April 6, 2018 at 1:53 p.m.
Entertainment Column
Movie skirted the reality
Those quotations capture the decidedly mixed feelings Father Joseph Verrett has about "Passing Glory," the two-hour TV film loosely based on this life. It is being shown several times this month on TNT.
An excellent TV movie (see my review last week), it tells the story of an actual basketball game between a white Catholic high school and a black Catholic high school in New Orleans in the mid-'60s. In the film, the game comes to represent the beginnings of racial integration.
Really?
But did it really happen as shown in the movie? To find out, I called Father Verrett, now based in Baltimore as editor of the Josephite Harvest, his order's quarterly magazine."There's a lot of fictionalization, but there are no lies in it" he told me. "It's not a documentary. The plot is woven around a game that did take place."
In fact, the screenwriter, Harold Sylvester, played in the game. The role of the star athlete for the black school, St. Augustine's, is based on his life. As in the movie, his father was a barber.
"And he had a grandmother," played by Ruby Dee in the film, said the priest, "but I don't remember her ever going to a basketball game." In the movie, she's a cheering fan at the game.
Distortion
But that's a small liberty compared to how Father Robert Grant, the principal of St. Augustine's, was treated, says Father Verrett. Father Grant, who died last year, is played by Rip Torn and shown as hesitant to change and opposed to the fictional Father Verrett's activism. In real life, it was almost vice versa."I don't want to fly under false colors or take credit from him," Father Verrett said of Father Grant. "He was extremely bright, a prodigious worker and a bulldog. He was a fire-eating character. I understand Harold was trying to create tension between the characters to bring out the dramatic conflict, but it was unfair to Bob. He was the moving force behind everything. He was the one who filed suit to gain admittance to the league. The result was, in one clean stroke, the whole system caved in and brought instant integration in schools."
The movie is accurate in its portrait of how black schools got no coverage in the sports pages of the newspapers, something Father Verrett fought to change because "it was an injustice to the athletes" who didn't get a fair shot at scholarships. But unlike the movie, he never coached St. Augustine's basketball team. Nor did he ever go into an all-white diner to order dinner for the team, one of the dramatic highlights of "Passing Glory."
Atmosphere
Father Verrett gives Mr. Sylvester credit for doing "an excellent job of creating incidents to give an accurate idea of the racial tension in New Orleans where Catholics were in the process of accepting integration."Among his fellow Josephites, an order dedicated to evangelizing black Americans, there have been "loud discussions about what's factual" in "Passing Glory," said the priest. In the end, he feels it will "do far more good than harm if it gives the Josephites and St. Augustine some name recognition. Bob Grant would say, 'If it helps get the school known, go for it.' That was his commitment. The school is trying to raise money for an endowment. If the movie inspires people to send in 50 bucks, it's worth it."
But surely the big game in the movie, which comes down to a buzzer-beater that allows the black school to win by one point, accurately portrays the real-life game, right?
"Naw," Father Verrett said with a laugh, "we beat 'em by 22 points!"
(You can write to St. Augustine High School at 2600 A.P. Tureaud Ave., New Orleans, LA 70119-1299.)
(02-25-99)
Comments:
You must login to comment.