"The Express"-lane review on the life of Ernie Davis: Truth, or daring?

== Davis, who arrived at Syracuse asked to replace Jim Brown and his long, controversial shadow, broke Brown's career stats in three seasons and then passed it foward, helping to recruit Floyd Little at the school.

== Orangeman coach Ben Schwartzwalder (played overdramatically by Dennis Quaid) was probably not so much unlike Texas Western coach Don Haskins as he was portrayed in "Glory Road" -- a white man who struggled relating to the African-American athlete. Orangeman lineman Jack Buckley (played by Omar Bensen Miller) put it this way in the movie: "Coach likes winning more than he dislikes Negros."

== How leukemia took Davis down before he could ever play pro football with the Cleveland Browns. He died at age 23.

Facts, you say? At least two of those three things we agree probably happened. The one about the coach, we can't be sure now, the more we read.

A story in the Charleston (West Virginia) Daily Mail (linked here, thanks to SportsByBrooks.com) has already challenged the movie's authentic account of things that happened, particularily pegged to Oct. 24, 1959, when Syracuse traveled to West Virginia for a game.
The movie shows West Virginia fans showering the Syracuse players with garbage as they went onto the field, and how coach Schwartzwalder, a West Virginia native, pulled Davis out of the game because he feared that him scoring would antagonize the Mountaineer fans.
As the paper points out, West Virginia and Syracuse did not play in Morgantown in 1959. Davis and the Orangemen visited Mountaineer Field only once, on Oct. 22, 1960.
This is somewhat significant in the fact that this Saturday, Syracuse is at West Virginia -- the day after the movie comes out.
Now in his 62nd year of writing about WVU football, Mickey Furfari was in the press box, covering the game for the Morgantown Dominion-News. "It's stupid," Furfari said of the scene. "It's pure fiction. The moviemakers should be absolutely ashamed."

The essense of the flick is, again, how an African-American athlete fought through the system of prejudice during a time of segration, changed some people's minds about how things can be done, but ended up like Brian Piccolo at the end of "Brian's Song," but without the white teammate helping ease his pain. Facts, in some cases, be stretched.

That's Hollywood, right? That's just wrong.

You'll find nothing fancy about "The Express," based on the Robert Gallagher book, "Ernie Davis: The Elmira Express" (which has been reissued, at this link) and is barely still in circulation (at this link).

It starts like most bioflicks, at the beginning, starting when Davis was collecting glass bottles along the rail road tracks at age 10 in Uniontown, Pa., and was chased away by white kids. It archs up until the day the Browns honored him on the field before a game on Aug. 19, 1962, then later revealing that Davis later died on May 18, '63, and President Kennedy offered some words of eulogy in his honor.

Now we're starting to doubt even more about those things actually happening. Allow us to do more research before we elaborate.

The story unfolds with many time-stamped episodes that were turning points in his career and makes it easy for the audience to follow.

After a Dec. 5, 1959 victory over UCLA, Davis and his teammates are ranked No. 1 and decide to face No. 2 Texas in the Cotton Bowl rather than No. 8 Georgia in the Orange Bowl. Syracuse pulls that Jan. 1, 1960 victory out in a physical contest, where Davis is hurt but still named player of the game. The team then agrees not to attend the celebration that Cotton Bowl officials had planned for them at a country club that excluded blacks -- the Orangemen had three black players, including Davis and Buckley.

The story then jumps to the 1961 Heisman ceremony, where Davis wins out over Ohio State's Bob Ferguson and Texas' James Saxton in the closest voting up until then, a 53-point margin, and meets President Kennedy. With that, Davis became the first African American to win the trophy -- although runner-up Ferguson was also black. It was a trophy that Jim Brown thought he could have won back in 1956, but lost to Notre Dame's Paul Hornung (Brown finished fifth).

There's a reference to a story that Davis wrote for the Saturday Evening Post, after he found out he had leukemia and began treatments, which seems to be excerpted into the movie but never really is fleshed out. It's too bad we can't find that story on any Internet searches. It might put his life into better context.

The film, adapted for the screen by Charles Leavitt and directed by Gary Fleder, will enlighten those who've never heard anything before about Davis -- but how can you not after all the publicity, even with NBC's Bob Costas on board doing some promos and interviewing Brown before a Notre Dame telecast recently to help promote the flick. Former USC lineman and veteran movie maker Allan Graf is the film's second-unit director, and his son, Derek, helped coordinate all the authentic football action sequences.

Unfortunately, the film only shows about a five-second color home-movie-like clip of the real Davis running the ball at the end before the credits. And at the end of the credits is a single black and white of Davis with Brown and Schwartzwalder.

It may not be Academy material -- it really could have used a scene at the end showing him on his death bed in a very emotional, dramatic moment, but that's missing as well. But if the end result that it sparks more interest in finding out about the life of Davis, then it's worth the time spent in the theatre.

==More on Ernie Davis:
==His biography on the Syracuse football website (linked here).
==His link on the College Football Hall of Fame site (linked here)
==The IMDB.com link to more photos and film background (linked here).
==The L.A. Daily News feature from last Sunday on Ron Brown, who played the role of Davis, with comments from director Fleder (linked here).
==An Indiana Gazette feature on Davis' teammates today remembering him (linked here).
==A Cincinnati Enquirer take on the Ernie Davis story and how it led to the creation of the Cincinnati Bengals (linked here).
==The Watertown (N.Y.) Daily Times story on the movie's screening that brought together former Davis teammates (linked here).