HBO Film Profiles Runner/Broadcaster Marty Glickman

Documentary airs Monday on victim of Olympic anti-Semitism.

Monday, August 26, 2013, 12:00 am

Tonight, at 9:00 p.m. Eastern, HBO airs “Glickman,” a new documentary about Marty Glickman, one of the pioneering figures of sports broadcasting and a sprinter who was most likely kept from competing at the 1936 Olympics because of anti-Semitism.

Glickman was the first TV announcer in the history of the National Basketball Association and is credited with formulating much of the terminology used in basketball today, including "swish." In New York, Glickman broadcast for the Knicks and the NFL’s Jets, and covered boxing matches and track’s Millrose Games. He did play-by-play for a marbles tournament and for roller derby, and once described the circus to an audience of blind people. He was erudite and exciting at the same time, which was a rare pairing in his profession.


He was not only a model for other figures behind the microphone; he actively boosted their careers. Glickman had been a star tailback for Syracuse University, and the story has it that he once intentionally returned belatedly from a vacation to give a big break to a younger Syracuse alumnus, a fellow named Marv Albert.

Long before he became a broadcasting legend, Glickman, a Brooklynite known as the “Flatbush Flash,” made the U.S. Olympic team at age 18 and was scheduled to run on the 4 x 100-meter relay in Berlin in 1936, at the Games staged by Adolf Hitler. But at the eleventh hour, he and Sam Stoller, the only Jewish athletes on the U.S. squad, were replaced by Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe, black sprinters who’d placed first and second in the 100-meter dash. (Owens, of course, also won the 200 and the long jump.)

Owens attempted to decline the relay selection, asking that Glickman and Stoller be allowed to run. But the latter two ended up being the only members of the American track and field team who didn’t compete in Berlin. Assorted rationales have been given regarding why the switch was made by U.S. officials, but Glickman never had any doubt that anti-Semitism was the culprit.

In an interview I did with him two years before his death in 2001 at age 83, his anger and bitterness over the snub had not abated. If anything, they’d festered and grown more acute. I’ve read accounts that suggested Glickman hadn’t really let the matter gnaw at him until he made a return to the Olympic Stadium in Berlin in the 1980s, at which point all of his anger over the perceived injustice to him came rushing to the forefront.

When we spoke, Glickman, for whom there had clearly been no mellowing on the matter, aimed his barbs at Avery Brundage, the president of the United States Olympic Committee, and Dean Cromwell, the assistant track coach who ultimately decided upon the relay selections.

“These were anti-Semites of the first order," charged Glickman, who even blamed Cromwell for depriving him of a spot in the individual 100 meters in Berlin. The Olympic Trials stadium announcer "introduced me as the kid who finished third,” recalled Glickman. “But they placed Frank Wycoff third and Foy Draper fourth. Both were from Southern California [USC], where Cromwell coached.” It was all as vivid, and as morally repugnant, as yesterday to Glickman.

What’s generally accepted (but, of course, difficult to verify with hard evidence), is that Brundage was eager to appease Hitler, who’d already been humiliated by the victories of black Americans over Germany’s alleged Aryan “supermen.” James L. Freedman, the producer of “Glickman”, is unequivocal about the relay switch that left Glickman and Stoller out. “This was heavily influenced by Brundage, so [Hitler] wouldn’t have to see two Jews on the medal stand,” states Freedman.

Brundage has traditionally been perceived as having pro-Nazi sympathies, and did join the anti-war isolationist organization America First, which Cromwell also joined, perhaps as much as anything to curry Brundage’s favor. When the Games were over, Brundage’s construction company got the contract to build a new German embassy in Washington. The construction never happened, as World War II intervened.

World War II also meant no 1940 or 1944 Olympics, and no more medal opportunities for Glickman, who instead broadcast college basketball games while in his Marine uniform. His verve and expertise in his Millrose Game coverage were essential in raising the stature of what is now the only surviving world-class indoor track meet in New York. But how many listeners who heard his mellifluous voice knew that, if not for nefarious forces that had more to do with world politics than pure athletics, they might have been listening to an Olympic gold medalist? Glickman knew. And he never forgot.

The trailer for "Glickman" is below.

Tags: Olympics