WILL to air lost 1982 interview with UI's 'Red' Grange
"You win without going around blowing up about it and bragging about it, and you can lose without crying about it. Then you say, 'Well, let's start all over again.'" – Harold "Red" Grange on playing football
If not for the threat of a few whacks on the butt with a paddle from his fraternity brothers, Harold Grange might never have tried out for the University of Illinois football team. At about 160 pounds, he'd looked around at the other students trying out, decided he'd never make it and went home. But his frat brothers felt differently, and they let him know it.
The track star made the team and made history when he scored five touchdowns during the opening game at Memorial Stadium in 1924, when the Illini beat the University of Michigan.
Working on a documentary about Memorial Stadium, Bloomington-based producer Denise La Grassa knew "Red" Grange, also called the Galloping Ghost, would have to be a part of the stadium's story. At 7 p.m. Sept. 8 – Illini Night on WILL-TV – Grange will get his own story told.
When La Grassa searched for footage on Grange and his famous five touchdowns, she originally didn't find much, and what she found was either expensive or overused. "I wanted something that was very special," she said.
She talked to an ESPN representative who happened to be from Florida, and a fan of Ron Zook and the Illini. The rep told La Grassa about Kemper Peacock, a sports producer who had interviewed Grange back in 1982 for a halftime TV spot.
Harold 'Red' Grange starred for the University of Illinois football team in the 1920s. By University of Illinois Division of Intercollegiate Athletics
La Grassa called Peacock, who she remembers saying, "If you want it, you can have it."
"He donated to WILL-TV his entire interview with Red Grange. Footage like this would cost so very much, it was an incredible donation. He wanted the footage to go back where it all started for Red Grange."
Peacock, speaking by phone from Connecticut, said giving the footage to Grange's alma mater "just seemed like it completed the story in a way."
His story with Grange began when he was making 90-second spots on college football greats to air on CBS Sports during halftimes. "In terms of Illinois football, there wasn't a No. 2," Peacock said. "He just towered over every other historical football player."
The interview itself almost didn't happen. The first few times Peacock called his home in Florida and asked, "he basically said, 'Forget it.' He'd had enough publicity."
But Peacock persisted. "I basically told him, 'Mr. Grange, I'll meet you anytime, anywhere, at your convenience," he remembered. "Finally, he said if you're at the corner of such and such ... at such and such a time, I'll meet you there.
"True to his word, he showed up, we went back to his house. Somehow he got the idea that we were relatively harmless, and that we would do anything, any way he wanted to do it," Peacock said. "We got all set up and the cameras started rolling, and I thought he was going to come right through the lens. His intensity was right in your face, in a nice way.
"All CBS would run was about 90 seconds, (but) I wasn't going to stop him. ... We just had a really open-ended conversation that ran on for the better part of two hours."
Along with telling the origins of his nicknames, his passion for baseball and many other stories, Grange talked to Peacock about his time playing in Wrigley Field with the Chicago Bears and about meeting legends like Babe Ruth and Jack Dempsey. He talked about meeting Ty Cobb and wanting to talk only baseball while Cobb wanted to talk only football.
Then there was the time he met then-President Calvin Coolidge, who was told Grange was with the Chicago Bears. "Calvin was not a great sports fan, by the way," Grange recalled. "He said, 'Welcome to Washington, young man. I always did like animal acts."
But the stadium documentary could include only a few bits of the Grange interview – not enough to do him justice, La Grassa thought. "He's a fascinating person. He came from a rough life. His mother had passed, ... he was kind of a poor kid," she said. "To see that he had sort of a magical turn of events that changed the course of his life and made him a superstar, and then also that he was the inspiration, or the architect for professional football."
On the tape, Grange talks about his summer job in Wheaton between college semesters. "I was an ice man ... the ice man used to haul ice," he said. "I worked six days a week and about 10 to 12 hours a day, and we got paid, too."
John Paul, who interviewed Peacock in a Memorial Stadium box overlooking the field, said, "If you're trying to put Red in today's time, he is the Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan of today, but it's hard to remember that because it's hard to take us back to the '20s."
La Grassa said going back to Grange's story is worth the journey, even for non-football fans, even for non-Illini. "He has an enduring appeal basically because of the person he was ... just the quality of his humility, his ethics," she said. "He just had so much integrity."
Peacock seconded that. "(Grange) said time and time again, football is a team sport, and recognized and gave credit to the other individuals on the team," Peacock said.
During the CBS interview, Grange himself said: "I never accepted the fact that I was a superstar. I don't really know what a 'superstar' means. I've had a lot of advantages. Football has been very good to me."
WILL's Illini Night
Check out WILL-TV's Illini Night on Sept. 8
7 p.m.: "Red Grange Remembers: Highlights and Reflections of Football's First Superstar"
8:15 p.m.: "The Legacy of Illinois Bands"
9 p.m.: "Memorial Stadium: True Illini Spirit"
For more information, go to http://will.illinois.edu.
TV tribute to UI bands
Not all the action happens during the game. When the football pauses at the University of Illinois, the bands step in. And on Sept. 8, they'll get their due.
In "The Legacy of Illinois Bands," a documentary produced by the UI Alumni Association and airing at 8:15 p.m. on WILL-TV as part of Tuesday's Illini Night, viewers can learn the history of a band which co-producer Joe Rank – a saxophonist in the UI band in the '60s and former UI band alumni president – calls "the pinnacle" of college bands, and says has about 10,000 living alumni. Rank produced the film with George Brozak, a doctoral student music education at the time.
The show was created in 2005 for the centennial of the appointment of band director A.A. Harding. "In that 100-year period, there have only been four directors of bands – in 100 years – which is pretty significant considering all the football coaches and basketball coaches," Rank said. "It's because Illinois and Harding really established the college band as a serious performing ensemble. Prior to that, bands were just student organizations, student clubs. Harding made it an academic subject worthy of study."
Harding, his relationship with legendary composer John Philip Sousa, the thrill of halftime shows and other nuggets of band lore populate the documentary. "It's part of the Illinois story," Rank said.
