by George Wolf
I was honored to attend the red-carpet premier of Race Monday night at Mershon Auditorium.
Opening Friday in Columbus and nationwide, the film offers a biopic of Buckeye legend and international hero Jesse Owens. Stephan James, the film’s lead, as well as Owens’s daughters Gloria Owens Hemphill and Marlene Owens Rankin, joined OSU president Michael V. Drake, athletic director Gene Smith, deputy director of athletics Miechelle Willis and others for the premier, where James greeted the capacity crowd with a rousing .”O-H!”
Needless to say, he got an enthusiastic response.
Owens’s story of overcoming oppression and segregation – including the prejudice he faced as a student athlete at Ohio State – to go on to win 4 Olympic gold medals in the 1936 Olympics held in Hitler-era Berlin, clearly has the makings of a powerful film, but the cultural icon’s daughters believe there will be surprises in store for viewers.
“I think there are a number of things that will surprise people,” says Owens Rankin. “There were things that surprised me, and I lived it. Things that I didn’t know. I think people don’t know about the pressures that he lived under and endured in those early years. I think they don’t know what it took to achieve what he did.”
Watching what their father endured during his lifetime was difficult for the sisters.
“We cry every time we see it,” says Owens Hemphill. “We’ve seen it four times, and we cry every time.”
For Willis, Owens’s legacy has an important impact on OSU students.
“Not only did he typify a wonderful human interest story from a human rights standpoint,” she says. “The fact that he is and was a Buckeye is even more special. And we have a number of student athletes here tonight that are on the track team, and it’s really important for them to see the struggle he faced to see the things that they take for granted now.”
For James, who also played John Lewis in the 2014 historical drama Selma, the approach to playing a historical figure is much different than it is to play a fictional character.
“It’s a whole other responsibility and obligation you have to tell the truth and to be accurate when you’re dealing with people who actually walked on this earth and breathed life,” he says. “I spent a lot of time with his daughters.”
The actor had to prepare both physically and mentally to portray Owens.
“First my research started physically, trying to get into the shape I needed to be in to sustain all the running. I’d never done track before, so I had to learn to run fast. But then I had to learn to run like Jesse because his running style is so unique and it’s so particular,” he says. “And that was only half the battle. For me the other half was trying to bring a level of humanity to him, give him a personality. I wanted to tell people about who he was as a man and a father and a husband and a humanitarian. A lot of things that people don’t know about Jesse.”
James found the work exhausting but rewarding.
“Of course, you get tired. You’re leading a film, but you’re leading a film about Jesse Owens. There’s a lot that comes with that. Even if that meant me being exhausted every day, I think it paid off.”