MEN OF THE QUARTER CENTURY
To honor the 25 football lettermen of 25 years ago "who have most distinguished themselves in their chosen fields of life"—that was the task of selection presented to the colleges and the judges; and the men named below (see box) are the winners of SPORTS ILLUSTRATED'S first Silver Anniversary All-America awards.
They are outstanding survivors, along with many another American whether athlete or not, of one of the most testing quarter centuries in U.S. history.
Their generation came out of college in mid-Depression, watched the rise of the Hitlers and Tojos, fought a great world war on the fronts of land, sea, air and home, emerged from the war in a world threatened again by imperial Communism, to help create an era of unheard-of plenty, responsibilities and new challenges.
Just a week before the 1931 football season began, Japanese troops seized half a dozen strategic points in Manchuria including the vital rail center of Mukden. A day later, the lordly Bank of England, pressed cruelly by the Depression drain on British balances, abandoned the gold standard. ("A pillar of civilization has fallen," mourned the worried French, facing a similar decision.) Britons divided their attention between the falling pound sterling and a bitter government interrogation in London of Mahatma Gandhi, soon to be arrested again for his uncompromising call for Indian independence, while his less-known follower, Jawaharlal Nehru, was sentenced to two years at hard labor. The United States Steel Corp., instantly followed by other steel companies and by the copper, aluminum, textile and rubber industries, slashed wages 10%; it was the first general wage cutback in a decade. In Berlin a black-haired fanatic named Adolf Hitler made an arrogant visit of self-introduction to the president of the German Republic, ancient Paul von Hindenburg, and then returned to Nazi headquarters to wait for the conspired collapse of the republic.
The football season got off with a happy and proper disregard of all such omens. Tennessee, Tulane, Michigan State, Cornell, Texas and Alabama were some of the giants who won their openers easily, though opening day brought one of the splendid upsets of the season when little St. Mary's beat mighty Southern California and All-America Gaius Shaver 13-7 before 75,000 in Los Angeles. It was to be Southern California's only defeat all year. At half time, Conrad Nagel, the actor, read a tribute to Knute Rockne, killed that summer in the explosion of a plane over Kansas, while the thousands stood in silence and taps was blown.
It was a season of memorable games. Harvard's quarterback Barry Wood had one of his best days when the Harvards played Army in Michie Stadium. Wood set up the first Harvard score with a long pass, scored the extra point himself, rushing, after a bad pass from center; later Wood passed for the tying touchdown and then drop kicked the winning extra point for a 14-13 upset.
Yale's Albie Booth, a frail bundle of fire all season, led the Elis through a 5-1-2 season, including a 3-0 victory over Barry Wood and Harvard, with Booth kicking the decisive field goal. The season's rugged play left Booth physically exhausted and bedded down in a Connecticut sanitarium while his classmates deserted New Haven for parties and dances at the holidays. He missed the Princeton game, which Yale won 51-14 with cries of "score one more for Albie." Booth, who recovered in time to hit a grand-slam home run and beat Harvard again in baseball, never lost his dedication to football. Today, a business executive in New Haven, Booth finds time for a sideline career as one of the leading referees in the East. But in 1931 his aches and bruises from a year-long course of football, basketball and baseball, all of which he played in the same all-out spirit, led to grave suggestions that a college boy's athletics should be limited to one team-sport a year. Fortunately, nothing ever came of the idea.
The world of college was a protected world, and the parties went on at the Christmas holidays with not too much worry about June and jobs. Some of the songs that year were Goodnight Sweetheart, Love is Sweeping the Country, Sweet and Lovely, Dancing in the Dark. On Broadway, Fred Astaire was playing in The Bandwagon, Katharine Cornell in The Barretts of Wimpole Street. Ethel Merman, Rudy Vallee and Ray Bolger were the hits of George White's Scandals. On the moving picture screen, which had lately found its voice, Al Jolson's Singing Fool grossed $5 million. Walt Disney won an Oscar (the Academy statue got its nickname that year) for Mickey Mouse—although one of the cows in a Disney film had its udder removed by the finicky Hays Office.
Spring came, and graduation. Of the many commencement speeches that year none exceeded in practical advice the warning to the graduating class at Colgate: "Don't snatch your diploma. Be calm. Take your diploma in your right hand. Tip your cap with your left hand. Don't wave it, just tip it." The graduates could not have had better counsel; the world was not particularly waiting for their charging ranks, diplomas waved aloft. In the want-ad section of The New York Times of June 21, 1932 just 13 jobs were offered to men of all ages; somebody wanted a bookkeeper, somebody else a cabinetmaker, somebody else a drug clerk, etc. (on the corresponding day last June the Times ran 31 columns of "Help Wanted" ads, and undergraduates drove off in their MGs to consider the professional, cultural and golf-course opportunities of the various high-priced jobs being offered to them).
The 25 men who have won election to SPORTS ILLUSTRATED'S Silver Anniversary All-America made their debuts in these days. Businessmen, doctors, diplomats, clergymen, professional military men they are now. It may be that no one can ever establish, who did not live through it, what college football meant to them as they faced what is commonly and all too banally called the challenge of life. Nowadays the colleges are faced with many questions—not just how to grow and meet their faculty salaries and keep up with the frontiers of science and teaching—but with never-ending questions of values, including whom to admit, what to teach, what to stress.
Let one of the Silver All-Americas, Bill (Air Mail) Morton of Dartmouth, rise and be sworn. Says Bill Morton, an All-America then and an All-America now:
"The most important lessons to be learned on the football field cannot be learned in the classroom. I have no time for hard losers. You see them sometimes at your golf club. They fuss and fume and rip up divots and act like little boys. Whenever I see a man like that, I say to myself, 'He never played contact sports.' Mere knowledge isn't enough. Plenty of soreheads have knowledge without having balance and a sense of proportion. A football field is a pretty good place to achieve the understanding of intelligent competition so important later on."
SIX PHOTOS
TWO PHOTOS
Arrested history is captured as Stanford halts USC's Shaver, Harvard's Barry Wood punts against Army
PHOTO
Albie Booth (No. 48) scores against Dartmouth in famous game tied 33-33 by Bill Morton's field goal
FOUR PHOTOS
THE 25 FROM 1931
BARRY WOOD (unanimous)
Vice-president, Johns Hopkins
Harvard
ROGER W. BLANCHARD
Dean, Episcopal Cathedral, Jacksonville
Boston U.
CHARLES C. TILLINGHAST JR.
Corporation lawyer, New York
Brown
CLEM E. BININGER
Pastor, Second Presbyterian Church, Kansas City
Centre
A. U. (BUCK) PRIESTER JR.
Georgia textiles executive
Clemson
JAMES HALEY
Physician and surgeon, Longmont, Colo.
Colorado
WILLIAM H. MORTON
Municipal securities dealer, New York
Dartmouth
JAMES W. HECKMAN
Telephone company executive, Boise, Idaho
Denver
JOSIAH C. HALL
Supt. of Public Instruction, Dade County, Fla.
Florida
JAMES W. BAMPTON
Aerosol products manufacturer, Philadelphia
Hobart
RAY ELIOT
Head football coach, University of Illinois
Illinois
G. DOUGLAS REED
Spice company executive, Baltimore
Lehigh
EDWARD W. SUAREZ
Vice-commander, Central Air Defense Force
U.S. Military Academy
BIGGIE MUNN
Director of Athletics, Michigan State
Minnesota
LOUIS J. KIRN
Captain, USN
U.S. Naval Academy
ERNEST L. MASSAD
Housing development and oil leases, Oklahoma
Oklahoma
RALPH DOUGHERTY
Physician and surgeon, McKeesport, Pa.
Pittsburgh
WILLIS M. TATE
President, Southern Methodist University
Southern Methodist
WILSON H. ELKINS
President, University of Maryland
Texas
J. EARL RUDDER
Land Commissioner of Texas
Texas A&M
ELDON C. UPTON JR.
Insurance executive, New Orleans
Tulane
EDWARD M. WINANT
Orthopedic surgeon, New York
Vermont
JOHN E. DOYLE
Country doctor, Ridgway, Ill.
West Virginia
JOHN W. TUTHILL
Senior economic officer, Paris Embassy
William & Mary
DOUGLAS MacARTHUR II
Counselor, U.S. Department of State
Yale
SIX FLASHBACKS
Collector's items now, program covers like these help document some 1931 moods: the flapper was letting her hair grow, Daliesque perspective was coming in, but the John Held Jr. touch was still mighty popular.
SPORTING LOOK
The rakish curled-brim fedora of New York's Mayor Jimmy Walker (center) was identifying costumery for him at 1931 Army-Navy game, which he attended with General Dennis E. Nolan, later the Army's Chief of Staff. Hard hats (right) were also worn.
GANGSTER LOOK
Al Capone (right), about to be convicted on income tax evasion charges, made one of his rare public appearances to attend the Northwestern-Notre Dame game at Evanston with a scowling henchman. Northwestern and Notre Dame played to scoreless tie.
GYMNASTIC LOOK
Exuberant Navy cheerleaders leaped, somersaulted, whooped it up in a still classic style before Army-Navy game in Yankee Stadium. Army won 17-7, despite fine play of Navy's halfback "Bullet Lou" Kirn, who passed for Navy's single touchdown.
FAIR HARVARD, 1931
On the brink of a season-and of an era more involved than any of the smiling young gentlemen could guess—Harvard's varsity lined up for this more-or-less official picture. In backfield stand Crickard, left halfback; White, fullback; Dean, right halfback; wood, quarterback and Mayes, Crickard's replacement at left half. Crouched in the Crimson line are: Hageman right end.