty Glickman, an 18-year-old from Brooklyn, and Sam Stoller, on his 21st birthday, denied the chance they believed they had fairly won?
Stoller seemed more serious than Glickman. Photographs of the two together from 1936 show the difference. Glickman was a wavy-haired 18-year-old who had experienced almost nothing in his life to stifle the ever-present wide-mouthed grin. Stoller’s look is determined, almost grim.
”This is one day in my life that I’ll remember to my dying days,” Stoller wrote in a diary that he shared with William O. Johnson in Johnson’s 1972 book, ”All That Glitters Is Not Gold.” Stoller, who died in May 1985, called the incident ”the most humiliating episode in my life.”
The Olympic Games would never be the same after Berlin. They became an opportunity for nations to prove something to the world, even if that proof came in so simple a form as who won a foot race.
There had been questions whether the United States would even take part. The Germans had adopted the Nuremburg laws in September 1935, limiting Jewish citizenship rights, and in the States there was a call to boycott. The dispute centered on whether the Germans had accepted all the Olympic codes for their grand show, including a guarantee that all athletes could compete for a spot on their teams.
Avery Brundage, president of the American Olympic Association, praised the German methods and accepted their propaganda. He said he was given assurances that ”there will be no discrimination against Jews.”
But there was. The best women’s high jumper in Germany those years was a 21-year-old named Gretel Bergman. On June 30, 1936, she tied the German high jump record at 5 feet 3 inches; that height would have earned her a silver medal in the Olympics. But she was Jewish and she didn’t compete.
Brundage cast pro-boycotters as radicals with ”Communistic antecedents.”
When the American Olympic Association met in New York in December 1935, Brundage carried the day, albeit by the slim margin of 58 1/4 votes to 55 3/4.
Dean Cromwell, the assistant coach who Glickman believes was the instigator in the change, came in for criticism just weeks after the Games when in a speech he made a complimentary reference to Hitler that was taken seriously by many. But, according to Cromwell: ”It was all said with a laugh and received in the same mood. If I referred to Hitler as that ‘handsome boy,’ it was poetic license and jovially received by my listeners as such.”
Was it Brundage who forced the hand of the American coaches? Or did Cromwell act on his own? In effect he was running the American track team as the assistant to Robertson, an older man in ill health.
The day after the relay team won the gold medal, Glickman was walking across the immaculate lawn of the village, which was to become housing for Wehrmacht troops. He heard someone call.
”I turned and saw Lawson Robertson lumbering towards me,” Glickman says. ”He walked with a cane and moved very slowly. He came up to me and said, ‘I just wanted to apologize to you. We have caused a terrible injustice. I’m sorry.’ ”
Stoller’s diary recalled a conversation he had with Robertson on board the Roosevelt on the trip home: ”Coach Robertson came up to me today on board ship and very apologetically admitted that he had made a terrible mistake not letting me run -in place of Metcalfe!”
But Robertson had given neither man a reason for the shift.
Glickman watched the 400-meter relay heats and final from the stands and from the press box. There he told the American press his story, saying politics and favoritism for the two Southern California sprinters was the overriding reason for his removal.
”I told the coaches there would be a big stink over Sam and me being pulled since we were the only Jews on the track team,” Glickman says.
”Cromwell said: ‘We’ll worry about that.’ ”
But there was virtually no furor. The reporters were more interested in covering the event than the people involved. The only non-competition story that got much mention in the American press during the games was Eleanor Holm’s removal from the swimming team by Brundage. She had been seen sipping champagne on the voyage to Germany.
Sam Stoller left Berlin saying he would never run again. But in fact he did, competing for Michigan and winning the college sprint championship. He had a fling at the movies, known as Singing Sam Stoller, and became a broadcast executive.
Owens became an American hero. During a ticker tape parade in New York, someone ran up to him and pressed an envelope into his hand. Hours later he opened it and found $10,000. He brought his seedlings home to Ohio.
Glickman figured: ”I’ll show these guys in 1940.” But by 1940, World War II had begun and the Games, scheduled for Tokyo, were canceled. In the fall of 1936 he returned to Syracuse where he became a football star. One day a local haberdasher asked him to do a radio program sponsored by his clothing store, hoping to cash in on the football player’s notoriety, and Glickman became a broadcaster. Over the years he became the most familiar voice to New York sports fans. He maintains the tightly wound athleticism of his youth by skiing and sailing. His home is filled with mementos of his success as an athlete and broadcaster; there is no Olympic medal. He remains a consultant to HBO as well as NBC Sports.
”I still firmly believe the Olympics is one of the most important methods of bringing together the youth of the world to know each other, to love each other and understand each other,” Glickman says. ”I did that. But Sam and I became the unfortunate object of bigotry.”
TV SPORTS; A TUTOR REFINING ATHLETE-BROADCASTERS
By Lawrie Mifflin
Copyright New York Times Company Sep 18, 1984
For years, Howard Cosell has been complaining about a ”jockocracy” in television. That’s his word for the situation in which, as he sees it, former athletes are hired as network sports announcers not on merit but simply because they are ex-athletes, and then are fawned over by some network executives, regardless of how good or bad their performances are.
”Being an athlete never has, in and of itself, qualified you as a broadcaster,” said Merlin Olsen, the former Los Angeles Ram defensive lineman who is now considered one of the best football analysts. ”But it doesn’t automatically eliminate you, either, which is where Howard and I part company.”
Yet Olsen recognized early that criticism such as Cosell’s would persist unless former athletes could improve their broadcasting skills. He didn’t want executives to fawn over him; he wanted them to criticize him.
”When I went to NBC in 1977, I asked if there was a training program, and they looked at me as if I had asked a question in a foreign language,” said Olsen. ”When they said no, I asked if there at least was someone to work with new commentators to help them learn the business, and again it was as if I spoke a foreign tongue. The whole year nobody picked up a pen or even a telephone to tell me what I was doing right or wrong.”
Most athletes are hired on a sink- or-swim basis, and quite a few – Johnny Unitas and Jim Brown come to mind – have foundered. For all the money that the networks spend on their National Football League programming, it should seem foolish to allow untrained commentators to mar the broadcast with mistakes that make them – and the network – look bad.
Thanks to Olsen’s prodding, Mike Weisman, the executive producer of NBC Sports, agreed, and began searching for a tutor for his football announcers. He found Marty Glickman.
”Marty Glickman is the perfect choice,” said Olsen. ”He has the respect of his peers, he’s experienced, he’s professional, and the kinds of things he tells us are things I want to hear.”
Glickman, now 67 years old and himself a famous former athlete, spent 23 years as the radio voice of the Giants; 6 with the Jets and 21 with the Knicks. He announced track meets for 38 years and was a harness-race caller for 12. His experience doing college and high school games is substantial.
Now he is retired from the booth, except for doing radio play-by-play on University of Connecticut football and basketball games – ”solely because I enjoy it,” he says. This is his second season of picking up pen and telephone to help Olsen and NBC’s other football announcers.
”The jock,” said Glickman, ”has two assets over the journalism student: his recognizability and his knowledge of the game. Why hire the stranger out of journalism school who never played the game over the jock who can be taught to broadcast?”
But until NBC hired Glickman, nobody was teaching the athlete how to broadcast.
”I don’t know why that is,” said Bob Griese, the former Miami Dolphin quarterback, now in his third season working for NBC. ”Athletes are used to constructive criticism. After games, you watch films, and the coaches tell you what you did wrong and how to do it differently next time. You grow up with that – at least I did, and I felt I needed it in my broadcasting career.”
Three days a week, Glickman sits in front of a television set in NBC’s offices watching cassettes of the previous weekend’s games and scribbling notes on a legal pad. Then he telephones each announcer to give him a critique.
Last week he watched two first- year announcers: Bob Wilkerson, a play-by-play man who is not a former pro athlete, and Harvey Martin, the former Dallas Cowboy defensive end, who was doing the analysis.
”I’ve got to remind Bob again about time and score,” Glickman said. ”He says, ‘Fifty-two seconds left’ – but where? What quarter? Time remaining means nothing without score.”
Glickman went on to point out that many announcers had problems with grammar and pronunciation. ”I’ve got to tell them,” he emphasized. ”It’s basic: A prerequisite of a good broadcaster is the ability to speak proper English.”
Glickman’s criticisms range from the substantial to the seemingly picayune. He reminds analysts to talk ”on the picture,” keeping their remarks related to what the viewer is seeing. He tells them not to use ”footballese” without explaining what the terms mean. He urges them not merely to describe a replay – the viewer can see it – but to add to it, with an explanation or a personal anecdote.
”Bob Griese was doing a game last year where the rookie John Elway was quarterbacking and was really struggling,” said Glickman. ”Griese said, ‘I remember my rookie year, I got so discombobulated in a game against the Chicago Bears, I walked to the line of scrimmage, ducked in under my center – only it wasn’t the center, it was my guard, and he jumped about 10 feet in the air.’ ”
”Now that was wonderful,” Glickman said. ”I told Bob, ‘Only you can tell that story and make it worthwhile.’ Here was one of the game’s great quarterbacks telling of his troubles as a rookie. It was humorous and poignant. It gave the fans something they couldn’t get anywhere else.”
Glickman said his ”nit-picking” criticisms were just as important.
”By minimizing little mistakes, you improve the overall quality of the broadcast,” he said. ”I want them to talk into the camera, make eye contact with the viewer. I hate cliches. And I’m no grammarian, but I hate to hear basic errors, such as ‘between he and I,’ or ‘tell it like it is.’ ”
Because of his pro credentials and because he isn’t dependent upon this job, as his bosses and his students know, Glickman can be honest.
”Most jocks who come into a broadcast job get patted on the back and glad-handed by friends, relatives, even people in this industry,” he said. ”I tell them I’m going to tell it as it is.”
SCOUTING; Take the A Train
By Michael Katz
Copyright New York Times Company Jan 8, 1983
Marty Glickman, the veteran radio announcer who for many years was the voice of the Knicks, should have known about the other ”city game.” Glickman, who now broadcasts University of Connecticut games, was reminded when he tried to get from midtown Manhattan to the Bronx campus of Manhattan College, where UConn was playing Thursday night.
”Take me to Manhattan College, please,” Glickman told taxi driver No. 1. ”It’s at 239th Street and Riverdale Avenue in the Bronx.” ”I don’t go to the Bronx,” replied the driver. ”Would you mind if you take another cab?” Glickman was willing, but in the second cab, as soon as he gave the address, the driver said, ”Listen, did you hear that?” Glickman did not hear anything. ”That ping in the fender,” driver No. 2 insisted. ”I’d better go straight into the garage. Why don’t you try another cab.”
Driver No. 3 was more direct when he heard where Glickman wanted to go. ”Why don’t you take the subway?” he suggested. It took a fourth cab to get Glickman to the Bronx.
SCOUTING; Running Strong At 71 Years Old
By William N. Wallace
Copyright New York Times Company Oct 21, 1982
At a news conference yesterday for Sunday’s New York City Marathon, Leo Rybak met Marty Glickman for the third time. The first time was at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin when both were sprinters, Glickman on the United States team and Rybak representing his native country, Poland.
”We had dinner,” said Rybak.
The second time was in 1956 at Ste. Agathe in Quebec‘s Laurentian Mountains where both were skiing. ”I didn’t recognize him,” said Glickman. ”But he recognized me.”
It was easy for both the third time as Glickman, the sportscaster, came around to say hello to Rybak who has a dual capacity with the marathon. Because he speaks nine languages, Rybak, who is 71 years old, is helping out as an interpreter for the foreign runners. But he is also one of the 16,000 entrants, and he says he will not be satisfied unless he finishes the course in three and one-half hours or less.
”I’m in great shape,” Rybak told Glickman. ”I run 15 to 20 miles every morning. How about you?” Glickman, who has taken to cruising aboard his 36-foot yawl in recent years, replied, ”All my life I’ve objected to running any distance more than 200 meters.”
Rybak, who has lived in the United States since 1961, is retired from a career in real estate and building and makes his home in Riverdale. He runs in two or three marathons each year. Glickman will not be around to see how Rybak fares in the race. After broadcasting the Connecticut-Maine football game at Storrs, Conn., he will head south. ”On Sunday, I’ll be on my boat on the Wocanaw River in South Carolina,” said Glickman. ”I wished him well.”
Good, Like Glickman
By George Vecsey
Copyright New York Times Company Feb 22, 1982
GOOD, like Nedick’s. Good, like Nedick’s. Good, like Nedick’s. For several generations of young New Yorkers, the last sound before falling asleep was the brisk voice of Marty Glickman. It was hardly a case of Glickman’s voice having any narcotic qualities; it was rather that we were exhausted from a day of playing stickball with a Spaldeen and running to the luncheonette for an egg cream.
At night we would beg to stay up to hear the first half of the Knicks’ game from way out West in Minneapolis or Fort Wayne, and as we began to fall off the edge of the world, we could hear Marty Glickman saying:
”Into the corner, back along the right sideline, across to Boryla, set shot – good, like Nedick’s.” Only people in Connecticut have that pleasure these days. Marty Glickman, age 64 and looking 44, has been broadcasting University of Connecticut football and basketball games along a six-station network in that state.
This Friday night the whole country gets a treat as Glickman broadcasts the USA/Mobil indoor track and field championship over the Public Broadcasting System.
Glickman is a legend even to people who don’t remember that he was an Olympic sprinter in 1936, a college football star at Syracuse and one of Brooklyn‘s greatest schoolboy athletes.
At Syracuse, a haberdasher tried to cash in on Glickman by giving him a brief sports show. From that came the Knicks for 21 years, college basketball for 10, football Giants for 23, Jets for six, track and field for 38, trotting for 12 years, 13 years of ”Today’s Baseball” and 22 years of ”Warmup Time” and ”Sports Extra” around Dodger and Yankee games.
”I never got tired of working,” he says. ”If you love something, you can do anything. We would start arguing on ‘Sports Extra,’ and Bert Lee Jr., the station manager at WMGM, would extend the show, half an hour, 45 minutes. We didn’t care.”
Generations of New Yorkers figured out at an early age that they would never steal home like Robinson or shoot like Braun – but maybe they could talk like Glickman.
”Marty set the standards for a lot of us,” says Marv Albert, who broadcast his first Knick game when his mentor was delayed in Paris. ”To this day, I think Marty missed that plane on purpose, to get me on the air,” Albert adds. ”I learned so much from Marty. He defined the geography of the basketball court for us. Radio is still the most fun for me because of that. You can describe. You are everything.”
Glickman was the definitive New York sports announcer for all seasons, yet he honors the other great ones in those days: ”Mel Allen was the best play-by-play announcer,” Glickman says. ”He could call a baseball play like nobody else. Red Barber was the best at giving you the feeling of the game. And Russ Hodges, with the Giants, was nearly as good as either of them; he just didn’t have the voice they did.”
Long after that trio was gone, and Vin Scully was stolen by Los Angeles, Marty Glickman spoke to New York. In 1978 the Jets switched from WOR to WCBS, which decided to use its own announcer, Spencer Ross, another Glickman protege.
It was that simple. Some announcers get shunted aside because they’re not pretty enough in the hot-comb era; others get replaced because they can’t memorize new numbers and new names; others are pushed out because they start slurring and stumbling and talking about the old days. There is no such blemish on Marty Glickman’s reputation.
Glickman had often talked about breaking away. He seemed to understand what the late 60’s were about. When a friend left New York to work in the hills of Appalachia, Glickman was one of the few people in sports who seemed envious. After 1978, Marjorie and Marty Glickman, having raised four children, decided to live much of the year on their 35-foot yawl.
”In all those years of motels and airports, I never realized how beautiful this country is,” Glickman says. ”North Carolina. You can sail for days up and down the rivers and marshes and never see a soul. I love to see the birds, to hear the water and the wind in my sails.”
A year ago he tied up at a marina in Georgia but couldn’t get any service because all the good old boys were listeing to a Georgia football game on the radio. He’d ask for gas and people would say: ”How ’bout them Dogs?”
The excitement in that marina made Glickman remember the days when he brought vital events to millions of New Yorkers. A few months later, Barry Berman from the Connecticut Sports Network called up and said he had long been an admirer of Glickman’s work and maybe this was a long shot, but ….
”I missed it badly,” Glickman admits. ”I went to camp with the football team, just trying to get the terminology back. Nose guard. My first game was shaky. You know, athletes lose hand-to-eye coordination and with announcers it’s eye-to-mouth.
”There is no doubt in my mind that I am slightly slower than when I was younger. I used to be able to see it and say it simultaneously. Basketball is even harder than football because of the rapidity.
”But I worked at it, and I am older, I’ve got all this experience, so I think I’m better than ever. I’m different, too. In the old days, I would never give my opinion. Never. Who cared what Glickman thought?
”But recently the other team played slow-down basketball and I said it was my opinion that coaches should consider the fans, too. At a football game in Rhode Island, I gave a play-by-play of a guy in a wetsuit trying to sail a sunfish in a 20-knot wind on a pond behind the field. I never would have done that in the old days.”
The other night, Glickman was excited as he drove to South Orange, N.J., remembering athletes and priests and fans from Seton Hall games 30 years ago. At the game, Byron Day, a promising young NBC announcer whom Glickman occasionally tutors, put on an extra headset to learn a few things. A New Yorker, slightly afraid of being let down, put on another headset.
Marty Glickman is as good as ever. His voice still has the toughness of sidewalks, the speed of Spaldeens and the richness of egg creams. In the closing minute of a tie game, he warned Connecticut drivers to ”pull off the road so you don’t hit a tree.”
As Seton Hall’s Dan Calandrillo made two foul shots with 12 seconds remaining for an upset victory, Glickman captured every bounce and also portrayed the delirium in the gym, even though he was broadcasting for the losing side. On the drive back to New York, Glickman was still keyed up, the way a great athlete should be. He will undoubtedly be keyed up for his national track assignment this Friday. And once during the two hours, he will undoubtedly find a performance that will be – yessss – good, like Nedick’s.
WHY JESSE OWENS WON 4 GOLD MEDALS
By Bud Greenspan
Copyright New York Times Company Aug 9, 1981
FIVE years ago today, Jesse Owens won his fourth gold medal at the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games when he led off the victorious 400-meter relay team that included Ralph Metcalfe, Foy Draper and Frank Wykoff. It was a race Jesse Owens was not supposed to run.
Forty-five years ago today, Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller, both Jewish, lost their chance to win an Olympic gold medal when they were told in a meeting before the qualifying heat of the 400-meter relay that they could not run. The meeting was called by the United States Olympic track coach, Lawson Robertson, and his assistant, Dean Cromwell, who was also head track coach at the University of Southern California. All six sprinters involved attended the meeting.
Much has been said about what transpired during that prerace meeting. The most dramatic story was that the president of the United States Olympic Committee, Avery Brundage, along with Robertson and Cromwell, had bowed to pressure from Nazi officials to remove the Jewish runners so as not to embarrass Adolph Hitler’s regime.
For many years, stories circulated that the Nazi minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, had appealed to the American officials not to enter a relay team that consisted of two black and two Jewish runners. The fact that Brundage later became associated with the America First Committee, a group that many believed was sympathetic to Hitler and the Nazi regime, only added strength to the reports.
Glickman vividly remembers the Berlin meeting. Over the last decade while filming ”The Olympiad” television series, I also interviewed Owens, Metcalfe and Wykoff for their recollections of the circumstances.
”We were told,” says Glickman, ”that the first three finishers in the 100-meter final tryout at Randalls Island in July 1936 would run the 100 meters in Berlin. We were also told that the runners who finished fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh in the 100-meter final tryout would make up the 400-meter relay team in Berlin.”
Owens, Metcalfe and Wykoff confirmed that this was their understanding, too. ”Owens, Metcalfe and Wykoff finished 1, 2, 3 in the final Olympic tryout,” recalls Glickman. ”Foy Draper was fourth, I was fifth, Sam Stoller sixth and Mack Robinson, Jackie’s brother, was seventh.”
Glickman maintains that only he, Stoller and Draper were certain to run on the relay team because they were not competing in the individual events.
Owens should have been the last of the seven considered. He would have to run four races in the 100 meters, four in the 200 meters, and do extensive jumping to qualify in the long jump. In order to reach their finals, Metcalfe and Wykoff would each run four races in the 100 and Mack Robinson would have to run four in the 200. Owens, Metcalfe, Wykoff and Robinson made it to the finals in their events.
Metcalfe died in 1978. In his interview with me, he said: ”Marty Glickman is right: You’ll recall that in the 1932 Olympics, when Eddie Tolan, George Simpson and I each qualified for both the 100 meters and 200 meters, the coaches reasoned that it would be better to have four fresh sprinters run the relay who would have the benefit of practicing their baton passes while we were running the individual races. Neither Tolan, Simpson or I were even mentioned about running in the relay in 1932.”
Glickman, Stoller and Draper appeared certain to run the relay. It was assumed that Wykoff would be the fourth runner even though he was competing in the 100 meters. Wykoff was on the previous United States Olympic 400-meter relay teams that won gold medals in Amsterdam in 1928 and in Los Angeles in 1932.
This belief was confirmed by an Associated Press dispatch in The New York Times on Aug. 5, three days before the qualifying heats of the 400-meter relay.
On Saturday morning, Aug. 8, a few hours before the qualifying trials of the 400-meter relay, the pre-race meeting was held. ”Lawson Robertson announced that because of the rumors that the Germans were hiding their best sprinters in preparation for the relay, Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe would replace Sam Stoller and me on the relay team,” recalls Glickman. ”We were shocked. I remember saying, ‘This is ridiculous, how is it possible to hide world-class sprinters?’ ”
Before he died last year, Owens told me that he felt terrible for his friends Glickman and Stoller. Glickman confirms Owens’s recollections of the meeting.
”Jesse was magnificent,” says Glickman. ”He said, ‘I’ve had enough. I won three gold medals. Let Sammy and Marty run.’ ” Glickman remembers that Robertson and particularly Cromwell were adamant. ”Cromwell would not accept Jesse’s offer,” says Glickman. Glickman and Metcalfe have different versions of Metcalfe’s participation in the meeting.
”Metcalfe was fairly quiet,” says Glickman. ”He had two silver medals in the 100 meters in both Los Angeles and Berlin. Apparently he was hoping for a shot at a gold medal.”
However, Metcalfe reacted angrily when recalling his reaction to the 1936 meeting. ”I thought at the time it was terrible,” he said. ”It was unjust to leave two athletes off the team just because they were Jewish.”
Wykoff, who died in 1980, said: ”We hadn’t worked with Jesse or Ralph at all. I think that if Glickman and Stoller had run, we would have had just as fast a time, if not faster.”
”The decision to keep the only two Jewish athletes on the United States team out of the competition was made by American Nazis,” Glickman says, ”Both Avery Brundage and Dean Cromwell were members and supporters of the America First Committee who were sympathetic to the Nazis.”
I spent five years researching the 1936 Games for my film, ”Jesse Owens Returns to Berlin.” The United States came close to boycotting the Berlin Games because of Hitler’s Nuremberg laws, which deprived German Jews of their citizenship and protection under the laws of the Third Reich. The anti-Olympic feeling forced Brundage to make a pre-Olympic visit to Germany. His conclusions decided the matter. He reported that Germany had fulfilled all the obligations required under the Olympic charter. So sensitive were the Nazis to the protests from the United States that they bent over backwards to quiet stories of Jewish persecution in the months preceding and during the Games. Several Jewish athletes competed for Germany in the 1936 Olympics.
The real culprits in the Glickman-Stoller affair appear to be Robertson and Cromwell, in deciding to eliminate the two qualified Jewish runners, and then, in giving the shameful explanation that their decision was made to protect an American victory against a mythical superteam of German sprinters.
Glickman, who was an 18-year-old freshman at Syracuse University in 1936, later gained national fame as a sportscaster. He’ll never forget Aug. 9, 1936.
”I remember watching the 400-meter Berlin final,” Glickman says, ”and I still have a feeling of frustration and sadness that I was not out there, was not running. Something I had pointed to all my young life. When they mounted the victory stand and they played the National Anthem, I thought, I ought to be out there, I should be out there … and I wasn’t …”
Bud Greenspan won an Emmy Award for ”The Olympiad” television series. His production, ”The Heisman Trophy,” will be shown in December.
