Go Man Go (1954) User Reviews

Perfect Symmetry

[sol1218 · 7/10 · 29 February 2008]

(Slight Spoilers) True story of a sports team that has become, in over 118 countries, a legend in their own time Abe Saperstein's, Dane Clark, amazing barnstorming powerhouse basketball team the "Harlem Globetrotters".

Since Abe Saperstein, who passed away in 1966, founded and organized the team the Globetrotters have run up an incredible record of over 22,000 victories against only 345 defeats, an over 98% winning percentage, in some 80 years since they came into existence back in 1928/29. At one point the Globetrotters had a 8,829 winning streak, which stretched almost 25 years, that was eventually snapped on September 12, 1995 in Vienna Austria by the Kareem Abdul Jabbar All-Stars.

The movie goes into the early days of the spectacular basketball team which was anything but spectacular. Going from one small town to another the Globetrotters played semi-pro and third rate basketball teams which they had no trouble at all beating. Considered a bunch of clowns by the sport writers and both collage and professional basketball team owners Abe had to do his best to convince the sports world that his team was in fact the powerhouse that its record, sometimes going through an entire season without a single loss, showed that it was.

The film "Go Man Go" was fortunate to have in it besides a young and up and coming 27 year-old Sidney Poitier, plying Globetrotter regular Inman Jackson, as well as three real life Harlem Globtrotters in its cast: Reese "Goose" Tatum "Sweetwater" Clifton and the only surviving member of the trio Marques Hayes. It was Marques Haynes's amazing ball control, in dribbling the basketball for minutes on end, that allowed his fellow teammates to rest. This while at the same time exhausting the opposition players in trying to get the ball away from him.

We also have a little romantic interlude in the film with Abe meeting at a Kenosha Wisconsin beauty contest no less his future wife the former Sylvia Franklin, Patricia Breslin, who came in second best. Still Sylvia was #1 not only with Abe and his parents Pa & Ma Saperstein, Anatol Winogradoff & Celia Brodkin, but the Globetrotters as well. It was a well meaning and determined Sylvia that kept Abe from quiting the team that he founded when those in high positions in professional and collage basketball tried to blackball him and his Globtrotters out of existence.

With the Globetrotters making such a splash on the sports front pages the big cheese of the professional basketball leagues James Willoughby, Bram Nussem, was forced to give the team a shot in the Basketball Playoffs which were in fact thought up by Abe! Going up the ladder as all the opposition folded before their unique brand, clownish but skillful and exciting ball handling and shooting, of basketball the Globetrotters were now in the final game of the playoffs against the highly touted, and expected to win, Chicago Majors.

The last ten or so minutes of the movie "Go Man Go" is pure magic with the bigger then life Harlem Globetrotters behind during the entire game coming back, from a ten point deficit, against the Chicago Majors like in a fictional sports movie. Nail-biting tension and excitement as the come from behind Globetrotters unbelievably pull off an upset to end all upsets in the last dwindling seconds of the game.

P.S Despite their name "Harlem Globetrotters" the Globtrotters didn't play a basketball game in Harlem, in upper Manhattan New York, until 1968! Some 40 years after they were founded and two years after their founder and couch Abe Saperstein passed away!

Not a terrible idea for a film...but really made on the cheap.

[planktonrules · 6/10 · 31 October 2020]

"Go Man Go" is a very low budget film about the early days of the Harlem Globetrotters and their owner/creator, Abe Saperstein. The film stars Dane Clark and Sidney Poitier (before he became famous) but otherwise the actors are mostly small-time actors, unknowns and actual basketball players. The film purports to be the story of the Globetrotters, though how close all this is to the truth, I have no idea.

The game begins with the Globetrotters already in existence and Abe in charge. The film follows them through the lean years, barely getting by (which would also have been true with other basketball teams of the era) and to the time when the team played a legitimate style of basketball and won the world championship.

The story is interesting. What isn't interesting is the extensive use of grainy stock footage. This becomes MUCH worse towards the end, as instead of just briefly showing the big game, it seems to take up a LOT of time with a lot of stock footage. Overall, moderately enjoyable but it left me wishing it was higher budgeted, but considering it's about black athletes and it was made in 1954, it it's actually surprising it was made at all.

The legendary Harlem Globetrotters

[bkoganbing · 5/10 · 18 January 2021]

Not too much in production values got put into this independent film released from United Artists about the early days of the Harlem Globetrotters. A lot of basketball footage narrated by legendary announcers Bill Stern and Marty Glickman.

One thing that does come through is protagonist Abe Saperstein's love of sports and basketball in particular. Dane Clark does a great job in portraying the perpetually boosting Saperstein, promoting his team before they became semi-pro legends.

The Harlem Globetrotters are now a legend combining skill and love the game. Hard to believe that a lot of stuffed shirts in the sports establishment were down on these guys.

Sidney Poitier and Ruby Dee are the only other names you might know in the cast. Poitier plays Clark's assistant and Dee his wife. Note we don't see Sid out on the court, he knew his limitations.

For basketball fans everywhere.

Subdued, overwrought, aspirational, with cool dribbling

[roy-zornow · 19 April 2008]

A charming time-capsule starring another charismatic but forgotten actor, Dane Clark (not the execrable Dane Cook), alongside a young Sidney Poitier, "Go Man Go!" features a bebop score by Slim Galliard, who was a favorite of Jack Kerouac. I wonder what the connection with "On the Road" is -- I remember the phrase "Go Man Go" as an exhortation Sal Paradise shouted out to improvising jazz musicians.

Slim Galliard makes an appearance, playing a piano with his fingers upside down for a small gathering of Globetrotters. I love Kerouac's description of a Galliard concert: '... we went to see Slim Gaillard in a little Frisco nightclub. Slim Gaillard is a tall, thin Negro with big sad eyes who's always saying 'Right-orooni' and 'How 'bout a little bourbon-arooni.' In Frisco great eager crowds of young semi-intellectuals sat at his feet and listened to him on the piano, guitar and bongo drums." "...Then he slowly gets up and takes the mike and says, very slowly, 'Great-orooni ... fine-ovauti ... hello-orooni ... bourbon-orooni ... all-orooni ... how are the boys in the front row making out with their girls-orooni ... orooni ... vauti ... oroonirooni ..." He keeps this up for fifteen minutes, his voice getting softer and softer till you can't hear. His great sad eyes scan the audience." What kills me is "ovauti", it makes sense next to "o-rooni" but it's so weird, where is it coming from? It's perfect though.

That's the 1950's part of this movie, the 1940's part consists of stereotypical interactions between Clark as Abe Saperstein, Bill Stern (as himself) a hard-bitten but honest sportswriter, and the evil Potter-like sports magnate Mr. Willoughby. The Bowery-Boys-style slang they use -- "Hey ya mug! Ya gonna be a chump all your life? Of course you're invited!" -- is the direct precursor of today's crushingly unimaginative board-room Ebonics appropriation: "Quarterly earnings doubled? Girl, go on with your bad self!". It was probably just as hard to listen to back then.

The 1960's part of the movie is best shown in the final scene, Abe Saperstein, arm-in-arm with the Globetrotters, walking triumphantly towards the camera, in a hopeful message of racial healing. Shades of Blackboard Jungle. I can't recall another movie from the 1950's that was this hopeful and unabashed about race. Today's derivative ironic culture cannibalizes sentiment like this.

"Go Man Go" also has something to say about acting. In an early scene real-life Globetrotter "Sweetwater Clifton" speaks some lines about how he likes soda pop (the origin of his nickname). He delivers them woodenly, although with charm. This is the low end of the acting scale.

Raising the bar, Dane Clark as Abe Saperstein, shows real conviction, but he's always hitting something when he acts. "I'm going to get us into big arenas if it's the last thing I do!' (SMACK). It's as if the director fired him up before every scene ("Now this time really mean it!") without thinking what the cumulative effect would be. Clark's "average Joe" always seems to be in a harangue.

The best actor in the movie is Sidney Poitier, in a relatively minor role, who pops up from time-to-time to speak a few impassioned lines. He does so with quiet conviction, and having seen the other actors telegraph and flail, one gets a sense of the star quality of Sidney Poitier.

A couple of minor points about this movie: it is exemplary in showing what I like to call "old-time small basketball court syndrome", action shot in a remarkably cramped gym. Another film that features this is "Angels with Dirty Faces" where the players are dodging trapezes and other non-basketball equipment as they play on a tiny court.

"Go Man Go" made me think of why, although everyone knows Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball, no one knows who did it in the NBA. It turns out that Charles Cooper was the first drafted, Nat Clifton was the first signed, and Earl Lloyd the first to play in a game, all in 1950. Even though it's complicated, I would think this deserves a little more recognition. Is it because basketball is not "America's Game"?

Great roundball history piece !

[masandmcs · 10/10 · 11 January 2002]

What can you say about the Harlem Globetrotters that hasn't already been said? This film is pure basketball history complete with a great story line and some of the best players EVER to play the game! When I viewed this film in the 50's it was my inspiration to play the game. That was nearly fifty years ago and I will NEVER FORGET IT !!!!!