I think most people here as been fair in their reviews, myself included. I have more reason than anyone to doog out about the film, but having known the story well even before the book was written, I was bound to come away thinking it was "fine, but nothing special".
I could look up at the Big W Club Board in the Old Connie Shellhouse in the 90's and clearly see that Joe Rantz was a Varsity letter winner in 1935 and didn't just show up in 1936 to try out for crew.
But to @pawz 's point, any FREE PUB, is good FREE PUB and the average movie goer doesn't care about the minor details.
3 part series challenging some of the narratives around the story of our 1936 team.
Part 1: Only Joe Rantz really qualified as a pour and they weren't a bunch of hillbillies. After all in the depression if you could get to college you were way ahead of the average American.
Part 2: We're Washington Dammit and winning was not surprising; the Eastern schools were maybe more elite but our team was still very well known and had already natty'd many times. Most of their coaches came from us anyway.
(Making the score closer than it should be due to the flu is a UW tradition)
Yeah, we've kinda summarized the issues we have with the movie. This does take some issues with the way the book frames their story, especially with Brown (and others) latching on to the "they were pours from farms who overcame great odds to beat the rich and Nazis" narrative.
Counter to this series is the fact we had to beg the people of Seattle to donate just to get to go, which was not an issue for the rich eastern schools.
Kind of skimmed. I kind of laughed a bit when he mentioned 'Well Off' and Montesano in the same sentence. I'm certain the jeweler selling to loggers, farmers and fisherman of Montesano were constantly operating in the black. I kind of feel like the author doesn't truly understand what the PNW, or hell, America, but especially the PNW looked like 100 years ago. Yes, UW was good and respected, and that was definitely lost in the movie.
He provides good commentary on how the @YellowSnow row boat journey is no longer possible…
The notion that rowing was dominated by the wealthy upper class in 1936 is just nonsense. Given the cost of the sport, the upper class may have had the most participants in the sport. But they were by no means always the most successful. When UW coach Al Ulbrickson spotted Joe Rantz working out in a high school gym in 1932, he didn’t ask him what his father did for a living. He saw a big strong kid he could mold into a rower and told him to come down to the boathouse when he got to UW. And UW had a lot of Joe Rantz types to build their rowing team. Brown tells us that 185 freshmen boys showed up to try out for crew Joe’s first year at UW. In 1935, it was 210.
Here’s your choice. You can try to build a rowing team with an incoming freshman squad of:
a) 200 country boys, many of them with years of farm or other manual work under their belts,
b) 40 prep school boys who rowed a few months each spring on their school crew teams.
A crew coach in 1936 would take option a) every time. After one intense year of rowing on the freshman team, any advantages the prep school rowers would have from their limited prior experience would be erased.
Of course, things are very different today. At the top college programs, rowers now arrive on campus fully formed with years of experience rowing year-round and they go straight to the varsity. And most of them arrive from overseas, having rowed for years in international regattas. (The Washington men’s varsity eight that took second place at the 2023 IRAs had just one American among the nine boys in its boat, sitting in the bow seat.) There are no longer many varsity slots for U.S. prep school rowers in the top men’s rowing programs. And essentially no slots at all for athletes with no rowing experience.
But in 1936, start with the nation’s premier college rowing program and feed it 200 big, motivated guys each year, you’ve got a formula for success. It didn’t matter in the slightest what their parents did for a living. And make no mistake, the University of Washington had what was widely recognized as perhaps the nation’s premier college rowing program in 1936. That is the subject of Part 2 of this article, which will be published tomorrow.
Agree. The movie takes way too many historical liberties for my taste.
I don't think Daniel James Brown does in the book, however. Joe Rantz is the main protagonist and was dirt ass poor. UW has won 3 natties in the 1920's but CAL was dominating of late and there was intense competition for Ulbrickson to get back to #1. And we did beat Hitler.
Comments
I think most people here as been fair in their reviews, myself included. I have more reason than anyone to doog out about the film, but having known the story well even before the book was written, I was bound to come away thinking it was "fine, but nothing special".
I could look up at the Big W Club Board in the Old Connie Shellhouse in the 90's and clearly see that Joe Rantz was a Varsity letter winner in 1935 and didn't just show up in 1936 to try out for crew.
But to @pawz 's point, any FREE PUB, is good FREE PUB and the average movie goer doesn't care about the minor details.
3 part series challenging some of the narratives around the story of our 1936 team.
Part 1: Only Joe Rantz really qualified as a pour and they weren't a bunch of hillbillies. After all in the depression if you could get to college you were way ahead of the average American.
https://heartheboatsing.com/2024/02/22/the-boys-in-the-boat-the-myth-of-the-underdog-part-i/
Part 2: We're Washington Dammit and winning was not surprising; the Eastern schools were maybe more elite but our team was still very well known and had already natty'd many times. Most of their coaches came from us anyway.
https://heartheboatsing.com/2024/02/23/the-boys-in-the-boat-the-myth-of-the-underdog-part-ii/
Part 3: The German 8 actually sucked and we were expected to win the Gold, though the Swiss kinda fucked themselves.
https://heartheboatsing.com/2024/02/24/the-boys-in-the-boat-the-myth-of-the-underdog-part-iii/
(Making the score closer than it should be due to the flu is a UW tradition)
Yeah, we've kinda summarized the issues we have with the movie. This does take some issues with the way the book frames their story, especially with Brown (and others) latching on to the "they were pours from farms who overcame great odds to beat the rich and Nazis" narrative.
Counter to this series is the fact we had to beg the people of Seattle to donate just to get to go, which was not an issue for the rich eastern schools.
Kind of skimmed. I kind of laughed a bit when he mentioned 'Well Off' and Montesano in the same sentence. I'm certain the jeweler selling to loggers, farmers and fisherman of Montesano were constantly operating in the black. I kind of feel like the author doesn't truly understand what the PNW, or hell, America, but especially the PNW looked like 100 years ago. Yes, UW was good and respected, and that was definitely lost in the movie.
He provides good commentary on how the @YellowSnow row boat journey is no longer possible…
The notion that rowing was dominated by the wealthy upper class in 1936 is just nonsense. Given the cost of the sport, the upper class may have had the most participants in the sport. But they were by no means always the most successful. When UW coach Al Ulbrickson spotted Joe Rantz working out in a high school gym in 1932, he didn’t ask him what his father did for a living. He saw a big strong kid he could mold into a rower and told him to come down to the boathouse when he got to UW. And UW had a lot of Joe Rantz types to build their rowing team. Brown tells us that 185 freshmen boys showed up to try out for crew Joe’s first year at UW. In 1935, it was 210.
Here’s your choice. You can try to build a rowing team with an incoming freshman squad of:
a) 200 country boys, many of them with years of farm or other manual work under their belts,
b) 40 prep school boys who rowed a few months each spring on their school crew teams.
A crew coach in 1936 would take option a) every time. After one intense year of rowing on the freshman team, any advantages the prep school rowers would have from their limited prior experience would be erased.
Of course, things are very different today. At the top college programs, rowers now arrive on campus fully formed with years of experience rowing year-round and they go straight to the varsity. And most of them arrive from overseas, having rowed for years in international regattas. (The Washington men’s varsity eight that took second place at the 2023 IRAs had just one American among the nine boys in its boat, sitting in the bow seat.) There are no longer many varsity slots for U.S. prep school rowers in the top men’s rowing programs. And essentially no slots at all for athletes with no rowing experience.
But in 1936, start with the nation’s premier college rowing program and feed it 200 big, motivated guys each year, you’ve got a formula for success. It didn’t matter in the slightest what their parents did for a living. And make no mistake, the University of Washington had what was widely recognized as perhaps the nation’s premier college rowing program in 1936. That is the subject of Part 2 of this article, which will be published tomorrow.
Agree. The movie takes way too many historical liberties for my taste.
I don't think Daniel James Brown does in the book, however. Joe Rantz is the main protagonist and was dirt ass poor. UW has won 3 natties in the 1920's but CAL was dominating of late and there was intense competition for Ulbrickson to get back to #1. And we did beat Hitler.