“Boys In the Boat” – Books & Movie
Contributed by Doug Ferguson
This December we went to see the movie version of “Boy’s in the Boat” directed by George Clooney based on a book of the same name by Daniel James Brown we had read shortly after it had been published in 2013.
This inspiring true story of how, against all odds, the working class rowing crew from the University of Washington beat all the elite crews from the Eastern Ivy League schools to earn the right to represent the United States in the 1936 Olympics held in Nazi Germany where they rallied to beat Hitler’s favored German team winning the gold medal in a photo finish at the race’s end.
The story also highlights our American values in a cultural era by those of us whose parents lived through the great depression of the 1930’s and remember their stories.
The focal point in the book, and in the movie, was crew member Joe Rantz. His father, who was widowed when Joe was four, remarried a woman with two toddlers that he didn’t get along with as he got older. His father left the fourteen-year-old teenager on his own in Washington to look for work. In the book and in actuality he was left a run-down house that he learned to maintain himself. In the movie he lived in an old, junked car his father left behind.
He ended up responding, as did many other depression affected young men, to an ad for tryouts for Washington University’s rowing program that had recently started and was looking to expand. Most had never rowed crew before.
The motivation for Joe and many others was that if you made the team you got a job to pay for tuition, but also room and board. While Joe’s situation was probably the worst, others who eventually made the crew also came out of poor or working class family situations. Conversely “crewing” as it was called, was a well established sport among the elite East Coast Ivy League colleges.
Without going into the details of the whole story, the book covers more of the final crew’s background plus that of the coach. The book was written after already established author Brown was contacted by Rantz’s niece at the end of his life. This was when he was dying of cancer after a long productive life as a Chemical Engineer after graduating from the University of Washington and wanted someone to document their Olympic Crewing achievements.
The book also follows up on the stories several others of the crew plus it shows the extent that Hitler’s regime went to empress Olympic attendees and the rest of the world long before anything was known about their Jewish policies.
Out of necessity, the movie, while doing a good, but somewhat condensed job on Rantz’s story and providing dramatic and inspiring live re-enactments of the actual races, was more limited in scope. For instance, other than showing Hitler’s frustration at the American’s edging out the German and Italian boats, it did not dwell at all on the extent of the propaganda his régime created for the West to sanitize and hide Nazi objectives. It also did not delve into the experiences of the rest of the crew as was done for Joe Rantz.
Until the movie came out, I was unaware that in 2015 a new best selling version of the book adapted for “Young Readers” was published. Since many such “versions for young readers” are really “dumbed down” versions of the original, I wanted to see why he decided to write this version and actually read the differences so I obtained a copy to review and found, while the emphasis was more on the boy’s experiences, it was far from being “dumbed down”.
In a note from the author at the beginning, he reflects on how many young people have shown up at his original book signings that were inspired by the story:
“It sometimes seems strange to me to have a ninety-year old grandma and a twelve-year old student standing next to each in front of me at the signing table. But listening to what both groups of readers have to say about the story, I have begun to understand. Some things are timeless.”
Based on these experiences he embarked on the version for younger readers. At the end of his authors’ note he says:
“So as you read this book, I hope you will keep in mind that at it’s heart this is a story about growing up, about wrestling with hope and doubt, about dreaming big, about going for gold. In that sense, it’s really a story about you.”
I highly recommend anyone reading either book and seeing the movie when you can!