Producer and lifelong football fanatic John Davis was long interested in the story of the first African-American who won the Heisman Trophy and challenged long-held prejudices of Americans in the early 1960s. After Davis read writer Robert Gallagher’s book “Ernie Davis: The Elmira Express,” he acquired the rights to the property and began the search for a screenwriter who would do justice to this singular tale of triumph over tragedy. John Davis was impressed with Gallagher’s chronicle of the many struggles and inspirational life of a young man who, though challenged with a speech impediment as a child, did his talking on the ball field to fantastic results. The success and accolades Ernie won at such a young age were achieved by few others…and were legendary to sports aficionados. His young life reads like a sports legend. While only in high school, Ernie secured four letters in baseball, was named as three-time all-conference basketball player and led his team to a stellar 66-1 record in his final 67 games. He was such a stunning talent that his soon-to-be college coach, Syracuse University’s Ben Schwartzwalder, would make approximately 30 visits to Ernie’s high school during his junior and senior year to watch the recruit in action. Ernie became the only black player on the Orangemen’s 1958 freshman team and, while at SU, earned his stripes as a two-time All- American player. In 1959, he helped lead the team to the first undefeated season in that school’s history. In 1961, as a senior at the school, he became the first black to with the Heisman Trophy. And that was only the beginning.
“When I was a young boy growing up in Colorado,” recalls John Davis, “I was a fan of a player named Floyd Little who had followed Ernie Davis to Syracuse. We were always aware of this legend, this great player who could have been—Ernie Davis—but who was an extraordinary individual. He generated a tremendous amount of optimism around him.” But it wasn’t just about the sports story. The producer felt the historic backdrop of Ernie’s life, the burgeoning civil rights movement, would make for an engaging drama. The more he researched, the more Davis discovered an amazing young man who accomplished, even in a brief lifetime, more than most—an inspirational figure to his country. “He was a black man at a college when there were maybe two other black men playing football at that college,” Davis continues. “It was a time of racial segregation. You go down and play the colleges down in the South and there’d be no black players. It was at a time when we were just learning in this country to accept black men—whether politically or athletically or intellectually—and Ernie was an ambassador of that change.”
Screenwriter Charles Leavitt admits that he was not a huge football fan before beginning this work. Of his interest in penning the screenplay, he says: “What really drew me to The Express was something Jim Brown said about Ernie Davis, and what it was like playing college ball as an African-American in that era, the late ’50s. I’m paraphrasing, but Brown said that ‘Black America had adopted two faces: one face was dealing with the world and one face was what we dealt with behind closed doors.’ “It struck me that this was the window through which to tell Ernie’s story,” Leavitt adds. “There was this passive institutional racism that existed throughout college sports at the time, even at liberal bastions like Syracuse University. And yet, outside those ivy walls, the civil rights movement was budding. There were winds of change in the air that swept up both Ernie Davis and coach Ben Schwartzwalder.”
When looking for the right filmmaker to helm the drama, John Davis searched for “a director who understood character, emotion and story.” He found that in Gary Fleder, whose previous feature films include such successful thrillers as Runaway Jury, Kiss the Girls and Don’t Say a Word. Davis believed Fleder could honor Ernie’s story and simultaneously lend it the dramatization necessary for a movie. “Gary understands all of that, and it was a real coup to get him on this project,” commends the producer. Fleder was interested in the project that would allow him to explore the life of the man behind the legend of The Elmira Express. While he agreed with his producer that this was about more than great football, he wasn’t sure the screenplay was ready. Fleder remembers, “John sent me a script of The Express that I liked and didn’t love, but I was intrigued. A few months after I read the script, I found this 1989 article on Ernie Davis from Sports Illustrated that put the story in context of Ernie coming after Jim Brown, as well as the country and the civil rights movement heating up.”
That was just what it would take to clinch his signing on for the film. Fleder understood that the film needed to tackle the more subtle forms of racism that allowed a black man to play sports but not enjoy the same civil liberties as his white teammates. “All of a sudden, I found a new story of Ernie Davis: Ernie in the context of what was happening in the country, as well as what was happening before him,” Fleder continues. “That became the key to dramatize his story. Ernie wasn’t some complicated, bad guy. He wasn’t Jake LaMotta from Raging Bull; he was a really sweet kid. I felt that there was a much deeper story to be told than what was told in some previous drafts.”
With a renewed interest in the project, the director worked with Leavitt and Davis to develop the script into a version the team felt honored Ernie’s story and gave an arc that would lend well to film. “There are figures like Ernie that are as important to the culture as Jackie Robinson,” Fleder says. “What I love about the story is it feels like the way Seabiscuit does; it’s this one little, beautiful story in the big canvas of the Great Depression. In the civil rights movement you have a lot of great stories, and Ernie’s is a great story against that canvas.” Invaluable to shaping the film was the assistance of former Syracuse and Cleveland Browns star running back (and Ernie Davis mentor), 1956 Syracuse alum and No. 44 legend, Jim Brown. Brown met with Fleder early on in the development process and was able to not only help mold the football and civil rights aspects of the story, but to help Fleder understand the personal elements of his good friend Ernie Davis.
About their many conversations, Fleder remembers: “Jim Brown said it best when he told me, ‘Ernie Davis could live in a black world and the white world pretty seamlessly. He didn’t threaten people. He had this gift of getting along with everyone, beyond race, and that’s a compelling trait. As Brown put it, ‘Ernie was a peacemaker.’” With the core team secured, the studio and filmmakers would begin to cast the players of Ernie Davis’ life…on and off the field.
Coaches and Halfbacks: Casting the Film
Casting The Express was no easy task for director Fleder and producer Davis. They would need to find an actor who could both embody the indomitable spirit of Ernie Davis and perform as a stellar athlete. Fleder remembers: “About a year and a half before I made the film, I had this general meeting with an actor named Rob Brown, who I’d seen in Finding Forrester. He was this big, strapping, handsome kid, but also had an uncanny resemblance to Ernie Davis…very similar face, with these eyes that looked right through you. I immediately connected him to Ernie.” When the project came about, Fleder brought in Brown, a performer who had both solid acting and sports experience. “He had that glow,” the director offers, “but here’s the great thing about Rob. He’s a football player. He played Division III ball at Amherst and is a great athlete. We actually put him on the field, had him run around and videotaped him. It was extraordinary. He’s got that grace.”
When he accepted the role, Brown conducted his own extensive research into the life of Ernie Davis. “Everybody was fairly consistent in describing how saintly he was,” he says. “Usually it’s that kind of fairy tale, then somewhere in the research you find that it’s different. That didn’t happen.” Brown was particularly moved by the piece in Leavitt’s screenplay in which the Syracuse team, while traveling by bus on its way to the Cotton Bowl, stops near Dallas at a gas station. Because Ernie Davis grew up in the Northeast, his experiences with racism were different than the “separate but equal” laws of the South. But football led him to several Southern campuses, opening his eyes to what was going on in the rest of the country. “That’s pretty much Ernie’s staunch realization of Jim Crow,” offers Brown of the scene. “There are two water fountains—one for whites and the other for blacks. For Ernie to go down South and see something so blatant, so in his face…it’s a point where he had to deal with it.”
For the part of Ernie’s powerful mentor Coach Schwartzwalder, the filmmakers would look to an actor who had a number of dramatic sports films on his resume, Dennis Quaid. The performer’s extensive work in this genre includes seminal movies such as Everybody’s All-American, Any Given Sunday, Tough Enough and The Rookie. Producer Davis appreciated that Quaid could embody Schwartzwalder, a coach he believes “loved sports, and really understood football and coaches.” Davis adds, “In this movie, we have a coach who is a great teacher and a player who needs to be taught…a player who is bound for greatness and a coach who is almost there himself. With that chemistry, Dennis got it. He just instinctually understands these kinds of characters.” Schwartzwalder, a veteran, trained and treated his team like a military unit.
Despite nurturing three All-American black football players on his teams, he was not necessarily a poster child for civil rights. Quaid did extensive research into the life of Schwartzwalder when he accepted the part. Of his on-screen counterpart, he notes: “I would call him a man of his times. This wasn’t the Deep South; it was New York, and all that Ben really cared about happened on that football field.” Still, the prejudices Ernie Davis faced were not unfamiliar territory to Houstonnative Quaid. He recalls: “I remember, well into the ’60s, the city had ‘white’ and what they called ‘colored’ bathrooms and drinking fountains. Black people had to sit in the balcony at theaters, had their own concession stand; everything was separated.” Chosen as Ernie’s roommate and fellow player Jack Buckley was Omar Benson Miller, also seen this season in Spike Lee’s World War II drama Miracle at St. Anna. Buckley helps Davis acclimate to the culture at SU and navigate the unspoken rules of the day. Of their relationship, Miller offers, “We forge a friendship that takes us beyond just the field. It’s a brotherly connection where we really become close. I share Ernie’s ups and downs, and he shares mine. We pick up for each other in fights, and he helps me get in shape and become a better player.”
Selected to portray Jim Brown was Darrin Dewitt Henson. Henson had known the football legend—who also appeared in Any Given Sunday, opposite Dennis Quaid— since they worked together on the Showtime television drama Soul Food. Henson, who bears an uncanny resemblance to the player, looks up to him as a friend, mentor and humanitarian. He looked forward to bringing his mentor’s story to the screen, specifically exploring Brown’s experiences in a “segregated America during his college years at Syracuse.”
Despite the tension-filled relationship between Brown and Schwartzwalder when both were at Syracuse, the coach was able to enlist Brown’s support in recruiting Davis from his high school in Elmira, New York. Of the influence that Jim Brown played in Ernie Davis’ life, Henson explains: “Jim could see that Ernie had extraordinary talent. Jim’s sense of brotherhood and leadership qualities afforded him the opportunity to help Davis understand that, no matter what social and racial differences he and Schwartzwalder may have, the coach would help make him a great football player.” Finally, Charles S. Dutton was asked to come aboard as Willie “Pops” Davis, Ernie’s beloved grandfather. As Dutton explains, Pops was “the grandfather who raised him and was in and out of his life. He raised him for a portion of his life and then Ernie went back with his mother, but he always talked to Ernie. Pops was like the father Ernie never really had. Early on, his grandfather saw in him a light that was coming off of this kid, which meant that he was special and that he would achieve greatness in life. He tried to get him to realize that and keep him on that path of destiny.”
Of his decision to choose Dutton, Fleder states: “You feel Dutton is the patriarch. I thought he was a perfect bit of casting—the right age, the right feeling, the right persona to play Ernie’s grandfather. He brings the humor and the gravitas, and that twinkle and edge. I want to feel that what Ernie takes from his Pops is one thing: If you push him too far, he will lash out and he will take what’s right.” The filmmakers rounded out the principal cast with Aunjanue Ellis as Ernie’s mother Marie Davis; Elizabeth Shivers as grandmother Elizabeth Davis; Clancy Brown as Schwartzwalder’s second-in-command at Syracuse, Coach Roy Simmons; Saul Rubinek as the Cleveland Browns’ owner Art Modell, who makes an $80,000 bid to secure Ernie Davis for his team; Nelsan Ellis as Ernie’s cousin Will Davis, Jr., the man who doesn’t want Ernie to be used as a pawn; and, finally, Nicole Beharie as Ernie’s loving college girlfriend Sarah Ward.
Now that the cast was set, the filmmakers began to re-create the world of Ernie Davis’ youth—from a simple upbringing in the coal-mining town of Uniontown, Pennsylvania, to the fields of Syracuse University where his legend was created. Designing The Express One of the most daunting tasks for any film is to re-create the look and feel of a specific historical era. According to production designer Coates: “I tell my crew that doing a period piece is like going to a foreign country. The clothes are different. The food is different and the graphics have a simplicity or difference to them. We’re trying to bring all of that to the screen like you are really there and not watching a museum piece.”
The designer adds that the passage of time isn’t such a friend to his field. “It gets harder and harder to do period movies—especially in the past 10 years, since so many things are being torn down and modulated.” The production opted to film primarily in Chicago, far from the Northeastern locales where Ernie Davis lived as a child and went to school. The availability of experienced film crew personnel and a large number of period stadiums from which to choose contributed to the selection of Chicago as the primary location. According to Coates, a total of seven different stadiums were used to represent the 12 in The Express.
Producer Davis explains the team’s decision: “We needed a base to operate from because we had a lot of different places to go to and different stadiums to shoot. We went to Syracuse and researched it, but Chicago turned out to be a good approximate for the city. It has lots of period streets, homes and neighborhoods. It gave us 1960s Syracuse—its stadiums and architecture.” For authenticity, the company did briefly lens on the campus of Syracuse University at the end of the production’s schedule. In addition to the physical locations, the cinematic look of the movie took much collaboration between Fleder and Coates, with valuable input from director of photography Kramer Morgenthau and costume designer Abigail Murray. Coates’ concern with the little period details was impressive. He combed available resources in Elmira, Uniontown and Syracuse before resorting to eBay. “For example, I found a little pint milk carton from the university we placed on the coach’s desk along with a little Saltine Warrior bank,” he offers. “These things are very specific and add a regionalism to the movie.”
Of the shooting schedule required for the drama, DP Morgenthau succinctly explains: “There are four visual acts to the film. The first act is when Ernie is very young and living in Uniontown. It was very desaturated, a quasi black-and-white feel to it. Secondly, when he gets to Syracuse, the look changes and there’s much more color and vibrancy. It’s almost like this world is exotic to him. “The third visual act,” the cinematographer continues, “is the Cotton Bowl and that’s a very harsh, unforgiving look. It was almost a bleach-bypass type of approach to it. Bleach bypass is a technique where you do some manipulation to the image to create extreme contrast. The final look to the picture is a return to the rich colorful look. Then slowly, as things develop in his life, the color is drained out of the picture and it returns to the black-and-white feeling that you start with. It’s a visual bookend, if you will.” Beyond the normal efforts to make a period film accurate was the necessity to find and use period-appropriate football clothing and equipment. To complement the world the production designer and director of photography created with Fleder, costume designer Murray would ensure that approximately 90 percent of the clothes were of 50- to 60-year-old vintage.
Ed Hanley, who worked with Murray and served as football wardrobe supervisor with James Spensley, points out the degree of detail that went into the nylon-cotton uniforms and gear that comprised the rest of the film’s clothing. “We had to start from scratch. Primarily, the material for the jerseys is not available and not made today. There was thread available, but not in colors, so we had to put everything together and dye it.” To match the look accurately from the ’50s and early ’60s, the wardrobe department needed to duplicate the older material and style. This required the lengthy process of having several different teams’ jerseys made. Additional work was required, as the NFL clothing and gear were quite different from the collegiate variety.
As players would actually be hitting each other quite hard, safety was a major consideration in what helmet, cleats and shoulder pads could be used. For the football helmets, the production opted for three versions: contemporary helmets used with period face masks, actual 50-year-old helmets used primarily in the background, as well as exact reproductions of helmets from the Syracuse Orangemen and their opponents. In creating the soundscape for the production, Fleder drew inspiration from Martin Scorsese’s classic Raging Bull, which took moviegoers into the ring with the boxers. “Likewise, with The Express,” the director notes, “we wanted to treat the audience to the experience of being on the field with Ernie and the other players: to hear the crowd, the body hits and the breaths, just as the players themselves might have heard them.”
He enlisted the help of supervising sound editor SCOTT MARTIN GERSHIN to make this a reality. Gershin believed it was crucial to not only cover the sonic reality of life on and off the field during the years in which Ernie lived, but the spirit of the battle and the challenges that Ernie faced growing up. “Using the tools of dialogue, sound design and music, we wanted to help tell Ernie’s story,” the sound mixer explains. “We made choices during each game to use sound to enhance the conflict, whether it was playing the scene realistically or creating the hyper reality of a single breath as a player concentrates on the ball. This extended to a stampede of horses as the players raced to catch the runner, the sound of a locomotive smashing through the line of scrimmage, the sound of getting hit and having the wind knocked out of you or the use of silence to create a feeling of loss. “It was important for us to give the audience an aural experience and place them in the center of the conflict and, at times, the feeling of accomplishment,” he continues. “We went to great lengths in re-creating and recording the sound of football during the time Ernie played—based on the materials used and the way they use them. The callouts of the players and the crowds helped to create the sound and intensity of an era.”
When considering composition for the drama, Fleder selected noted composer Mark Isham to design the original music. The director was adamant that the score for The Express would possess the evocative, emotional quality Isham had shown in such landmark films as Crash, as well as noted sports hero dramas including Miracle and Invincible. Fleder notes, “For The Express, I wanted to use music that’s very Americana. The great learning curve of making this film has been that we’re telling not just a black or white story, but an American one. Mark nails that with his score.” All design detail aside, the production knew it was meaningless without a story the crew believed in telling. Morgenthau sums: “Football can be a metaphor for many things. For Ernie, it was a vehicle to express himself without words and in ways he would never have had an opportunity, had he not been such a talented player.”
Be Like No. 44: Filming Actor-Athletes
Getting in the fighting shape necessary to play the team that won Syracuse its first and only national football championship would take training available only from the toughest of coaches and the savviest of trainers. For this picture at least, Dennis Quaid was content to work from the sidelines. Of tackling the role of leader of the team over teammate, he laughs, “It’s a lot easier being the coach than the player. That’s what I like about this. You don’t have to suit up every day and get your arm sore. You stand on the sidelines and scream.” Fleder and Davis enlisted football movie veteran ALLAN GRAF with a two-fold assignment: find and field a group of top football players and then, as second-unit director, film them playing the games. “Allan Graf had done two of my favorite football movies, Friday Night Lights and Any Given Sunday,” commends Fleder. “He’s got a great eye, so when he shoots it, it’s just wonderfully photographed. You’re seeing real, gritty, scrappy football.”
Graf, a former University of Southern California player, began his film career posing as a double for infamous Chicago Bear Dick Butkus. Graf notes, “The Express was different from other football movies I’ve done, because I’ve never done one in this period. I did a lot of research on blocking technique and had to teach the guys how to block with their shoulders more. They didn’t block with their heads in those days, and they weren’t allowed to use their hands as much.” Two other discrepancies the second-unit director/stunt and football coordinator is quick to point out are mass and attitude of that era’s teams: “The size of the players was a lot smaller then, and I did tone it down a bit. Our biggest guy is 270.” He adds, “Also, after running the ball, they used to hand it to the refs. There wasn’t a lot of rah-rah—no high fives or spiking the ball. Those guys were more polite.”
One of the coups of the production was acquiring an actual Syracuse Orangemen playbook from Ernie’s era. Using that document as a blueprint, Fleder and Graf were able to teach, and then film, the exact plays that Davis and his teammates executed during the various game sequences that brought them national acclaim. As a starting receiver and linebacker for Amherst, Rob Brown had a head start on most others actors on the field. After being cast in The Express, Brown lost approximately 30 pounds to lean up for the role of Ernie Davis. “I prepared thoroughly, both physically and mentally,” says the performer. Both his director and second-unit director were impressed at his level of understanding of the game, which allowed them to work with him in more ways than if a stunt double had to do all his football scenes.
The majority of the gridiron action in The Express focuses on Ernie Davis’ years at Syracuse and, in particular, the national championship team of the 1959 season that culminates with the hard-fought Cotton Bowl game against the University of Texas in Dallas. To date, this remains the only national championship football team for Syracuse. In addition to the pressure of the national title, the Cotton Bowl game took on a tense racial challenge between the teams. Syracuse, with its three black players, was the subject of taunts both on and off the field in the emotionally charged game. Re-creating that event—filmed at Northwestern’s Ryan Field—accurately took keen collaboration from the entire production team, especially between Coates and Graf. The production designer recounts, “We had an interesting challenge at Northwestern because they have a Wildcats statue on the field and it was not
removable.
So, I had to come up with elements that made sense that could cover the statue. Also, the Cotton Bowl sits inside Fair Park, which is the largest collection of art deco buildings west of the Mississippi.” Complementing the scene, the entrance to the stadium was filmed at a National Guard Amory in south Chicago, which captured the art deco feel. Too, the scoreboard used for the game is an exact replica of the Cotton Bowl scoreboard of that day. In replicating game play, Fleder and Graf studied existing film footage to ensure accuracy of the plays. Davis, who had injured his leg in practice, became both a physical and racially verbal target for the fans and players of the Texas Longhorns. The tension culminated in an all-out brawl between the players on the field, which was carefully duplicated by the production. It must be noted that Davis led Syracuse to a 23-14 victory in that game, scoring two touchdowns, garnering two two-point extra points and intercepting a pass that led to an Orangemen touchdown. One of these touchdowns was a then-Cotton Bowl record for a pass play. He was awarded the Most Valuable Player for the game but was unable to receive the honor when Cotton Bowl officials explained that only white players could attend the annual banquet. In solidarity with their brother, the Syracuse team refused to attend the banquet.
Ernie Davis died on May 18, 1963, from complications due to acute myelogenous leukemia—before taking the professional football field. He was only 23 years old. His legacy was far more than the school record of 6.6 yards per carry, 35 touchdowns and 3,414 total all-purpose yards he made while at Syracuse. As he lied in state in Elmira, more than 10,000 men and women paid respect as they walked by his coffin in one day. That was only the beginning of how much he would matter to the history books. Of the project begun so long ago, producer Davis reflects, “This movie is about accepting yourself no matter who you are. No matter how talented you are physically or intellectually, at the end of the day, we have to find meaning in ourselves. And what Ernie Davis came to understand was that he actually could find meaning in a short life and make a big contribution outside of that.”
Rob Brown summarizes how much of the cast and crew felt while working on the film: “I sit and complain about things that I go through, but it’s nothing like the Cotton Bowl. He went through that brawl and all of the negative energy towards him simply because he was black and in the South. I’m glad he did it for me, but it’s sad that he did have to experience it.” Concludes director Fleder about what he discovered in his foray into this genre: “At its core, The Express is a story of the first African-American winner of the Heisman Trophy, but if I have done my job well, it also illustrates how a young man helped change a culture and helped change a coach named Ben Schwartzwalder.”
