 Morris andLeni Riefenstahl in1936 | ||||||||||||
| Personal information | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Full name | Glenn Edgar Morris | |||||||||||
| Born | June 18, 1912 Simla, Colorado, U.S. | |||||||||||
| Died | January 31, 1974 (aged 61) Palo Alto, California, U.S. | |||||||||||
| Alma mater | Colorado State | |||||||||||
| Height | 1.88 m (6 ft 2 in) | |||||||||||
| Weight | 84 kg (185 lb) | |||||||||||
| Military career | ||||||||||||
| Allegiance |  United States | |||||||||||
| Branch |  United States Navy | |||||||||||
| Unit | Pacific Theater | |||||||||||
| Conflicts | World War II | |||||||||||
| Sport | ||||||||||||
| Sport | Athletics | |||||||||||
Event | Decathlon | |||||||||||
| Club | Denver Athletic Club | |||||||||||
| Achievements and titles | ||||||||||||
| Personalbest(s) | 100 m – 10.6 (1936) 400 m – 49.4 (1936) 110 mH – 14.6 (1936) 400 mH – 544 (1934) LJ – 6.97 m (1936) SP – 14.45 m (1936) DT – 43.10 m (1936) JT – 56.06 m (1936) Decathlon – 7254 (1936)[1][2] | |||||||||||
Medal record
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Glenn Edgar Morris (June 18, 1912 – January 31, 1974) was aU.S.track and fieldathlete. He won agold medal in the Olympicdecathlon in1936, setting new world and Olympic records.[3] He attended Colorado A&M — now known asColorado State University — and playedfootball as well astrack and field. He was also an occasional actor, he portrayedTarzan inTarzan's Revenge.
Born on his family's homestead farm nearSimla, Colorado, Morris was the second of seven children. A natural athlete whose record in the 220-yard (201 m) hurdles stood for forty years at his high school, Morris entered Colorado Agricultural College (nowColorado State University) atFort Collins in 1930, and became a star athlete, excelling in several sports and being namedAll-American in track and field. Working as an assistant coach and automobile salesman after graduation in 1934 (with degrees in economics and sociology),[4] Morris began training as a decathlon athlete in hopes of competing in the 1936 Olympics.[3]
In theU.S. Olympic track and field trials in1936, Morris scored a new world record of 7,880 points, earning himNewsweek's sobriquet "the nation's new Iron Man." Morris broke his own world record, and the Olympic record, in theBerlin games, with a decathlon score of 7,900 points.[3] It was said thatAdolf Hitler never left his seat while Morris was competing, and that theGermans thereafter offered Morris $50,000 to stay in Germany and appear in sports films, an offer Morris refused.[4]
Germanfilmmaker anddocumentarianLeni Riefenstahl(1902–2003) claimed in her memoirs that during and after the 1936 Olympics, she had an affair with Morris, which she ended because of a very disparaging report about him that was given to her by agraphologist.[5] Riefenstahl also claimed that the affair began when, after winning thegold medal, he tore off her blouse and kissed her breasts, in front of the audience of 100,000 people.[6] In reality, Morris merely received his medal and laurel from Hitler's mistressEva Braun in an otherwise standard ceremony.[7] Part two of Riefenstahl's filmOlympia included a segment documenting Morris's decathlon triumph.
Morris' success at the 1936 Olympics resulted in a brief flurry of fame, including aNew York City ticker-tape parade and a statewide Colorado celebration. He received the 1936James E. Sullivan Award as the top amateur athlete in the United States, and he had a short stint as anNBC radio commentator.[1][3]
In November 1937,Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer released the ten-minute short filmDecathlon Champion: The Story of Glenn Morris, depicting how he trained for and won the decathlon event. Morris portrayed himself in the film, before becoming the fourth Olympic athlete to playTarzan. He appeared in only one Tarzan film,Tarzan's Revenge (1938), an inexpensive independent film produced bySol Lesser and released byTwentieth Century Fox. Reviews for the film cited both the silliness of the production and the exaggerated acting of the theatrically untrained Morris (though Variety called him "a highly acceptable Tarzan").[8] After only one minor additional film role, in the 1938 comedyHold That Co-Ed, Morris left the movie business forever.[citation needed]
Morris played four games with theDetroit Lions of theNational Football League (NFL) in1940 before injury curtailed this new career,[7][9] then worked as an insurance agent.[10]
DuringWorld War II, he served as anofficer in theU.S. Navy and was stationed inthe Pacific, commanding amphibious-assaultlanding craft.[7] Reportedly wounded, Morris was treated forpsychological-trauma issues and spent several months in a naval hospital.[3]
Following his release from duty, Morris worked for a dozen years in construction and as a steel rigger for theAtomic Energy Commission. Subsequently, he may have worked off and on as a parking lot attendant, and he was rumored to have been an alcoholic.[3] He lived out his last years mostly inMenlo Park, California, and as a patient inveterans hospitals. Too ill to attend his induction into theColorado Sports Hall of Fame in 1967, where he was proclaimed "the world's greatest athlete," Morris nevertheless donated his Olympic gold medal to the Hall.[3] The medal was subsequently given, along with Morris's other memorabilia, to Simla High School, which gives an annual Glenn Morris Award for athletic and academic excellence;[7] the school, in turn, donated the medal in April 2011 to Colorado State University, the successor to Morris' college alma mater, where it is displayed in the Iris and Michael Smith Alumni Building.[11][12]
At age 61 in 1974, Morris died of congestive heart failure "and other complications" at the veterans' hospital inPalo Alto, California,[13] and was buried inSkylawn Memorial Park in nearbySan Mateo.[14]
He was married from 1937 to 1940 to Charlotte Edwards, whom he had met in college.[3][7]
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| Preceded by | Men's Decathlon World Record Holder August 8, 1936 – June 30, 1950 | Succeeded by |
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