The Spirit of Notre Dame (The Movie)

Not long ago a young man who was (very) unfamiliar with Notre Dame asked an innocent question. “You know that movie, Rudy?” he said. “Is that what made Notre Dame famous?”

After a brief (and admittedly, somewhat stunned) silence, the short answer was “No. Actually, Notre Dame has been pretty well known since at least the 1920s. In fact, Rudy wasn’t even the first Hollywood movie made about Notre Dame.”

Rudy, the story of an underdog who dreamed of playing for the Fighting Irish, made its appearance on movie screens in 1993. Some people may be familiar with the second Hollywood motion picture focused on Notre Dame, Knute Rockne – All American, which premiered in 1940 and told the story of the legendary football coach. Fewer people still may be aware of the first, The Spirit of Notre Dame.

Released by Universal Pictures in 1931, The Spirit of Notre Dame tells the story of the fictional Bucky O’Brien, a high school football star from small-town Hookerville High School, who arrives at Notre Dame brimming with confidence about his abilities on the gridiron. The promising but cocky running back must be taken down a notch more than once during the course of the story, first as a freshman on the practice field, and later after he finds success on the field and begins to believe his own press clippings. Ultimately, the head football coach decides to bench Bucky until he finally learns the team comes first. Bucky does get a chance to redeem himself -- and demonstrate the true spirit of Notre Dame -- when the coach puts him back on the field at a crucial moment in the biggest game of the year.

Part of what made the film fascinating to college football fans at the time was the appearance of “real-life” Notre Dame football stars in the movie. In the days before television, when radio was king, fans knew their football heroes mostly through radio and newspaper coverage, and the occasional flickering newsreel. The Spirit of Notre Dame gave fans a chance to see some of the most celebrated football stars of the era, larger-than-life on the silver screen. The film featured all four of the famed Four Horsemen of Notre Dame (Don Miller, Jim Crowley, Elmer Layden, and Harry Stuhldreher). Adam Walsh, an All American center and captain of Rockne’s 1924 national championship team, also appeared in the movie. In a couple of comedy scenes, Frank Carideo, a quarterback who played on the last two teams coached by Knute Rockne (he was 19-0 as the starting quarterback), nearly steals the show.

The Spirit of Notre Dame was dedicated to Knute Rockne, and opens with a tribute to the great coach, including film footage of Rockne himself. Rockne had been killed in a plane crash several months before the film was released (in fact, the crash occurred as he was flying to Los Angeles to participate in the production of the film). The coach in the film is played by J. Farrell MacDonald, who is never identified by name in the film. According to a New York Times review published at the time, MacDonald “gives a splendidly convincing performance.”

The movie starred Lew Ayres as Bucky O’Brien. Ayres had become a star in 1930 in the role of the disillusioned German soldier Paul Baumer in All Quiet on the Western Front, and would later star as Dr. Kildare in a series of nine films from 1938 to 1942 that became the model for countless hospital dramas on both the big and small screen. A very young Andy Devine, who had only performed in bit parts in silent films until then, and would one day become one of America’s favorite sidekicks in films and T.V. westerns and ultimately receive a shout-out in a Jimmy Buffet song (“…an autographed picture of Andy Devine”), appears in his first major role in a “talkie.” As the fictional Notre Dame football player Ernest “Truck” McCall, Devine provides comic relief and eventually inspiration to the team, fighting for his life from a hospital bed while his team plays the big game against Army.

The film also includes a number of scenes of high-spirited college pranks – in one, a student is carried to and thrown into a lake on the Notre Dame campus (a not uncommon occurrence through the years). The scene begs an interesting question: did the lake-throwing scene simply reflect a student tradition that was already in place at Notre Dame? Or, did the scene in The Spirit of Notre Dame begin a new one? The answer to that question may be lost forever in the history of life in the residence halls of Notre Dame.