Citizen Ashe

Year 15, Day 107 - 4/17/23 - Movie #4,408

BEFORE: Arthur Ashe and several other sports stars carry over from "Say Hey, Willie Mays!". I see this ALL the freakin' time, whether it's the directors of documentaries or somebody who works for the directors, I don't know, but there are filmmakers out there who only consider the "cast" of a documentary to be the people who were interviewed for it.  I say, Nay Nay, the people in the archive footage are also important, the IMDB just lists them differently.  So for this one, going in I thought that maybe they hired an actor to play the young Arthur Ashe, because he wasn't listed in the credits. AT ALL. For the documentary where he is the central figure - that's crazy, how can Arthur Ashe NOT be in the doc that's all about Arthur Ashe?  The simplest answer is that because he's deceased, the production company didn't consider him as part of the "cast", just the people who were interviewed. 

Well, that's where I step in, because I sit there with a little notepad or a piece of scrap paper or I use the Notes app on my phone, and then before I write my review, I submit and update to IMDB with all the famous (and not-so-famous) people I recognized in the archive footage - like, say, Arthur Ashe, and also in this case LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Venus and Serena Williams, and about thirty others.  Now, my linking of films might have been a lot easier if I had known about these other people in the archive footage, but I get no sympathy because, as far as I know, I'm the only person who watches movies like this.  (If there is someone else, I'd like to meet him or her, we'd probably be friends.  Or maybe not, I don't need any competition.)

I'm going to try very hard, however, to not think about how at the same time as I'm correcting all these appearances, I'm also padding the resumes of people like Adolf Hitler and Saddam Hussein.  Sorry, but it can't be helped, I've got to be MORE RIGHT about these things than anyone else, and if I see an incomplete cast list, that just won't do.  Also there's some poor person who works for IMDB who reviews these submissions, and my documentary block probably constitutes their least favorite time of year. Again, sorry, but it can't be helped. 

THE PLOT: Explores the tennis career of Arthur Ashe and his impact on tennis and HIV activism. 

AFTER: Another day, another blactivist profiled - it's just my way of atoning for missing Black History Month every year, I've got to assuage my white guilt.  Arthur Ashe was way on the other side of the activist spectrum than, say, Muhammad Ali.  He was the quiet one, and though he basically broke the color barrier in men's tennis by himself, he was preceded by Althea Gibson in women's tennis (where's HER documentary?) he kind of changed the system from within, rather than standing on the outside and calling for change.  Together they were like the Jackie Robinsons of tennis, and I guess maybe every sport other than boxing has its Jackie Robinson, but by the time you get down to the Jackie Robinson of curling or the Jackie Robinson of pickleball, at some point it becomes rather petty.  Yes, of course, there should be people of all colors in all sports, I just mean that we should stop focusing on our differences. 

Me keeping track of all the archive footage and the appearances of certain sports stars who keep popping up is rapidly affecting my cumulative stats - Robert De Niro is still out in front for 2023 with 7 appearances, but after a week of documentaries, certain sports stars and politicians are catching up with him - Ali, MLK, Jackie Robinson, Richard Nixon, and Spike Lee all have 4 appearances in the last 8 films, while Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Arhtur Ashe, Bill Clinton, Hitler, RFK, Obama, Bill Russell, Serena Williams and Malcolm X all have 3. (Serena and Kareem made cameos in "Glass Onion", that gave them a head start.). Oddly, Robert Kennedy is leading JFK 3-0, and Michael B. Jordan is beating Michael Jordan 3-1. 

Anyway, Arthur Ashe grew up in Richmond, VA, which seems like it's in the center of the East Coast but is really part of the Deep South, if you know what I mean. His mother died when he was 6 so he was raised by a single father, who didn't let Arthur play football because he was too skinny.  But the family lived on a black playground where Ashe Sr. was a caretaker, and there were tennis courts there, just yards from their house. He was spotted by a tennis instructor who was the best black tennis player in Richmond at the time, and things just kind of fell into place. Althea Gibson's coach, the founder of the Junior Development Program of the ATA also took notice of him, and Ashe became the first African-American to play in the Maryland boys' championships, and learned from his coach to never argue with an umpire, or react to racial comments from others, because it was unsportsmanlike, and counter-productive toward the integration of the sport. 

Ashe moved to St. Louis in his senior year to avoid the segregated courts in Richmond - this was 1960, so that probably tells you something about Virginia in 1960, they still acted like it was 1860. Ashe got a tennis scholarship to UCLA, joined the ROTC and then became the first black player selected for the U.S. Davis Cup team.  He won the NCAA singles title in 1965, but then there was that whole Vietnam thing, and he had gone through officer training with ROTC.  So he joined the U.S. Army in 1966, but got assigned to the Military Academy at West Point, where he worked as a data processor, and also headed the academy's tennis program.  Hands down, the best story here comes from Arthur's brother, Johnnie, who served in Vietnam and signed up for a second tour, because he knew that by staying in active service, he was preventing Arthur from being sent overseas.  (The military was apparently keeping track, and didn't allow brothers to serve in Vietnam at the same time, after what happened in World War II to some families that lost all of their sons.)

The second best story here concerns how Ashe tried repeatedly to play in the South African Open, to champion integration at the time of apartheid - but the South African government kept denying his visa.  He certainly qualified, having won the U.S. Open and the Australian Open, and then with the help of diplomat Andrew Young, he was able to compete in South Africa in 1973, after promising to not speak about politics while there.  But just appearing there and competing there sent a quiet message, as an attempt to bring about further change.  Ashe lost in South Africa to Jimmy Connors that year and the next, and then three years later, Ashe had to basically apologize for playing in South Africa, as some people saw that as a tacit acceptance of their racial politics. 

We all know the rest of his story, how he retired in 1980 after having heart surgery in 1979.  There aren't many athletes more fit than tennis players, but this shows you that cardiovascular disease is largely hereditary, as his mother died from it, and his father had two heart attacks. Later he was diagnosed with AIDS, and it was believed that he contracted HIV during blood transfusions received during his heart surgery.  He got this diagnoses in 1988, and it was revealed to the public in a newspaper article in 1992 - obviously it was a different time, and the rules for revealing the health status of public figures were still being worked out.  But after that Ashe worked to raise awareness of AIDS and call for more funding.  So yeah, there's a lot here that's bittersweet, or it proves you have to take the bad with the good, or something.  

I've got to run, I have to get up very early tomorrow morning and open up the theater - so I can't even start on tomorrow's movie tonight, I'll have to catch up tomorrow afternoon.  Thankfully most of these documentaries are short so if I fall behind, I can double up and fix it. 

Also starring Johnnie Ashe, John Carlos (last seen in "Say Hey, Willie Mays!"), Harry Edwards (ditto), Art Carrington, Karlton Davis, Donald Dell, Billie Jean King (last seen in "Venus and Serena"), John McEnroe (ditto), Ej McGorda, Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe, Charlie Pasarell, Lenny Simpson, Andrew Young (last seen in "MLK/FBI")

with archive footage of Muhammad Ali (last seen in "Say Hey, Willie Mays"), Barack Obama (ditto), Jackie Robinson (ditto), Bill Russell (ditto), Tommie Smith (ditto), Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (last seen in "What's My Name: Muhammad Ali"), Dick Cavett (ditto), Howard Cosell (ditto), Robert F. Kennedy (ditto), Nelson Mandela (ditto), Dinah Shore (ditto), Kobe Bryant, Jimmy Connors (last seen in "Venus and Serena"), Serena Williams (ditto), Venus Williams (ditto), Ellen DeGeneres (last seen in "Running With Beto"), David Dinkins, Coco Gauff, Althea Gibson, Bryant Gumbel (last seen in "Wolfgang"), Charlton Heston (last seen in "Robert Klein Still Can't Stop His Leg"), Adolf Hitler (last seen in "The Book Thief"), Jesse Owens (ditto), LeBron James (last seen in "Space Jam: A New Legacy"), Naomi Osaka (ditto), Colin Kaeperneck (last seen in "George Carlin's American Dream"), Rod Laver, Ibtihaj Muhammad, Tom Okker, Dan Rather (last seen in "Driven"), Morley Safer (last seen in "Fyre Fraud"), Mike Wallace (last seen in "One Night in Miami...")

RATING: 6 out of 10 red, white and blue wristbands