Johnny Weissmuller and the Old Global Capitalism: The Origins of the Federal Blueprint for Selling American Culture to the World

Abstract

Recent scholarship has acknowledged the power at the turn of the twenty-first century of American sport in promoting US products in the new global capitalism. American designs to use sport to promote American commerce and American culture actually date to a much earlier period. Beginning in the 1920s, as the US surpassed Great Britain as the world's most powerful nation, the federal government hatched a plan to use sport to Americanize the globe. Trading on the prowess of American teams at the Olympics, this scheme sought to harness the power of American statecraft and American industry into a program to convert the world's masses to American ways of life. Faced with the problem that the sport which had become the ‘world's game’, soccer football, was not an American national pastime, federal bureaucrats surprisingly settled on swimming as the most viable option for their Americanization campaigns.

Notes

[1] For the classic ‘pop culture’ version of Jordan and globalization, see Erla Zwingle, ‘A World Together’, National Geographic 196 (Aug. 1999), 2–33. For an academic versions of the argument see LaFeber, Michael Jordan and the New Global Capitalism; Andrews, Michael Jordan, Inc.; Dyson, ‘Crossing Over Jordan’, 56–9; Halberstam, Playing for Keeps. See also the special December 1996 issue of the Sociology of Sport Journal entitled ‘Deconstructing Jordan: Reconstructing Postindustrial America’, edited by David Andrews. In this issue Andrews describes these new global intersections as ‘Jordanscapes’.

[2] Gallico, The Golden People, 231. Gallico was a leading observer of American sport during the 1920s and 1930s. He dubbed the 1920s the ‘golden age’ in ‘The Golden Decade’, ‘Saturday Evening Post 204 (5 Sept. 1931), 12–13. Gallico wrote sports for the New York Daily News for nearly two decades. His masterful goodbye to sportswriting, A Farewell to Sport, remains one of the key sources for understanding American sport culture in the 1920s and 1930s. His farewell was not a permanent break since in 1965 he penned The Golden People. Gallico became a prolific writer of fiction for children and adults. He also wrote for film and television. His most famous film credit, The Poseidon Adventure, shaped the modern ‘disaster movie’ genre. Molly Ivins, ‘Paul Gallico, Sports Writer and Author, Is Dead at 78’, New York Times, 17 July 1976.

[3] This is a crucial misstep in LaFeber's Michael Jordan and the New Global Capitalism. A closer reading of Allen Guttmann's Games and Empires, which LaFeber cites, might have cured LaFeber's unfortunate drift into present-mindedness. Some familiarity with Nancy Struna's People of Prowess would have provided LaFeber with a better understanding of the deep historical links, dating to at least the latter half of the eighteenth century, of modern sport to international market capitalism.

[4] My initial foray into this topic was published in Sportwissenschaft in 2004. Dyreson, ‘Globalizing American Sporting Culture’.

[5] The new swimming culture was not solely an American phenomenon. For a perceptive look at an Australian alternative, and American influences on its development, see Booth, Australian Beach Cultures. See also Lencek and Bosker, The Beach.

[6] For typical Weissmuller BVD ads see Wallach Brothers advertisement, New York Times, 15 July 1932; Saks advertisement, New York Times, 6 June 1931.

[7] Sklar, Movie-Made America, 215–27; Maltby, Hollywood Cinema, 126–7; Fury, Kings of the Jungle, 51–120.

[8]New York Times, 8 Oct. 1933.

[9]‘A Boy Who Has Broken All Swimming Records’, Literary Digest 73 (27 May 1922), 57–8; ‘Swim Said the Doctors – and Johnny Swam’, Literary Digest 110 (4 July 1931), 29–30; ‘Weissmuller Swims to Films’, Literary Digest 113 (16 April 1932), 18–19; L. De B. Handley, ‘Swimming’; Gallico, The Golden People, 219–34.

[10] For a more extensive treatment of this idea see Dyreson, ‘Globalizing the Nation-Making Process’. For histories of the roots of sport as a global social force in Great Britain, the United States and other modern nations, Guttmann's Games and Empires provides an excellent starting point as does his more recent work, Sports: The First Five Millennia.

[11] For a history of the concept of sport as a social technology in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century United States, see Dyreson, Making the American Team. Colin Howell also uses the term ‘social technology’ to explain how the middle classes in Canada sought to create a ‘respectable’ social order’ through sport. Howell, Blood, Sweat and Cheers, 28. For an excellent case study of manufacturing ‘social order’ through sport see Grundy, Learning to Win.

[12]‘Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, liberal democratic governments remained relatively indifferent to the success or failure of their athletes in international competition, and sports administrators were happy to be free of governmental interference. Communist, Fascist, and Nazi regimes had a different view of politics to sport,’ Guttmann argues in his chapter on ‘Instrumentalized Sports’: Guttmann, Sports, 293–306 (quotation from 293).

[13] For histories of government-business partnerships in the 1920s and 1930s see Barber, From New Era to New Deal; Gordon, New Deals; Himmelberg, Business-Government Cooperation; Keller, Regulating a New Economy; Rosenberg, Financial Missionaries to the World.

[14] For an insightful history of the connections between sport and the spread of American consumer culture see Keys, ‘Spreading Peace, Democracy, and Coca Cola®’. For more general histories see Lears, Fables of Abundance; Marchand, Advertising the American Dream; Feis, The Diplomacy of the Dollar; Wilson, American Business and Foreign Policy.

[15] Carter, The Twenties in America; Ogren, The Jazz Revolution; Rosenberg, Spreading the American Dream; Sklar, Movie-Made America.

[16] Abramson, National Geographic; Lutz and Collins, Reading National Geographic.

[17] Bill Allen, ‘From the Editor’, National Geographic 196 (Aug. 1999), 1.

[18]J.R. Hildebrand, ‘The Geography of Games: How the Sports of Nations Form a Gazetteer of the Habits and Histories of Their Peoples’. National Geographic Magazine 36 (Aug. 1919), 89–144.

[19] Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780, 141–3.

[20] James, Beyond a Boundary.

[21] Webster , ‘Looking Back on the Ninth Olympiad’, 82.

[22] Dyreson, Making the American Team.

[23]‘Race Questions at the Olympics’, The Independent 73 (25 July 1912), 214–15.

[24] Oscar Lewis, ‘The Case of American Sport’, The Independent 118 (18 June 1927), 628–30.

[25] Keys highlights the centrality of the Olympic games in American designs on global markets. ‘Spreading Peace, Democracy, and Coca Cola®’, 196.

[26] Frederick T. Birchall, ‘Germany Realized Hopes in Olympics’, New York Times, 16 Aug. 1936; ‘Final Point Tabulation in the Olympic Games’, New York Times, 17 Aug. 1936; ‘OLYMPICS: Germany, Unofficial World Champions; US Second’, News-Week, 22 Aug. 1936, 20–21; ‘Olympic Games (Cont'd)’, Time, 17 Aug. 1936, 37–40 and 24 Aug. 1936, 56–60.

[27] American Olympic Association, ‘Minutes of the Quadrennial Meeting of the American Olympic Association’, Willard Hotel, Washington, DC, 22 Nov. 1922, box 5069, State Department Records Division, Record Group 59 (Hereafter RG 59), National Archives and Record Administration II, College Park, Maryland (hereafter NACP); O'Connor, ‘Fencing and the Olympics’, 25.

[28] Robinson, ‘England and the Olympic Games’, 415.

[29] A.B. Coffman to Henry Morse, 13 July 1923, Sporting Goods – Olympic Games, 1923–1931 File, box 849, Records of the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, General Records of the Department of Commerce, Record Group 151 (hereafter RG 151), NACP.

[30] A.B. Coffman to Herbert Hoover, 24 March 1923, Sporting Goods – General, 1923–1931 File, box 849, RG 151, NACP.

[31] On Hoover, the Commerce Department, and the modernization of American economic policy see Brandes, Herbert Hoover and Economic Diplomacy; Clements, Hoover, Conservation, and Consumerism; Murray, The Politics of Normalcy; Wilson, American Business and Foreign Policy; Wilson, Herbert Hoover.

[32] Herbert Hoover to A.B. Coffman, 3 April 1923; Henry Morse to Mr. Emmet, 30 March 1923, Sporting Goods – General, 1923–1931 File, box 849, RG 151, NACP.

[33] A.B. Coffman to Henry Morse, 13 July 1923; E.J. Breyere to Mr. North, 19 July 1923; Henry Morse to A.B. Coffman, 20 July 1923; Walter L. Miller to the Latin American Division, 1 Aug. 1923; Questionnaire No. 84, Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, n.d.; Sporting Goods – General, 1923–1931 File, box 849, RG 151, NACP.

[34] Walter L. Miller, memos to the Editorial Division, the Eastern European Division, the Western European Division, the Far Eastern Division, 1 Aug. 1923; U.S. Department of State, memo, to the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, 15 Aug. 1923; Sporting Goods – General, 1923–1931 File, box 849, RG 151, NACP.

[35] US Department of Commerce, European Market for Sporting and Athletic Goods, 1–30; Market for Athletic Goods in Canada and Newfoundland, 1–13; Latin American Market for Sporting and Athletic Goods, 1–34; Far Eastern Market for Sporting and Athletic Goods, 1–30; Market for Sporting and Athletic Goods in Africa and Near East, 1–13.

[36] US Department of Commerce, European Market for Sporting and Athletic Goods, ii.

[37] US Department of Commerce, European Market for Sporting and Athletic Goods; Market for Athletic Goods in Canada and Newfoundland; Latin American Market for Sporting and Athletic Goods; Far Eastern Market for Sporting and Athletic Goods; Market for Sporting and Athletic Goods in Africa and Near East. American domination of Olympic competitions in 1920 and 1924 put the United States in a prime position to capitalize on its athletic prowess. Dyreson, ‘Selling American Civilization’; Dyreson, ‘Scripting the American Olympic Story-Telling Formula’; Dyreson, ‘Aggressive America’.

[38] Indeed the reports noted that Canada accounted for 40 per cent of the American export market, totalling $591,000 in sales in 1923. C.J. North described Canada as essentially a suburb of the American republic of consumers in terms of tastes and affluence. ‘In nearly every respect the Canadian market for sporting goods is like that of the United States,’ North averred. If ice hockey and lacrosse were more popular than they were in the US, baseball, American football and basketball were still major Canadian pastimes the Commerce Department's analysts, believed: US Department of Commerce, Market for Athletic Goods in Canada and Newfoundland, 1–13.

[39] Ibid.

[40]US Department of Commerce, Market for Sporting and Athletic Goods in Africa and Near East, 1.

[41] US Department of Commerce, European Market for Sporting and Athletic Goods; Market for Athletic Goods in Canada and Newfoundland; Latin American Market for Sporting and Athletic Goods; Far Eastern Market for Sporting and Athletic Goods; Market for Sporting and Athletic Goods in Africa and Near East.

[42] Tennis returned as a medal sport for the 1988 Olympic games and has been on the Olympic programme since then. Baltzell, Sporting Gentlemen; Engelmann, The Goddess and the American Girl.

[43] Murray, The World's Game, 42–64.

[44] The dominant transnational pattern that emerged from the globalization of sport was the worldwide spread of the notion of using sport to define and promote nationalism rather than the erosion of national fervour through some common fascination with sport. Dyreson, ‘Globalizing the Nation-Making Process’.

[45] See especially, Markovits and Hellerman, Offside; Foer, How Soccer Explains the World; Szymanski and Zimbalist, National Pastime.

[46] 1. The US men's swimming and diving teams dominated medal competitions in 1920, 1924, and 1928. In 1932 and 1936 the Japanese men's swimming team beat the US in the medal count although the US still dominated diving. The US women's swimming and diving teams dominated Olympic contests in 1920, 1924, 1928, and 1932. In 1936, Holland won more medals in women's swimming than the US although American women still dominated diving.

[47] US Department of Commerce, European Market for Sporting and Athletic Goods, 8, 10, 13, 16, 22–4, 27, 29.

[48] US Department of Commerce, Market for Athletic Goods in Canada and Newfoundland, 4, 9.

[49] US Department of Commerce, Latin American Market for Sporting and Athletic Goods, 7, 17, 24, 25, 27.

[50] US Department of Commerce, Far Eastern Market for Sporting and Athletic Goods, 2–4, 29; Market for Sporting and Athletic Goods in Africa and Near East, 4, 6, 9.

[51] US Department of Commerce, European Market for Sporting and Athletic Goods; Market for Athletic Goods in Canada and Newfoundland; Latin American Market for Sporting and Athletic Goods; Far Eastern Market for Sporting and Athletic Goods; Market for Sporting and Athletic Goods in Africa and Near East.

[52] E.G. Holt, memos to H.B. Canby, the Crawford, McGregor, Canby Company; W. Cunningham, Worthington Ball Company; Wright and Ditson; Gale Shedd, Jr., Seamless Rubber Company; D.D.F. Yard, Pennsylvania Rubber Company of America, Inc.; W.W. Mills, Secretary, St Mungo Manufacturing Company of America; J.T. Rodgers, Hillerich & Bradsby Co.; R.B. Caranaby, Huntingdon Manufacturing Co.; C.C. Case, manager, United States Rubber Co.; I.L. Miller, secretary, Faultless Rubber Company; A.J. Reach Company, 24 Jan. 1924; Julius Klein to Sporting Goods Dealer, 24 Jan. 1924; E.G. Holt, memos to J.E. Smith, Pennsylvania Rubber Co. of America, Inc.; F. Lawrence, A.G. Spalding & Brothers; J.T. Rodgers, Hillerich & Bradsby Co.; E.C. Conlin, golf ball sales manager; I.L. Miller, Faultless Rubber Co.; R.B. Carnaby, Huntingdon Manufacturing Co., 29 Jan. 1925; Walter J. Donnelly to US Department of Commerce, 25 April 1925; Sinclair Graham, editor and manager, The Cuba Review, to US Department of Commerce, 18 June 1924; Warren L. Hoagland to The Cuba Review, 20 June 1924; W.F. Saunders to Warren L. Hoagland, 14 July 1924; F. Lawrence to P.L. Palmerton, 1 Dec. 1924; Harvey A. Sweetser to US Department of Commerce, 10 Jan. 1925; T.L. Gaukel to A. Heath Onthank, 23 June 1925; A. Heath Onthank to T.L. Gaukel, 27 June 1925; T.L. Gaukel to A. Heath Onthank, 4 September 1925; K. Mandell & Company to US Department of Commerce, 16 Sept. 1925; Thaddeus S. Dayton to J.M. Calvin, 20 Feb. 1928; J.M. Calvin to Thaddeus S. Dayton, 1 March 1928; Sporting Goods – General, 1923–1931 File, box 849, RG 151, NACP.

[53] The $1,581,000 figure is from the last report in the global survey. US Department of Commerce, Market for Sporting and Athletic Goods in Africa and Near East, ii.

[54] Starr, Material Dreams: Southern California through the 1920s; Starr, Endangered Dreams: The Great Depression in California.