It’s the same everywhere he goes. Not a day passes that Dee Brown isn’t asked about The Dunk, a spontaneous act of showmanship that makes him famous, draws Michael Jordan’s ire, and brings urban sneaker culture one step closer to the mainstream. Mistaken for Shawn Kemp’s little brother during the 1991 NBA Slam Dunk Contest, Brown, an unknown rookie out of Jacksonville, becomes a household name when he takes down Seattle’s “Reign Man” with a jam so original that it ushers in the contest’s prop era, replete with dunkers soaring over cars, teammates, and mascots. Sure, Brown only uses his arm, but when you close your eyes and dab in midair . . .
Pump the brakes: Dab? In midair?
The dunk contest, which begins in 1984, is still something of a novelty when Brown signs on as a late add. He’s 6-foot-1, rail-thin, practically a runt standing next to the muscular, 6-foot-10 Kemp. There are others in the contest—leapers like Blue Edwards, Kenny Smith, Kendall Gill, Otis Smith, Rex Chapman, and Kenny Williams—but the SuperSonics’ precocious man-child is the odds-on favorite. Kemp can leap like The Human Highlight Film and destroy the rim like Chocolate Thunder. Brown? He barely fills out his uniform. Julius Erving is one of the judges on this night. A student of the game, Brown has Erving’s dossier memorized. He knows all about Rucker Park, the Virginia Squires, and the New Jersey Nets. He knows about that sick reverse layup against the Lakers in the 1980 NBA Finals, a scoop shot for the ages. He also understands that while Doc isn’t the first player to levitate, he’s the first to transform dunking into an art form. Erving is Jackson Pollock, the ball his brush, the court his canvas.
“A lot of guys can dunk. Very few leave their mark,” Brown says.
On this night all those years ago, Dee Brown decides to leave his mark.
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Dee Brown’s story is bigger than the night he delivers that jam for the ages. The dunk makes him a star, but there’s more to the Dee Brown mosaic than a singular night in Charlotte midway through his rookie season. That doesn’t keep the haters from dissing Brown’s 12-year career—he doesn’t win a championship, his basketball résumé never fulfills the glitz promised by that dunk contest—but the critics who throw shade fail to grasp the NBA landscape onto which he lands. Everything starts to unravel in Boston when Auerbach’s maneuvering for Len Bias backfires and compounds a year later when the Celtics select Northeastern’s Reggie Lewis, two future cornerstones wiped out in tragic fashion. The C’s still have stars on the roster when Brown arrives via the nineteenth pick in the 1990 NBA Draft, but age and injury limit the effectiveness of all-time players Bird, McHale, and Parish. Brown can’t possibly fill their shoes.
In February 1991, Dee Brown inflated his Reebok Pumps in front of a national audience before scoring a title-winning dunk during the 1991 NBA Slam Dunk Contest.
“People forget what it was like back then,” Brown says. “Those teams in the ’90s struggled to recover from the deaths of Len Bias and Reggie Lewis. The Big Three were breaking down. The team was in decline.”
Welcome to the post-apocalyptic world that is Boston Celtics basketball through much of the ’90s—dark days fueled by tragedy, exacerbated by miserable ownership, and prolonged by a string of forgettable draft busts. Drop Dee Brown into a different era—when the Big Three were going gangbusters—and the Celtics might have another banner hanging from the rafters. That’s not meant to diminish Brown’s legacy in Boston. He epitomizes Celtic Pride during his time with the team, joining a list of uber-legends as team captain. He plays alongside the Big Three, and he’s on the floor during the last game in the Boston Garden. He represents the organization with class while bridging the chasm between Bird and Pierce. Get to know Brown for more than a dunk contest, and it’s easy to see why his light shines brightest during the team’s darkest days.
Jacksonville is hardly a basketball hotbed, but Jax is where this NBA-bound story starts. Brown grows up there auspiciously, which is to say that his isn’t a discourse on hood life.
“I was the oldest of three kids,” Brown begins. “My parents were young when they had me—my mom was 16 and my dad was 17—and they’re still together today. We weren’t from the ghetto, we weren’t hood. Both of my parents worked. I always had a roof over my head, and there was plenty of food to eat, so it wasn’t that story.”
The Browns are a sports family. His dad is a basketball junkie, a rec league baller with instincts he passes down to his son. Dee’s uncles aren’t much older than he is, so it’s like having a pack of big brothers around. They’re always at the park, where Dee learns to pitch, pass, and shoot. Soon he’s playing organized sports year-round.
Dee Brown, lightly recruited on the Division I level, played his college ball at Jacksonville
“Being from Florida, I played whatever sport was in season. I was really good at baseball and football, but basketball was something that I loved.”
Brown doesn’t hone his game on a Jacksonville equivalent to Rucker Park, and those looking to perpetuate the gangsta stereotype are sorely disappointed. He attends the Bolles School, a private college preparatory school with an international reputation for both academic and athletic excellence. More than 50 Olympic swimmers graduate from Bolles. Chipper Jones, the ’99 Major League Baseball MVP, is a freshman when Brown is a senior. Jackie Crosby and Kevin Sack, both Pulitzer Prize winners in journalism, are Bolles alums. Brown is the only African American in his graduating class.
“I got the chance to be around a lot of affluent people that weren’t my color,” he says. “It helped me to see things in a completely different light.”
For Brown, basketball isn’t his only passion.
“Break dancing was big during the ’80s, and I was a breaker,” Brown confesses with a laugh. “I had a cardboard box in my garage, and I had that big boom box with dual cassette decks. I remember taking it to the park and blasting the music as loud as we could, and those batteries would be dead within an hour.
Dee Brown
“Back then, hip-hop was just starting. My high school years were 1983 through 1986. I was listening to the Sugar Hill Gang, Kurtis Blow, and LL Cool J. For me, that whole period was really about the New York rappers because there really weren’t any Florida rappers or hip-hop artists. Heavy D & The Boyz had that album Big Tyme. I wore it out. “We had a group, and we would go to these dance competitions at the local skating rink. We would play basketball all day and break dance at night. I’d listen to the New York rappers and various deejays like DJ Kid Capri. From there I started listening to acts like Public Enemy, Eric B. and Rakim, and Heavy D. Today they are considered old school, but to true fans like me, they are better known as the Godfathers of Rap.”
What the Bolles Experience doesn’t do is give Brown street cred with college recruiters.
“Not a single Division I college was interested in me,” Brown says. “Zero. I was 30th in my graduating class, I had a 3.7 GPA, and I scored 1200 on the SAT, so it wasn’t an academic thing. Florida is a football state, and there weren’t a lot of big-time basketball players coming out of Jacksonville. Bolles was a small, private school with an AA classification, and it was basically all-white, so even though I was one of the best players in the state, I wasn’t on anyone’s radar when Florida basketball prospects were discussed. I only had one scholarship offer coming out of high school. That was an NAIA school, Presbyterian College, in North Carolina.”
Brown decides on a local junior college instead. His plan is simple: Prove that he can play and hope that a D-I school offers him a scholarship. All of that changes late in the summer of ’86.
“Florida holds an annual Olympic-style festival called the Sunshine State Games,” Brown explains. “Other states do something similar—in New York, it’s called the Empire State Games. There are all kinds of events: track and field, swimming, boxing, basketball, and so forth. I went to Lakeland with my high school team and competed against all the top players, including Florida’s Mr. Basketball. I averaged 37 points-per-game and broke the scoring record.
Dee Brown pumps ’em up
“The Thursday before the tournament, I had one offer from an NAIA school. The following Monday, I had 15 Division I scholarship offers. Every major college in the South wanted me because I was still eligible to sign. School was starting in one week, so I had to make a snap decision. Since I was already mentally prepared to stay home and go to school, I signed with Jacksonville University.”
The Dolphins are D-I but barely a blip on the national hoops scene. The school’s most famous baller is Artis Gilmore, a Consensus First-Team All-American in 1971 and a Hall of Famer. Otis Smith (the same Otis Smith in that 1990 dunk contest) is a senior when Brown is a freshman. From 1987–90, Brown carves out his own legacy. He scores 1,503 points, sets the school’s single-season steals record, and leaves with zero regrets.
“Jacksonville was right for me,” he says. “It was a small school in the Sun Belt Conference, which had competitive programs like Virginia Commonwealth, South Alabama, and UNC Charlotte. And our non-conference schedule was tough—we played schools like Virginia and North Carolina, so I had experience going against some of the best competition in the country.”
Brown proves that he can ball with the best, but, in the pre-Internet world in which he lives, word is slow to spread. With the 1990 NBA Draft looming, Brown’s draft status is anything but a slam dunk.
“The draft was reduced to two rounds the year before I came out,” Brown says. “I had a great senior season, but I wasn’t an All-American so there was no guarantee that I’d get drafted. It was just like high school all over again—the Sun Belt Conference was inferior to the ACC, I hadn’t proved myself consistently against blue-chip schools, the NBA was too physical for me, and on and on.”
Reggie Lewis and Dee Brown
Determined to change minds, Dee Brown hits the road.
“There were all of these different camps during the summer,” he says. “My first camp was the Orlando Invitational. All of the top players played, except for guys like Derrick Coleman, Gary Payton, Dennis Scott, and Chris Jackson, who were already locked into the top five spots. I made the all-tournament team and showed what I could do against guys like Bimbo Coles and Travis Mays. That’s when I started moving up in the draft. I went from maybe being selected in the second round, to being a solid second round pick, or maybe even being picked early in the second round.
“The next camp was in Chicago. I played well there and impressed teams during the interview process, and all of a sudden there was talk about me being a high first-round pick. Those camps helped teams see me in a different light.”
The rest of the summer is a blur. Brown, no longer a fringe player, now has multiple suitors wanting closer looks.
“I visited three teams ahead of the draft,” Brown says. “I went to Detroit—they were still champions at that time—and I also visited Houston and Boston. Back then, there weren’t any rules. You could stay with a team for days on end. I went to Houston for a week and played pick-up ball with the veterans. That was how the coaching staff ran their pre-draft workout—no drills, no analytics, no scientific evaluation. Just go play. If the players like you, we like you. It was the same thing in Detroit. Boston was different. When I visited the Celtics, I had a very short workout. I figured they weren’t impressed with me.”
More memorable for Brown is what happens off the court.
“I had an interview with Red, in his office on Causeway Street. I was a basketball history buff anyway, so walking into his office was better than walking into the Hall of Fame. There was so much history on the walls, on his desk, everywhere you looked. I sat there, awestruck, unable to believe that I was having a face-to-face conversation with Red Auerbach. It was surreal. Me being a 20-year-old kid from Jacksonville, who’d never left home before, and suddenly I’m in Boston and talking to the man who’d started it all. I knew the history of the team; I’d watched so many Celtics games on CBS when Tommy Heinsohn was broadcasting. I’d been glued to the TV during all of those ’80s battles between the Lakers and the Celtics. To be in Red’s office was a life-changing experience. Even if I didn’t get drafted by Boston, I knew that I’d talked to one of the greatest basketball minds of all time.”
CHARLOTTE – FEBRUARY 9: Dee Brown #7 of the Boston Celtics attempts a dunk during the 1991 NBA Slam Dunk Contest as part of NBA All Star Weekend on February 9, 1991 at the Charlotte Coliseum in Charlotte, North Carolina. Copyright 1991 NBAE (Photo by NBA Photos/NBAE via Getty Images)
Brown’s dream comes true on June 27, 1990, when the Celtics select the athletic combo guard with the 19th pick in the first round.
“The best thing about being drafted by the Celtics is that Red Auerbach made the pick. People talk about the dunk contest, but the draft was the best moment of my life. Just to think about all of the other players he’s selected in the past—Russell, Havlicek, Cowens, Bird . . . for me to be put in that company is unbelievable. You couldn’t ask for a better feeling.”
Dee Brown plays nearly eight seasons in a Celtics uniform. The best days come early. The team sprints out to a 29–5 record to start the 1990–91 regular season, finishes 56–26, and falls to the hated Pistons in the Eastern Conference Semifinals. He lands on the ’91 NBA All-Rookie First Team.
“The Big Three were older when I got drafted, and the Celtics had started transitioning from a front court-oriented team to a team that featured the backcourt,” Brown says. “The offense featured younger, faster players like Brian Shaw, Reggie Lewis, Kevin Gamble, and myself. For the first time in a long time—or maybe ever—the Celtics were throwing down alley-oop dunks, running backdoor cuts, dunking on people, and doing windmill dunks during the game. The fans didn’t know what to think. They called us the ‘Zip Boys.’ Tommie Heinsohn gave us that nickname.”
Despite the injection of youth, the Boston Celtics are slowly crumbling when Dee Brown arrives, the fissures almost imperceptible at first.
“When I got there, Larry, Kevin, and Chief were still playing at a high level. This was before Larry got hurt, before Kevin got hurt again, and before Reggie passed. So even though we lost Lenny, we had an opportunity to be a great team. Unfortunately, it wasn’t meant to be.
Dee Brown
“My first eight years in the league, there were only two NBA champions: Chicago and Houston. That was it. Like most players of that era, I came around at the wrong time because my career coincided with Jordan’s prime. But then again, Patrick Ewing, Karl Malone, Charles Barkley, and so many other great players could say the same thing. They just came around when the greatest player who ever lived happened to be playing basketball.”
Brown’s early years in Boston are spent balling in the game’s most storied venue.
“People talk about Chicago Stadium and Madison Square Garden, but the old Boston Garden was great,” Brown says, smiling. “It was all about one thing: Basketball without distractions. There were no cheerleaders. No dancers. You had the organ. You had the dead spots. You had the obstructed view seats. You had the conspiracy theories of Red turning off the hot water to the showers or turning off the air conditioning during the playoffs. It was pure basketball, played in front of the best fans in the world.”
A young Dee Brown loves talking shop with the Celtics’ aging patriarch. Auerbach takes an instant liking to the acrobatic dunker with the old school vibe and Pogo sticks for legs. The memories made are priceless.
“We were playing a home game, and I’m sitting in the locker room when Red walks in,” Brown says. “I think it was the year that Reggie Lewis had passed away, and I was playing close to 38 minutes a game. By this point in the season, I’m exhausted because I’m playing both guard positions. One game I’m guarding Mitch Richmond, the next game it’s Michael Jordan, and the next it’s Tim Hardaway. I’m guarding these guys, and I’m giving up 20 to 30 pounds. They’re bigger and stronger.
“So I’m sitting in the locker room and Red walks in. I never called him ‘Red.’ I always called him ‘Arnold.’ He loved it. I said, ‘Arnold, I’m exhausted, sore, and beat up.’ He looks at me and says, ‘Dee, let me tell you something. One year Bill Russell averaged 47 minutes per game for an entire season. And guess what? He owes me a minute. So you’d better never complain about playing all of these minutes because he played 47 and he owes me a minute, and until I get it from him, I’m going to keep chasing him.’”
Brown laughs at the retelling.
“I never complained about minutes again,” Brown says. “For him to be pissed off because Bill Russell didn’t play 48 minutes a game, the greatest Celtic of them all, who am I to complain [laughs]? Besides, playing 38 minutes a night was a lot better than sitting the bench. I loved Red. He always came into the locker room with a story.”
Away from the court, Brown soaks up Boston’s nightlife. His musical tastes continue to grow and evolve, but he’s still hooked on hip-hop.
“It was the early ’90s, so Biggie had just hit big. I listened to Busta Rhymes and EPMD, so I still liked the New York rap scene. There were a couple of Florida groups coming out of that time, like 2 Live Crew. People were like, ‘You can’t listen to that in Boston.’ But I was from Florida, so I had to represent. 69 Boyz were from Jacksonville. So was 95 South. They had a hit with ‘Whoot, There It Is.’ Living in Boston, I also go to see plenty of concerts. I was a Janet Jackson fan, a Faith Evans fan, a Stacy Lattisaw fan. Whitney Houston. I saw them all in Boston.”
If you’re a Boston Celtics fan during the ’90s, your allegiance to the team is sorely tested. Brown understands this perhaps better than anyone.
“A lot of people tend to dismiss that era of Celtics basketball,” Brown says. “They remember me winning the dunk contest, and then it jumps to Paul Pierce. The best years were early in the decade and were bookmarked by two tragedies that disrupted the future of the franchise. Len and Reggie weren’t lost due to injury. They weren’t traded away for other players. These were great talents who passed away tragically. You can’t plan for that.
“People forget that I joined the team just a few years after Lenny died, and I was part of the whole Reggie situation. I was there for eight years, and the Celtics were still trying to recover when I was traded to Toronto. We had some good players. Dominique Wilkins was there for a couple of years. Xavier McDaniel. Sherman Douglas. Dino Radja. Rick Fox was there before he went to Los Angeles. Chris Ford was one of the best coaches that I ever had.
“Nobody even talks about the ’90s, and nobody really brings up my career in Boston,” Brown continues. “That era has become a footnote in Celtics history. I consider myself lucky. I played in the last game in the old Boston Garden and the first game in the Fleet Center. I was the last person to play with the Big Three. I was the last of Red’s last picks to make significant contributions in a Celtics uniform. Those are the things I back on with pride.”
Brown understands that winning the ’91 NBA Slam Dunk Contest is a sexier headline and the thing people still remember most. But for him, being named Celtics captain is the ultimate honor.
Dee Brown
“They don’t give that title out every day, nor do they give it away lightly. You have to earn it. I never thought in my wildest dreams that I’d be a Celtic captain. It helped being around Larry, Kevin, Robert, and DJ on a daily basis. Through them, you learn that Celtic Pride isn’t a catchphrase. It’s a way of life.”
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. Brown, who embraces his new role, quickly appreciates its burden.
“When I first became captain, I don’t think I fully grasped the magnitude,” Brown says. “It was great to be recognized as a leader, but I didn’t realize how difficult it was to be captain. It was a handful. And then, when you look at the list of captains that came before—Cousy, Russell, Havlicek, Cowens, Bird, Parish—you’re talking about some of the greatest players to pick up a basketball. That’s pressure. Just to be mentioned in the same breath with these guys is an honor. I didn’t have a career to match theirs, but I felt like I carried the same respect for what it means to be a Boston Celtic.”
As the team’s fortunes sag through the ’90s, Brown’s career stalls like a hurricane over the Florida coast. He battles a knee injury, watches legends retire, and endures a string of draft busts. There’s negativity at every turn.
“I was the biggest name on the roster at the time, but I was thrust into a situation that I really wasn’t prepared to handle. Reggie Lewis dies, and all of a sudden you go from being a complementary player to being the face of the franchise. There’s no way to prepare for that.”
The Dunk. It always comes back to The Dunk.
Funny thing is, Brown’s iconic sky dab almost never happens.
“I had a lot of dunks during my rookie year,” Brown says. “The All-Star Weekend was coming up, and Jon Jennings, a Celtics assistant coach at the time, was telling everybody that I needed to be included in the dunk contest. Thanks to his lobbying I was added as an alternate, and eventually slid into the lineup when one of the top guys pulled out.”
Shawn Kemp creates all of the buzz, while Brown arrives in Charlotte to little fanfare and even less recognition.
“It’s a few hours before the contest, and I’m sitting in the stands with Shawn Kemp and the rest of the guys,” he says. “We’re dressed in regular clothes, and I’m right beside Shawn, and this kid comes up and asks for his autograph. The kid points at me and says to Shawn, ‘Hey is that your little brother?’ I just looked at the kid and thought to myself, ‘You have no idea what I’m about to do in this contest.’”
Brown draws the seventh slot in the dunk order and wastes little time making an impression. Before his first dunk, he stands near mid-court, bends over and pumps the inflatable air bladders in his black Reebok Pump Omni Lite sneakers with both hands. The crowd, which includes an array of megastars like Will Smith, goes wild.
“I’d already signed a contract with Reebok, but pumping up my shoes before that first dunk wasn’t scripted,” he says. “I just said to myself, ‘This is for fun, you may never be in this situation again.’ I’d seen the contest on TV plenty of times, and I want to do something different. I want to get the crowd into it. Obviously, it worked.”
With that single act of showmanship, Brown accelerates the convergence between sneakers, hip-hop culture, and the American mainstream. An unknown wisp at 6-foot-2, 165 pounds just seconds before, the scrawny Boston rookie—Brown’s words—is suddenly the star of the NBA All-Star Weekend.
“People could relate to me,” he says. “I looked like an average guy, not a superhero in basketball shorts. There was an instant connection with the fans.”
Brown continues pumping before each subsequent dunk. After eliminating Kemp in the final round with a two-ball double-stuff that includes raking a ball placed on the back of the rim, followed by a 360 dunk off a bounce, Brown lines up for that final, iconic assault on the basket.
Celtics guard Dee Brown, pictured knocking the ball away from Bulls star Michael Jordan in a 1997 game.
“I’d never done that dunk before,” Brown says. “I literally made it up on the spot. I wanted to do something that everybody would remember, like Michael Jordan taking off and dunking from the free-throw line, or Dominique Wilkins throwing down a vicious windmill dunk. I wanted people to remember Dee Brown doing something that nobody had ever done before. All those thoughts ran through my mind as I started running from half-court. When I jumped, I closed my eyes and put my head in my elbow. I knew that I was either going to make it, and everybody would be talking about me 25 years later, or I was going to miss it, and everybody was going to be talking about it 25 years later [laughs].”
Even without social media, Brown’s spontaneous improvisation brings instant fame.
“Larry Bird said, ‘Before that dunk, everybody wanted to shoot like me, and now everybody wants to dunk like Dee.’ It was the first time since he’d been in Boston that people would run past Larry Bird to get someone else’s autograph. He thought it was funny, and he didn’t mind at all.
“Outside of Boston, nobody knew who I was before that dunk,” Brown continues. “Having somebody from the Boston Celtics in a dunk contest was kind of like it snowing in San Diego. I literally became a household name overnight. After the contest, I couldn’t go anywhere in New England without being recognized by people who didn’t even follow the Celtics that closely. I was on TV all the time; I was doing Dunkin’ Donuts commercials, Reebok commercials, car commercials, radio spots. I was doing appearances in Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island. For a while, I was New England.”
Brown’s run in Boston ends with the arrival of Rick Pitino. Hailed as a savior when he arrives, Pitino trades away players at a dizzying rate, to his own detriment. Brown is a casualty of the house cleaning when he, along with Chauncey Billups, is traded to Toronto midway through the 1997–98 regular season.
“I was a bridge between the great Celtics teams of the ’80s and Rick Pitino’s Celtics,” Brown says. “I never thought I would leave Boston. I never asked for a trade from Boston. A new regime comes in and they want their own people, their own players. Pitino didn’t want the old Celtics there. He wanted his people there. I got it. Basketball’s a business. But I was very, very hurt.”
Iconic
They say you never know what you’ve got until it’s gone. It works both way for Dee Brown and the Boston Celtics fans he leaves behind, fans who watch Rick Pitino push the Celtics deeper into disrepair.
“My biggest regret is not enjoying it as much I should have. When you’re in the moment, sometimes you don’t appreciate where you are in life. Then when it’s over, you miss it. That was me. I wish I had enjoyed being an NBA basketball player and the captain of the Boston Celtics more than I did. Back then you were either in the NBA and had a job or you didn’t. There was no D-League to fall back on. I think that fear of losing my job took a lot of the fun and enjoyment away from it. I didn’t savor the good times as much as I should have. I wish I could change that.”
Today, Brown looks back on his career and the era of Celtics basketball in which he played with great fondness.
“My 12-year-old son searches for me on Google. He’ll watch old footage on YouTube, and he’ll say, ‘Dad, you were pretty good.’ It helps me appreciate my career. When you’re grinding, you lose track of the fact that you’re playing against some of the best athletes in the world. Look at the NBA’s 50 Greatest list, and 20 to 25 of those players played during my era. I played against them. In order to have a 12-year NBA career, you have to play at a very high level. I did that, and I got to spend most of those years playing for the Boston Celtics, the best organization in the NBA. I was twenty when I was drafted. The Celtics raised me. I have nothing but love for Boston. I’ll always be a Celtic.”
https://i0.wp.com/www.fifteenminuteswith.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/the_dee_brown_interview.png?fit=600%2C400&ssl=1400600Michael McClellanhttps://www.fifteenminuteswith.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/FifteenMinutesWith_NewLogoPrototype.pngMichael McClellan2020-08-22 22:29:592020-09-08 22:06:11Dee Brown – Pumped Up
Written By: Michael D. McClellan |Victor Newman wasn’t supposed to hang around the fictional town of Genoa City, Wisconsin, this long. The conniving businessman first appeared on CBS’s The Young and the Restless way back in 1980, when he was written into the plot for an eight-to-twelve week run. That was more than long enough for Eric Braeden, who wasn’t convinced he wanted to make his living on a daytime soap opera, not when he’d been plenty busy in Hollywood since landing there in 1960 with $500 in his pocket and zero acting experience on his resumé. Tall, athletic, and unnervingly handsome, the German-born actor had racked up 120 TV and film credits during his first two decades in show business, appearing in everything from The Rat Patrol to Hawaii Five-O to Gunsmoke, so, for Braeden – born Hans Gudegast in Kiel, Germany, at the height of World War II – a short-term commitment was plenty long enough to test the waters. Talk about a plot twist: Turns out the despicable, contemptible, unfaithful wife abuser wasn’t killed off as originally scripted, not with a nationwide audience swooning over the show’s dangerous new character and CBS execs taking notice of the ratings spike. Producer William Joseph Bell promptly offered Braeden a role as a series regular, and Braeden has spent the past 40 years turning Victor Newman into soap opera’s leading male figure.
“What a ride it has been,” he says in his recognizable low-toned voice. “I am enormously grateful to the writers and my fellow actors, and most importantly, to Bill Bell.”
Since arriving in Genoa City, on business, Newman has formed his own worldwide conglomerate, forged a supercouple pairing with stripper Nikki Reed (Melody Scott Thomas), cheated on Nikki with Ashley Abbott (Eileen Marie Davidson), had a son who grew up without knowledge of Victor being his father (Adam Newman, played by Justin Hartley), and engaged in a long-running business rivalry with Jack Abbott (Peter Bergman). Forty years of twists and turns jump-started by a conversation that Braeden had with his tennis partner, comedic actor Dabney Coleman, who had logged a stint playing a doctor on the NBC soap Bright Promise from 1971-72.
Eric Braeden (far right) – “The Young and the Restless”
“He said, ‘Do it. You’ll love it,’” Braeden recalls. “Upon that advice, I agreed to come in for an interview.”
Braeden not only developed an instant rapport with Bell, he thrived on the grueling pace of soap opera production. After four-plus decades of working on a show that typically shoots 100 to 120 pages a day, Braeden can’t imagine toiling at the pace of what he calls “nighttime TV.”
“That would bore the shit out of me,” he says flatly. “I have no interest in it.”
Braeden’s character has since found himself entangled in hundreds of storylines, from amnesia, to near death experiences, to more than a dozen on-screen marriages. But it’s Victor’s layered backstory, as a child abandoned by his parents who rose to fortune and fame, that Braeden says makes the character so fulfilling to play.
“He’s on one hand tough, ruthless, does whatever he has to, but he’s also vulnerable. He wants to be loved and he wants to love, but he can’t really. He’s a loner. It’s a fantastic part.”
Eric Braeden as German Capt. Hans Dietrich in “The Rat Patrol” Courtesy ABC-publicity
The odds of Braeden landing such a role in the first place – much less making it his own and turning it into one of the most iconic characters in the history of daytime television – were practically unfathomable as a young child growing up in war-torn Germany. His father’s death plunged the family into poverty, and the prospects of a prosperous future appeared dim. Braeden’s work ethic and athletic frame led to a track scholarship at the University of Montana, as well as an opportunity to conquer Idaho’s notorious Salmon River – otherwise known as ‘The River of No Return.’ The resulting documentary film delivered $500 and a bus ride to Los Angeles. Determined to stick, Braeden moved into a cheap hotel room and started parking cars.
“I knew nothing about how Hollywood worked, and I had no acting experience. The unknown was worth the risk to me – I had first dissected cadavers at the John Sealy Hospital in Galveston, Texas, where a German cousin of mine was a doctor. Then I ventured from that to Montana. I was a cowboy on a ranch outside of Missoula. I worked at a lumber mill. Trying my hand at acting was my ticket out.”
That Greyhound bus ride came during the fall of 1960. A year later he landed his first uncredited role in something called Operation Eichmann, a fictional hunt for the architect of Hitler’s atrocities. From there, Braeden kept working and never looked back, scoring roles in Mission: Impossible, Marcus Welby, M.D., Barnaby Jones, CHiPs, Kojak, Cannon, Mannix, and The Six Million Dollar Man. At one point, Braeden was even a serious candidate to replace Sean Connery as James Bond. He’s acted in James Cameron’s Titanic, and produced and starred in his own feature film, The Man Who Came Back. He’s been honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. A decorated career by any measure, and one capped by that 40-year run as Victor Newman – a role for which Braeden is eternally grateful.
Eric Braeden (left) as John Jacob Astor in “Titanic” Courtesy Twentieth-Century-Fox
“The fans have been tremendous,” he says. “Their support over the years has been the one constant that makes playing the role of Victor Newman so rewarding, and the big reason it has been so easy to stick around for so long.”
With that, the legendary actor with the charming-but-despicable alter-ego settles in for the interview, and the stories pour out – tales of playing tennis with princes, of making movies with Brando and Brynner, and of sharing the silver screen with a young Leonardo DiCaprio. All of them connected to those forty years of scripted ruthlessness and bound together by a lifetime of hard work.
Eric Braeden might be an acting legend, but he’s earned it every step of the way.
There’s nothing despicable about that.
I hope you’re staying safe during this coronavirus pandemic. How do you occupy your time?
All of the studios are either closed or locked down. I don’t mind it, to be honest with you, I really don’t. I get to read a lot, and I love that. I read five publications a day – newspapers from Germany, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal – not from front to back, obviously, but I do read the opinion sections and the most important articles. I work out a lot. I talk to my family. It makes time go by very fast. It really is not that difficult right now, as long as one stays away from that virus.
Did you ever envision a world like the COVID-19 world we’re living in today?
I live in a beautiful area, so I’m very fortunate that way. My heart goes out to those that don’t know where their next meal is coming from, or how to pay their rent. That bothers me a great deal, because I have been there. I have felt that pain, you know? There’s nothing worse than being in financial need. It’s the worst. It’s a killer. I lived through those times after the war in Germany, and I’ve seen what it did to the people that fell victim to it. We didn’t have hot running water. We had an outhouse. My first years over here were not easy either, so I know what it means to wonder whether you can pay your rent or not. It’s not a good feeling. Anyway, I feel for those people who are suffering because they’ve lost their jobs…waitresses, people in the service industry…it’s tough man. It’s awful.
Eric Braeden as Dr. Otto Hasslein in “Escape from the Planet of the Apes” (1971) Courtesy Twentieth Century Fox
Take me back to the beginning. You were born in Germany, at the height of World War II.
I was born in Kiel, Germany, during World War II. The city was bombed heavily during that time. In fact, the Allies dropped about 500,000 bombs on Kiel between 1941 and the end of the war in 1945, during which time 90% of the city was destroyed. There were 200 women giving birth in the basement of the hospital because of the bombing, and we barely made it out alive.
You are no stranger to hard times. Please tell me about your childhood.
I grew up in the German village of Bredenbek, which was the kind of farm country where all you saw was people working from sun up to sun down. My father had a trucking business, and he used his trucks to build roads and oil bunkers and all kinds of stuff. He had four or five drivers. I remember them starting very early in the morning and working all day. We wound up with nothing when my father died, and we plunged into poverty. At that point I started working on the farms around the village, so I’ve made my own money since I was 12 years old. I never got a penny from anyone. I don’t know any differently. It was hard work. During harvest time, I cleaned out horse stalls. By the way, horse manure smells good compared to cow manure, compared to pig manure, compared to chicken manure. I am very grateful to my childhood in many ways, although, to be frank with you, I can do without the poverty. Sometimes people romanticize poverty. My ass. Poverty is terrible. It’s the worst.
Eric Braeden (left) as Von Klemme in “100 Rifles” (1969) Courtesy Twentieth Century Fox
There’s an old African proverb that it takes a village to raise a child.
The great thing about growing up in a small village is that everybody knows you, so that adage is very true in my case. People looked out for you. They made sure you stayed out of trouble, and they were always there when you needed them. So yes, the village did help raise me to a certain extent. For that I’m thankful. Those were tough times after my father died. That stayed with me for decades. I was close to my dad. We were four boys at home and he was a man’s man, and a goodhearted man. I miss him to this day.
What was school like for a young Eric Braeden?
We had fights at school almost every day. It wasn’t this politically correct bullshit that prevails in schools today where they have fights, and it’s like, “Oh my God, call the parents, and call the school psychologist.” No, we fought it out. Boom. End of story.
Funny thing about those schoolyard fights. The teacher would come out, and everyone would make a circle around us and watch. If the fight got too bad, the teacher would say, “Okay, that’s enough.” That was it. Then when you went off into the school and went to class. If the score was unsettled then you waited for that guy outside of school, in some lonely country park, and you beat the shit out of him.
You’re world renowned for portraying Victor Newman in The Young and the Restless, but you were also an outstanding athlete.
I grew up in track and field in Germany, and I won the junior youth championship with my team. My disciplines were discus, javelin, and shot put. We won the German championship, and a year later I came to America. I had a scholarship in track and field, at the University of Montana in Missoula.
Eric Braeden in “Colossus The Forbin Project” Courtesy Universal-Pictures
Please tell me about your track and field career at the University of Montana.
It was a very demanding period in my life. My scholarship only covered tuition and didn’t cover living expenses, so I got a job and worked from six in the evening until two in the morning in a lumber mill outside of Missoula. I worked on the green chain, pulling lumber for those eight hours. My first lecture was at eight in the morning, and I didn’t arrive home until 3 a.m., so you can imagine how many hours one slept. Then I had classes all morning, followed by track and field practice in the afternoon. I would try to sleep for an hour before I went back to work, so it was not a very good time, to be quite frank with you.
How hard was it for you to leave your homeland and move to the United States?
It was hard in that Germany is where I was born and raised, but I’ve been in awe of this country from the very beginning. I must say, one of the pleasant surprises about coming to America was how welcoming the people were. I didn’t go anywhere that I wasn’t welcomed. I can honestly say that America has been wonderful and very hospitable in that way. I think Americans, in their DNA, remember that their forefathers were immigrants as well, you know? It’s basically a welcoming and openhearted country. There are no two ways about that.
I also have to say that Americans appreciate it if you are good at something. It doesn’t make any difference where you came from or what you had done before. If you are good, bingo. It’s different than Europe in that sense. This is truly a country of unlimited possibilities. All of those clichés are true. It’s tough, no question. I am deeply grateful to this country.
Eric Braeden as Jack Sinclair in “Gunsmoke” (1971) Courtesy CBS Television Network
How did you end up in Hollywood?
I had a girlfriend, and her girlfriend’s boyfriend wanted to make a documentary film about a river trip on the Salmon River in Idaho. The Salmon River is known as ‘The River of No Return.’ Well, he was something of a tough, adventurous guy, and he couldn’t find anyone to go with him. I asked, “What’s the upshot?” He said that no one had ever gone up and down the Salmon River because everyone knew how dangerous it was, and that we could be the first – and we would have a documentary film that we could then take with us to California. I said, flatly, “I’m in.” Anything to get the hell out of Montana. Montana might have been beautiful, but to me it was working at a lumber mill from 6 p.m. to 2 a.m.
It was an experience of a lifetime. The Salmon River is full of rapids, hence the name, ‘The River of No Return.’ Going down the river is one thing, but going down and up is a completely different story. Try to imagine going up those rapids, and fighting through them in a 50-foot aluminum Crestline boat with a 40-horsepower Johnson motor outside. When you’d hit the rapids you’d just you inch along, and then, if you hit the wrong spot, you’d lose power. You were always in danger of flipping over. It was damned dangerous.
Well, we made that river trip and we were successful. We took the film with us on a Greyhound bus and went to Los Angeles, where we did a press conference arranged by Johnson Motors and Alcoa. We each got 500 bucks. He went back to his fiancée, who was pregnant at the time, and I stayed. I didn’t know a soul here. It didn’t matter. I had 500 bucks in my pocket, so I rented a room in a cheap hotel and started parking cars. Then I worked for a furniture moving company. That’s how I came to LA.
Take me back to those early years in Hollywood. Was it hard breaking into acting?
You hear all of the stories about how hard it is to work as a professional actor in Hollywood. This is largely true. It’s a cutthroat business, and the odds are not in your favor. For me, coming from war-torn Germany, those obstacles weren’t something that I really dwelled on. I pushed on and I persevered.
Starting out, my first role was playing a Nazi in a television series called Combat!. Then I played a Nazi in The Rat Patrol. I used to play all kinds of heavies – a Russian heavy, a French heavy, an English heavy, whatever…as long as they paid, I didn’t give a damn. I was one of the few people working. I must say the business has been very good to me. I was rarely turned down. That rarely happened, except for James Bond.
Eric Braeden as Victor Newman in “The Young and the Restless” Courtesy CBS Television Network
Eric Braeden as James Bond?
They found out that I was German, so that was the end of that. But they were interested. When Sean Connery said no for the first time, they were looking for another one. The producer, Cubby Broccoli, had seen me in a film called Colossus, and he was interested. We had lunch and he asked if I still had a British passport. I learned British English and German in high school, and every so often I fall back into that, so when they found out that I was German that was the end of that story.
The Rat Patrol was a hit. Please tell me about this experience.
We did the pilot in Yuma, Arizona, and filmed the first 16 segments in Almería, which is located in the South of Spain. This was 1966. We filmed in Almería because they have desert-like areas there. It’s a fascinating area with a mixture of cultures. In the midst of all that, you had the Gypsies – they were called Gitanos – who lived in mountain caves. They sang beautiful, heartfelt songs. Because I played soccer with most of them in-between scenes, and because they liked that I spoke some Spanish, they invited me and my wife to the cuevas – the caves – at night to list to the music.
Francisco Franco was still the dictator in Spain at the time we were filming The Rat Patrol, so everything was hush-hush. You didn’t talk politics. The South of Spain held out the longest against Franco during the Spanish Civil War – in Almería, particularly. They called Almería “el culo del mundo” – the asshole of the world – because it had held out so long against Franco. I remember seeing all of these destroyed buildings and houses with bullet holes, all of it from the revolution in 1936. It was a fascinating time to be there. You had this present-day dictatorship, and then you had this medieval Catholicism that had taken root when King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella came to power in the 1400s. They were the ones who sponsored Columbus’s trip to the Americas. Until then, much of Spain was under Muslim rule. When they came to power, they threw out the Muslims.
Eric Braeden as German Capt. Hans Dietrich in “The Rat Patrol” Courtesy ABC-publicity
The Rat Patrol wasn’t the only time you filmed in the South of Spain.
I went back there two years later and did a film called 100 Rifles with Jim Brown, Burt Reynolds, and Raquel Welch. We actually filmed in the same area. When we did The Rat Patrol, Clint Eastwood was doing one of those Spaghetti Westerns in the same area.
You have acted with a Who’s Who of Hollywood royalty, including the late, great Marlon Brando. What was that like?
To be frank with you, I’m just very fortunate. I’ve worked with a lot of fantastic people. One of my first films was a film called Morituri, starring Marlon Brando and Yul Brynner. We filmed onboard a ship off Catalina Island. I think the captain was from New Zealand and the crew was Chinese.
Marlon and I did a scene together, and afterwards we starting talking and became friendly. We talked about politics and history, mostly. He was interested in German history, especially recent German history, and Nazi history in particular. He was also very concerned with civil rights and Native Americans at the time, so we had some interesting conversations. He was an interesting character. And let me tell you, Marlon Brando was a damned good athlete. He was a stocky guy, and strong. We used to throw the football outside on the stages of 20th Century Fox between scenes and talk history. He had a good arm.
Yul Brynner was one of the greatest storytellers of all time. Truly, that guy could tell stories in five languages. Most people say, “I can speak a second language,” or, “I can speak in several languages.” Bullshit. They speak a little bit of something. Yul Brynner was fluent in five languages. He was a genuinely bright guy and one of the best raconteurs that I think I’ve ever met.
Interestingly, Yul and Marlon didn’t like each other. They were both tough guys.
As an actor, did you learn anything from your side jobs that you were able to take with you to the studio?
I learned how to curse in English, and I will tell you how. I was working for a furniture moving company in Los Angeles. I was working a job in West Los Angeles with an old geezer – and old American guy – and we were carrying a refrigerator up a flight of stairs for an old lady. He was on the top of the fridge and I was on the bottom. The old lady was telling us not to hit this and that, not to damage the wall, not to bump the handrail. Well, we’re barely holding onto this fridge and doing our best to make it up these creaky stairs. Finally, my partner says, “Lady, will you shut the fuck up?” I will never forget that moment. I love the expression. It’s imprinted in my mind. I remember being in that moment and trying to translate that expression into German. Shut the fuck up. And I thought to myself, “Wait a minute – he’s turning a verb into a noun!” I will never forget the moment. I remember the time of day, I remember where on the steps I was when he said it. I loved it. It sounded wonderful. Shut the fuck up.
Let’s talk about The Young and the Restless. Congratulations on 40 years as part of the cast!
First of all, the fact that one has been steadily employed for 40 years is a luxury one can really only appreciate when you work in this business. Because, I’ve been working more or less steadily since 1962, long before I joined Y&R. I’ve acted in The Rat Patrol, Mission: Impossible, Mannix…the list goes on and on. So I’ve just been very fortunate in that I’ve never really been unemployed for a long time. That is not the typical life of an actor.
Y&R of course, has been a blessing. There are so many fond memories, such as Victor Newman meeting his mother for the first time, played by Dorothy McGuire, and, of course, Victor meeting his father, played by George Kennedy. What a wonderful man, George Kennedy. He subsequently did a film of mine called The Man Who Came Back. I have the deepest respect for George Kennedy. He was a big man, about 6-foot-4 and 300 pounds, and just the nicest human being. Tough guy. Very smart. A wonderful actor. A gentleman of the old school. Sean Young used to set almost by his feet in between scenes, and he would tell her stories of Hollywood. I was greatly saddened by his passing.
I’ve done some very memorable scenes with Jack Abbott and Peter Bergman. They were also wonderful actors to work with. And also Melody Thomas Scott, who plays Nikki. Our characters have had our ups and downs on the show, and I love working with her. I adore her as a human being.
Eric Braeden as Victor Newman in “The Young and the Restless” Courtesy WATCH
You played a friendly tennis match with fellow actor Dabney Coleman in the late 1970s. That match helped you land the iconic role as conniving business mogul Victor Newman.
Dabney and I met through acting and shared a love of tennis. Do you know Alex Olmedo, who won Wimbledon in 1959? Alex and Dabney used to play tennis regularly, and I would play with them on occasion. Well, we were playing tennis one afternoon, and I had recently learned that this role on a daytime soap had opened up. Dabney had done a soap at one time or another, so I asked him what it was all about. He said, “Do it. You’ll love it.” I didn’t watch daytime television, so I didn’t even know that they had that kind of stuff on daytime television. I didn’t know what the hell it was. I had no clue. But Dabney is a serious actor and I trusted him. Had I not gotten that recommendation, I wouldn’t have gone to the casting call. The rest is a 40 year history.
The Young and the Restless is a big part of people’s lives.
What has really impressed me as an actor – and this has only happened because of Y&R – is the enormous influence one has on people’s lives. I never realized that until I became Victor Newman. I’ve done more than 120 guest shots over the years, appearing on everything from Hawaii Five-O to Gunsmoke to The F.B.I. and on and on, but I never realized what an effect we have on people just by doing what we do. Y&R taught me that.
Before Y&R, I had never gone out and done a public appearance on behalf of a show. Never. Then Doug Davidson and I, who plays Detective Paul Williams, went to a huge market just outside of Toronto, the biggest market in North America. I will never forget it. There were 15,000 people crammed into a little area in that big market, and all of them were there just to see us. I looked at Doug and said, “Are you serious?” But that’s example of the impact that we have on people’s lives. We reach between four and five million people every week. It’s just extraordinary.
Eric Braeden as Victor Newman in “The Young and the Restless” Courtesy CBS Television Network
You’ve been playing Victor Newman since 1980. There have been fans who’ve been there with you every step of the way.
I really, really appreciate the fans, to be honest with you. Other than the income we make, which is nice, the most satisfying thing is to know that you impact people’s lives. Wherever I’ve gone, I’ve had such wonderful experiences with the fans. I’ve made two appearances in Charleston, West Virginia over the years, in the middle of one of your malls. I will never forget that, for example.
Victor Newman is an iconic character. Are you ever surprised by the fame that has come along with it?
It has been enormously humbling. There are several examples that come to mind. I remember playing in a tennis tournament in Monte Carlo. I’m sitting with my wife and son at a table, and Harry Belafonte, who was part of the whole thing, walked over and said, “Would you mind saying hello to the people at the table over there? They would love to meet you.” I said that it would be my pleasure, so I got up and walked over and shook hands. They were very nice. They spoke French, and a little English, so we made small talk, bah-bah-bah, and then Harry took me back to my table. I politely asked him who they were, and he a very surprised look on his face. He said, “You don’t know who they are?” I said that I had no idea. He said, “That was President Habib Bourguiba of Tunisia. He and his family watch the show.”
Another time I was in Istanbul with some of the cast, and we were invited to appear on TV by a station there. Tansu Çiller, the Prime Minister of Turkey, was throwing a big party later that evening. Melody Thomas Scoot, who plays Nikki, went to the party with me. We were treated like rock stars. And I thought, “You must be kidding. This can’t be true.”
In Israel I was invited to the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, and had conversations with Shimon Peres about politics. So it has been wonderful in that sense.
In your critically acclaimed autobiography, I’ll Be Damned: How My Young and Restless Life Led Me to America’s #1 Daytime Drama, you write about Mikhail Gorbachev and President Ronald Reagan. Tell me about that.
I was able to give a speech for Mikhail Gorbachev when he was here in Los Angeles and, afterwards, Nancy Reagan invited me to give a similar speech for Ronald Reagan. It was a tremendous honor, because both men were such historically significant personalities. Growing up in a small German village, I never dreamed that one day I might be giving speeches to two of the most powerful people on earth.
In terms of their historical significance, I call Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev the two most important men in the second half of the 20th century. People always look at me and say, “Why is that?” and I say that it’s because they prevented a third world war. People forget how close we were to a war with Russia. Whatever I think of Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan politically or otherwise is beside the point. That is an extraordinary accomplishment. Think about it. Two people met from two different philosophies, one being a harsh capitalist the other being a hardline communist, but they found something in common as human beings. I will never forget it. People have no clue as to how close we were to war, and how important it was that Ronald Reagan was willing to reach out to Gorbachev as a human being. I think Nancy had a lot to do with it, and her contributions were absolutely critical.
We could use some of that to help heal the divisions in the United States today.
This whole rift between liberals and conservatives in America, and all of this ideological bullshit going back and forth…you know, if you just got to know each other a little bit more, and you sat down somewhere and had a beer and a tequila and began to shoot the shit, you would begin to like each other as human beings.
I’ve heard that a soap opera averages 80 pages of script per day. How does that compare to an evening drama, or even a feature film?
Eighty pages is the low end. There are some days that go up to 100-to-120 pages. It’s insane. The great thing about daytime is that I come in, I concentrate like crazy, focus like crazy, learn that stuff, and then I make it as real as I can. The most I’ve ever done personally is 62 pages in one day. Many of us routinely do 20, 30, 40 pages a day.
A feature film is nothing compared to that. Unless I starred in it, I would not be interested in films anymore because they are too boring. You spend most of your time sitting around on the set waiting for other people to do their job. If I had continued doing nighttime television or film, I would have been directing by now. Daytime television is what keeps you on your toes. You’ve got to cram that shit and make it your own.
You played the character John Jacob Astor IV in James Cameron’s Titanic. There were a lot of people who thought that movie was going to flop, but it became both a critical success and one of the highest-grossing movies of all time.
James Cameron is a genius – an extremely bright guy with balls of steel. While we were doing that movie, both 20th Century Fox and Paramount Pictures were scared shitless that they would lose their shirts. They thought they would go broke, because the budget ballooned over $100 million, and it had never been done before. My God, did he prove them wrong.
Eric Braeden as Victor Newman in “The Young and the Restless” Courtesy CBS Television Network
James Cameron must have been under enormous pressure.
We were filming near in Rosarito, Mexico, which is near Tijuana, and also in Baja, California. The studio brass would sometimes come down at lunch and sit there in their suits, because they wanted to exert pressure on him. I’ll never forget, I was standing behind him in the lunch line and his assistant came up to him and says, “Well, the suits are here,” meaning the executives from the studios. And he says, “Fuck ‘em. Just bring my food to the dressing room. I don’t want anything to do with them right now.” It was a tense time, because the cost overrun reminded them of Cleopatra, and Cleopatra had nearly bankrupted 20th Century Fox. They were afraid the same thing would happen with this film, which was not only expensive, it didn’t have the star power of actors like Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. James Cameron was making this film with relatively unknown actors – [Leonardo] DiCaprio was not really known at the time. So I’m sure the executives thought, “What are we doing? We’re making Titanic, and we may go down with the Titanic.”
Did you think that Titanic would become a massive hit?
I have to say, I’m probably one of the few people who predicted that James Cameron would be very successful with that film. I was interviewed by a beat writer from TheHollywood Reporter, and he says, “You’re the only one who keeps saying that is going to be successful.” I replied, “Well, I’m in the top-rated soap opera on television,” and he says, “What does that have to do with Titanic?” And I just smiled and said, “This movie is a soap opera – albeit, a very expensive one. It’s going to make a fortune.”
Eric Braeden as John Jacob Astor in “Titanic” Courtesy Twentieth-Century-Fox
What was it like watching Titanic for the first time?
James Cameron was a big fan of the film Colossus, which I did at Universal Studios in the late ‘60s, so he couldn’t have been nicer. We had finished filming my scenes around Christmas, and afterwards I called him up and asked if I could come down for a visit with my son, who was then a film student at UCLA, my wife, and my future daughter-in-law. He was absolutely fine with that, so we drove down to the set. He stopped shooting when we got there, and he took us into his trailer and showed us the first cut of the first five minutes of Titanic. He had already played Céline Dion’s beautiful song, My Heart Will Go On, for us. I got goosebumps watching it. I said, “You are going to make a fucking fortune on this.” And he did.
What was it like to be part of something like Titanic?
The acting was superb. Leo [Leonardo DiCaprio] is a wonderful actor. He continues to turn in amazing performances and make great films. What some don’t see is that he works incredibly hard at his craft. Billy Zane is another fine actor. Billy acted in my film, The Man Who Came Back. I knew Kathy Bates, and I knew what kind of an actor she was. Being a part of Titanic was just a remarkable experience, I must say, and then to see the success of that film…whoa…incredible.
In 2008, you executive-produced and starred in The Man Who Came Back. A wonderful film with an all-star cast.
To be honest with you, it was the best experience of my career. I’ve never enjoyed anything as much as doing that film, in large part because I had decision-making powers as to who we were hiring for the roles. All of the actors who were on will tell you that they had a hell of a time. Billy Zane was part of it, from Titanic. Great actor. Peter Jason is a wonderful actor. Armand Asante, fabulous character actor. We also had George Kennedy, Sean Young, and Carol Alt. We also had former heavyweight champion Kenny Norton – my God, what an honor it was to have him in this film. I have such respect for the man, God rest his soul. It just so happened that we worked out and boxed at the same gym in Watts. Bill Slayton was his trainer, one of the best. Kenny, when we worked on the film together, every so often I would slap him on the shoulder, and Jesus Christ, it was like hitting rock. Even at that age. Wonderful man.
Eric Braeden in “The Man Who Came Back”(2008) Courtesy Eric Braeden
How did this project come together?
Chuck Walker, who boxed on the 1976 Olympic boxing team in Montréal with Sugar Ray Leonard, is an old friend of mine, and he came to me with the story. I liked it enough to see if we could get the money together and all of that. As it became clear that we were going to make it, I said that we need something that is more than just a revenge story. So it takes place in the latter part of the Reconstruction era in the South. Slavery was officially over with, but in reality it was not. The director, Glen Pitre, was doing some research on this when he came upon a labor strike in 1887, in Thibodaux, Louisiana. He learned that the plantation workers and the railroad workers got together and decided to strike. They wanted to be paid at least a dollar a day. This was especially important to the freed slaves, because many of them had continued working on the big plantations, but they were paid in company scrip – currency that they could only exchange on the company plantation. Because the scrip wasn’t good anywhere outside of the plantation they continued to be in bondage, so they had a strike in Thibodaux. Well, the strikers were mowed down by militia from New Orleans and Lafayette who came with the first Gatling machine guns. They murdered 300 strikers one night. I said, “That’s it. Now we have a story. Let’s go.”
What was it like wearing some many different hats in making The Man Who Came Back?
It was totally satisfying. My only regret is that we admittedly had a little bit too much violence in it. That was my insistence, and I take responsibility for it, because I wanted things to be real. When my character’s wife gets raped and murdered and all of that, I said “Make that as real as possible.” That was a decision I should not have made because it turned off a lot of people. It’s pretty brutal. But beyond that, I absolutely loved doing that film. I’m still friends with all of them. When I had my Y&R 40th anniversary party, all of the actors from that film came, except the ones who had passed away.
How hard was it getting this independent film made?
The bane of the existence of independent producers is that you’ve got to find a distributor. As an independent filmmaker, when you go through a distributor, you get fucked. Meaning, you really have no choice in the matter. They give you a certain amount of money, and that’s the last thing you will ever see. The only way around that is if you’re part of a big studio, or a big company that makes a lot of films. In those cases they can’t screw with you. But if you are an independent film producer, they will take you. They’ll say, “We’ll do this, this, and this,” and then they pay you some money. That’s the last penny you will ever see. And then, try to sue them. You take them to court, and it costs you at least $100,000. And then, if the judgment is in your favor, try to collect it. It’s an old story in Hollywood. They have three books – one for the IRS, one for the studio, and one for the people who own a percentage in the film. They cook the books. They can always say, “We had so many expenses – look at the books, we had this, this, and this.” Sadly, that was our experience. Otherwise, I would have made two or three other films already. I never enjoyed anything as much. Never.
Eric Braeden (left) in “The Man Who Came Back”(2008) Courtesy Eric Braeden
Let’s talk sports. Tell me about your friendship with Muhammad Ali.
Muhammad Ali was a big fan of Y&R! He invited me to his 50th birthday party at Chasen’s Restaurant in Beverly Hills. My son and I went, and I will never forget it. Another time, I sat beside Ali on a plane ride from Philadelphia to Los Angeles. When we landed he said, “Go my way.” It wasn’t the official way to make it through LAX, the staff took us through all kinds of freight elevators and back hallways off limits to the public, but it was how he could avoid being mobbed by all of his fans. He knew that I was a boxer, so we started shadowboxing in one of the freight elevators. It was a bucket list moment for me.
You love tennis. You’ve played in a lot of celebrity tournaments all over the world.
The last one I played in was with the Ilie Năstase, in Bucharest, Romania. I had been invited to appear on a television show there, and he approached me and I was more than happy to play. Nadia Comaneci got us together, she is a big fan of Y&R. Ilie and I played against too young pros in Bucharest, and we beat them. I’ve played tennis with Chrissy Everett. I played in a tournament with Johan Kriek, against John McEnroe and Chevy Chase. I played an exhibition match in Central Park with Goran Ivanišević, we played against Andrei Chesnokov and Marc Rosset, another tall Swiss guy. Chesnokov was a fantastic athlete. I’ve played with Monica Seles and Tracy Austin quite a bit.
Funny story – I played in a celebrity tournament in Monte Carlo, with Prince Albert as my partner. The first two sets were tight, which we split, and then we were down 4 to 1 in the third set. His father, Prince Rainier, had come in with his entourage and sat down in one of the booths, and you see that he was visibly nervous. The errors started to pile up, and suddenly we were down 4 to 1. I said to myself, “Shit, he’s intimidated by his father.” So I turned to him and said, “Fuck it, Prince. Let’s go.” His eyes light up and he smiles and says, “Yes, fuck it.” We won the third set, and we went on to win the whole thing. I will never forget that moment. Actually, it was very telling about the relationship between father and son.
I’ve also played tennis with a few NBA players as well, but most of them were not that good. The exception to that was Rick Barry. Rick and I played a lot, and Rick was very good. He is 6-foot-7 and had an overpowering serve. What a fantastic athlete.
Steffi Graf and Eric Braeden enjoy a moment on the tennis court
You were also one hell of a soccer player. Tell me about winning a national championship as part of the Los Angeles Maccabees.
When I arrived in Los Angeles, I looked into playing soccer at UCLA, but the school had awarded all of its scholarships that year. Instead, I played for a team that was owned by a restaurant in Beverly Hills called La Scala. The owner, Jean Leon, brought together retired soccer players or players in their early 30s who had finished playing competitively all over the world – in the English First Division, which is known as the English Premiere League today, in the German Division, all over South America.
We played in something called the Greater Los Angeles Soccer League, which was founded in 1903 and is the oldest organized sports league in Los Angeles. Long story short, the Maccabees offered $20 a game. Being a starving student at the time, I jumped at the opportunity. I was a token German on a Jewish team – we had seven Israelis from the Israeli national team, two Ethiopians from the Ethiopian national team, two guys from South America…Brazil and Mexico…also from the first division. So, we had a good team. We made it all the way to the National Cup in 1973 against the Cleveland International Italians, or whatever they were called, and won the national championship.
Eric Braeden (second from left) and his LA Maccabees teammates
Do you have a soccer tip you’d like to share?
I never missed a penalty kick in five years. I would tell the goalies I was going for the corners, and then I would hammer the shit out of the ball. You can do that and still put slice on it. The top pros today try to finesse the ball into the net and all of that kind of stuff, but that’s all bullshit. Just hammer the ball. You can look directly at the goalie, but you just hammer it and put spin on it, and it spins away from him. And from that distance, if you hit it hard, I don’t care how fast he is, he may get a finger on it but he’s not going to stop the ball.
Your son, Christian Gudegast, wrote and directed the STX feature film Den of Thieves. You must be proud that he’s followed in your footsteps.
Immensely proud. One of the greatest joys in my life was to raise him. In a sense it’s a father-son relationship that a lot of people dream about. I was tough with him, but he was tough himself. He has my competitive spirit. I took him to the kettle gyms when he was seven and eight years old, and he learned of boxing from early on. He is a black belt in Brazilian jujitsu. He worked with Rob Kaman, the world champion in Muay Thai boxing. He worked with Rickson Gracie, the tough guy in Brazilian jujitsu. He graduated at the top of his class at UCLA. He writes and directs, which is something I would have loved to have done if I’d only had the guts.
Father and Son: Eric Braeden (right) shares a moment with his son, filmmaker Christian Gudegast
It must have been a thrill for you to act in Den of Thieves. What was that experience like for you?
That acting was superb. Gerard Butler and Pablo Schreiber both did wonderful jobs. Christian casts people very carefully. He divided the cast and had them train in the use of weapons weeks before filming began, with the bad guys and the sheriffs training separately. He insisted that they were proficient in the weapons they had to use, because he can’t stand phoniness. He’s like me in that regard. Make it as real as you can. Christian has finished writing the sequel, which he hopes to get made as soon as this coronavirus thing is over with. It’s a waiting game in that regard, because they can’t shoot anywhere in the world now.
Unlike your soap opera character, you have been married to the same woman since 1966. What is the secret to a successful relationship?
It’s tough to be married to an actor. My wife grew up in this town, and she went to school with Frank Sinatra’s daughters. She knew Mia Farrow and all of that. So she is used to that side of the business. It doesn’t impress her. So, she knows what the real story is all about.
I think the important thing is that you have to basically like the other person. You should respect the woman that you are with, or in her case, the man. That “being in love” thing, at some point a metamorphosis takes place and it transforms into the two of you liking each other. There is a lot of forgiveness along the way. People get divorced because sometimes the relationship becomes untenable. They aren’t willing to work through the adversity. It gets tough, but you stick it out.
Eric Braeden – Daytime Emmy Award Winner
In 2007, you received what is arguably Hollywood’s highest honor – a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Coming from such a humble upbringing in a small German village, what does this honor mean to you?
It was arguably one of the most important moments in my life. It moved me deeply. Having come to this country as a 18-year-old, with 50 bucks in my pocket and all of that shit, and overcoming all of the hardships along the way…that was one of the most moving experiences in my life.
https://i0.wp.com/www.fifteenminuteswith.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/the_eric_braeden_interview.png?fit=600%2C400&ssl=1400600Michael McClellanhttps://www.fifteenminuteswith.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/FifteenMinutesWith_NewLogoPrototype.pngMichael McClellan2020-07-13 17:24:422020-07-27 12:30:08Eric Braeden – Despicable V
Written By: Michael D. McClellan | His NBA journey begins during the US Bicentennial and ends 21 seasons later, during Bill Clinton’s second term as President. He arrives as disco is heating up, plays through the Michael Jackson-dominated ‘80s, and is still balling when Tupac is gunned down on the Vegas Strip in ‘96, winning a swansong championship during Michael Jordan’s Second Coming with the Chicago Bulls. Jordan might take time off to chill with Bugs Bunny and star in Space Jam, but it’s the quiet Louisianan who spaces out his own jams, a seven-foot wonder who runs the court for four teams over three decades of uninterrupted excellence.
All told, Robert Lee Parish plays fourteen of those twenty-one memorable seasons in a Celtic uniform. He arrives, along with rookie Kevin McHale, as part of Red Auerbach’s famous heist job on the Golden State Warriors, teaming with Larry Bird to lift Boston among the league’s elite. The move fuels the Celtics’ magical seven year run, a stretch that produces five trips to the NBA Finals, three NBA titles, and countless signature moments by Boston’s talented trio of big men. Nicknamed “Chief” by teammate Cedric Maxwell, Parish quietly suppresses his own considerable game for the overall good of the team. While Bird and McHale get most of the touches, he’s content to labor in the shadows of their out sized personas.
“Robert was special because he knew his place on the team,” says his former head coach, KC Jones. “He knew that there were only so many basketballs to go around. Robert embraced his role on the team, which was to rebound, play tough defense, and to be a force in the middle. This isn’t to say that Robert wasn’t a great offensive player; he could have put up big numbers on other teams. He just understood what was expected from him and he went out and did his job.”
Robert Parish – a.k.a., “Chief”
Born in Shreveport, a teenage Robert Parish grows faster than Louisiana kudzu and begins a mesmerizing transformation. He enters the desegregated world of Woodlawn High School unsure of his basketball potential, but exits as the best player in school history. With Parish dominating in the paint, Woodlawn reaches the state finals two years running. As a senior, he leads Woodlawn to a state championship, capping his 1972 dream season by being named Louisiana’s Player of the Year. With nearly 400 scholarship offers to choose from, he decides to play his collegiate basketball at tiny Centenary College – a mere six miles away from home.
The decision is tested shortly after Parish commits, when Centenary is placed on probation for various rules violations. To make matters worse, the school is banned from tournament play the entire four years he’s at the school. With all of its basketball players free to transfer elsewhere, he decides to remain in Shreveport.
Parish stands out on the campus of this predominantly white, Methodist school in more ways than one, but because Centenary is a small independent with no conference tie-ins, he quickly disappears from the nation’s basketball landscape. There is no social media in 1972. The school’s games aren’t on TV. Parish toils in relative anonymity, quietly averaging 21.6 points and 16.9 rebounds during his collegiate career, leading the nation in rebounding twice, and being named to The Sporting News All-America first team as a senior.
The highly-coveted Parish charted his own course, choosing tiny Centenary over elite programs like UCLA and Kentucky
Despite the low profile, the Golden State Warriors select Parish with the 8th overall pick in the 1976 NBA Draft. Stoic and dignified, the rookie joins a veteran team fresh off a championship in ‘75. He averages 9.1 points and 7.1 rebounds as a rookie, impressive numbers for a young center logging just under 18 minutes-per-game.
The honeymoon is short-lived; Golden State’s win totals decline each season, bottoming out with a 24-58 record in 1979-80. Players like Rick Barry are kept past their primes and young talent like Jamaal Wilkes and Gus Williams are traded before reaching their full potential. Parish continues to improve – he becomes a starter, and by his third season is averaging 17.2 points and 12.1 rebounds – but the losing trumps anything Parish does on the court.
The Celtics possess the top pick in the 1980 NBA Draft, two spots ahead of Golden State. Auerbach offers to trade picks with Warriors, on the condition that Parish is included as part of the trade. Parish, now in a Celtics uniform, responds by averaging 18.9 points and 9.5 rebounds, earning his first All-Star Game appearance. The Celtics roll to a 62-20 record and a date with the Philadelphia 76ers in the 1981 Eastern Conference Finals. In an historic series, the Sixers – led by the incomparable Julius Erving – forge a seemingly insurmountable 3-1 series lead. Yet the Celtics are able to fight their way back, winning three consecutive nail biters to advance. The Celtics then defeat the Houston Rockets in the 1981 NBA Finals, 4-2, winning the team’s 14th championship.
Parish played his first four years for Golden State
Parish continues to blossom. He registers 21 points on 9-of-12 shooting in the ‘82 All-Star Game, and earns a spot on the All-NBA Second Team, but a Game 7 loss to the Sixers in the ‘82 Eastern Conference Finals, followed by a four-game sweep by the Milwaukee Bucks in the 1983 playoffs, leaves a bitter taste. With the team regressing, Auerbach responds with two shrewd moves: He names KC Jones as the team’s head coach, and trades for defensive stopper Dennis Johnson. The Celtics respond, winning the 1984 NBA Championship in a classic seven game thriller.
Los Angeles exorcises its demons a year later, beating the Celtics in six games. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, especially for a Boston team storms to a 63-19 regular season record, tops in the league. Parish averages 17.6 points and 10.6 rebounds, but finds himself drained from playing heavy minutes. Help arrives when Auerbach swings a major deal during the off-season, trading away the popular Maxwell for Bill Walton, a former superstar center with a history of foot problems.
It’s a risky move that pays off handsomely; the Celtics go 67-15 and beat the Rockets in the 1986 NBA Finals. The ‘86 title is the high point for Parish and the Celtics. A slow descent follows the tragic death of Len Bias, who succumbs to a cocaine overdose just two days after the 1986 NBA Draft.
** FILE ** Boston Celtics, from left, Robert Parish, Larry Bird, and Kevin McHale watch their team win over the Washington Bullets at the Boston Garden, in Boston, in this Nov. 30, 1991, file photo. (AP Photo/Stephan Savoia, File)
Parish averages 17.5 points and 10.6 rebounds in his 11th season, which includes his lone career triple-double, recorded on March 29 against the Philadelphia 76ers. He hobbles through much of the 1987 NBA Playoffs, missing a second-round game against Milwaukee and repeatedly willing himself up the court against the young, hungry Detroit Pistons. That series remains best-known for Bird’s last-second steal of Isiah Thomas’ inbounds pass, but few can forget the sight of a courageous Robert Parish limping into battle.
By the 1990s, Boston is a solid playoff team, but the new decade is a dark time for a team with such a storied past. Bird’s back is so bad that he often lays prone on the floor when not in the game. McHale, who guts out the ‘87 playoffs on a broken foot, becomes a shell of his former self. Both are in retirement by 1993, the same year that Reggie Lewis dies while shooting baskets at Brandeis College.
Through it all, Parish remains a significant and viable piece of the Celtics’ rebuilding process. At age 40, he averages 11.7 points and 7.3 rebounds, and logs 51 minutes in a 104-94 overtime Celtics win over the defending champion Bulls. He is the team’s elder statesman, the last link to its championship past, his tenure exceed only by the man who traded for him all those ago.
Parish’s next two seasons are spent as a reserve with the Charlotte Hornets, where he becomes the NBA’s all-time leader in games played, passing Abdul-Jabbar’s total of 1,560 on April 6, 1996 in a game at Cleveland.
BOSTON – 1981: Robert Parish #00 of the Boston Celtics looks to rebound against Bob Lanier #16 of the Milwaukee Bucks during a game played in 1981 at the Boston Garden in Boston, Massachusetts. Copyright 1981 NBAE (Photo by Dick Raphael/NBAE via Getty Images)
On October 29th, 1996 – more than twenty years after Parish takes the court as a Golden State rookie, and less than two months after Tupac is gunned down on the Vegas Strip – the player known as “Chief” is recognized by the league as one of the NBA’s 50 Greatest. He spends that final season in Chicago, winning a fourth NBA championship and walking away with an armful of records, among them: Most seasons played all-time (21); most games played all-time (1,611); most offensive rebounds in the NBA Playoffs (571); and most defensive rebounds all-time (10,117).
The records are impressive, but Parish doesn’t spend much time reliving them. Still, he doesn’t waste an opportunity to let that wicked sense of humor shine.
“With Larry and Kevin around, I didn’t get much credit for my offensive skills – but that’s because they took all of the shots,” he says, laughing heartily. “Be sure to let them know I said that.”
You were born on October 30, 1953, in Shreveport, Louisiana. Take me back to your childhood.
We were a close-knit, happy family, and this closeness was fostered mainly by my mother. She was a religious woman. She taught us the fundamental beliefs from the bible. She taught us the importance of faith and religion, and also the importance of being respectful. We learned courtesy at a very early age. My parents worked hard to provide for us – there were four children, and I was the oldest, with one brother and two sisters – and they always stressed the value of a good work ethic. They also wanted us to get an education. They knew how important a degree would be when it came time to find work. A degree meant the difference between a career and a life of hard work.
You credit your junior high school coach, Coleman Kidd, with spurring your interest in basketball. Please tell me about Mr. Kidd.
Coleman Kidd deserves all the credit for the things that led up to me playing basketball. I had never played basketball until I was in junior high school. He was persistent; he saw the potential in me, even when I didn’t see it myself, and he kept after me to pick up a ball and play competitively. I showed very little interest initially, but he stayed with me, kept encouraging me, and kept me positive – even though I wasn’t showing a desire to play the game of basketball. So if I had to pick one factor that left me to the basketball court, it would have to be Coleman Kidd. If it weren’t for him, I would have been just another tall kid walking around the streets of Shreveport [laughs].
You led Woodlawn to the state finals two straight years, winning a state championship along the way. In 1972, you were named Louisiana’s Player of the Year. Why did you choose tiny Centenary College?
It’s very interesting, because I never dreamed that I would be the player that I was at that particular time. Like I said earlier, I didn’t show promise initially. The process was a lot easier on me because of my parents. The gathered all of the information together, made a list of the pros and cons of each college, and helped me to make a sound decision about where I wanted to go. The reason I went to a small college – Centenary College – is because I didn’t want to be compared to other greats that had played before me. If I had gone to UCLA, for example, I would have faced constant comparisons to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. If I had chosen Kansas, I would have played in the shadow of Wilt Chamberlain. So one of the big reasons I chose Centenary was because I wanted to carve out my own identity, and not get caught up in that comparison thing. Also, I liked the coaches at that time – Larry Little and Rodney Wallace. They put a lot of emphasis on education first, and athletics second – and not the other way around. That impressed me a great deal, but it really impressed my parents. It was important for them to hear that education was the number one priority, because I was the first one in my family to get a college education.
Robert Parish – Woodlawn High School
Centenary was placed on probation for various rules violations, where it would remain during your entire four years at the school. With all basketball players free to transfer elsewhere, why did you decide to stay in Shreveport?
There were several factors. One, I was a father in college. I wanted my child to be close to family, and the college was very close to home. Two, it was group decision made by those of us who had the opportunity to leave. There were six or seven of us that could have transferred. We all decided to stay, so it was a group decision to stay on at Centenary College.
You averaged 21.6 points and 16.9 rebounds in college, and were named to The Sporting News All-America First Team as a senior. Did you think your skills would translate at the NBA level?
I had great confidence in myself, and I knew that I could compete. It was just a matter of getting the opportunity and making the most of it.
The Golden State Warriors selected you with the 8th overall pick in the 1976 NBA Draft.
It was an exciting time time for me. It was also a learning experience. I was fortunate to have a mentor in Clifford Ray, who took me under his wings and taught me all about being a professional athlete. He stressed the importance of things like work ethic, nutrition, and fitness – both mentally and physically. That really made a big difference in me, because the only thing I had to do was concentrate on basketball.
Tough times in Oakland – Parish and the Warriors failed to live up to the hype
Please tell me a little about your four seasons as a Warrior.
The team was going through a transition. Golden State has won the championship in ’75, sweeping the Washington Bullets, and that team had been led by Rick Barry. They reached the Western Conference Finals the next season. Then they drafted me, and we were beat by the Lakers in the ’77 Western Conference Semifinals. The next three seasons we failed to make the playoffs, and there were a lot of disgruntled people – the fans, management, and players included. It wasn’t the best of times to be a Warrior. I considered cutting my career short before the trade because I was being blamed for the Warriors’ demise. I understood that I was the team’s top pick, and that a lot of pressure comes along with that. But basketball isn’t an individual sport. I just felt like the Warriors at that time were an assembly of misfit pieces. Guys were thinking about their own agendas as opposed to that of the team.
What was it like finding out that you’d been traded from Golden State to Boston?
It was like going from the outhouse to the penthouse in one phone call [laughs]. I’d taken a lot of the blame for the Warriors’ problems, but there was plenty of blame to go around. When I found out I’d been traded, I poured myself a stiff drink and celebrated.
Sounds like you were happy with the change in scenery.
The trade gave me incentive, and I was motivated to play basketball again because I was finally surrounded by the talent that I played with in college. I mean that in relative terms, of course. In other words, in college we had a front line that was very dominant at that level, and we played very well together. Everyone understood their role, and they went out and did their job. It was the same with the three of us in Boston. We all understood what our roles were going to be, and we understood this from a very early point in time. There was no jealousy. We fit together very well, and complimented each other perfectly.
What was that first Celtics training camp like?
The first day of training camp was very intense, very focused. There was complete dedication on the part of everyone. It was like a playoff-type atmosphere in terms of intensity. All of the practices, in fact, felt like playoff-type games. Just from seeing that, and being exposed to that, I knew very quickly that we could be very special.
How long did it take for you to realize that the Big Three of Robert Parish, Kevin McHale and Larry Bird was destined for greatness?
Initially, I didn’t realize that myself, Larry and Kevin was going to turn out to be such a respected front line. It didn’t really sink in until after Dave Cowens retired. I had all intentions of going into it as being a backup to Dave. I had no idea that Dave was going to step down so abruptly. And then, once we started playing together on a consistent basis, I realized that we had the capacity to be something special.
Cedric Maxwell nicknamed you “Chief.”
Cedric nicknamed me Chief because when I came to Boston I was always talking about this movie, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. I’m a big fan of Jack Nicholson, and I finally convinced Cedric to see the movie. He said that I had similar characteristics to Chief Bromden – mainly because Chief had ‘em all fooled. He couldn’t talk – he was a mute – and then it turns out that there wasn’t anything wrong with the Chief. He was just there, in that insane asylum, relaxing and taking it easy. And because I was so quiet, I think I had a lot of people fooled. So that’s how I came about that nickname. Oh, and I have a wicked sense of humor [laughs]. Only people who are in my inner circle know that, though.
Robert Parish – Sports Illustrated Cover Story
The Celtics and the 76ers waged some great battles in the early 80s, none better than the 1981 Eastern Conference Finals. Down 3-1, you were able to win three consecutive games and reach the Finals against Houston. What was the key to your comeback?
I would have to credit our coach at the time, Bill Fitch, for us staying determined and focused, and for us not giving up. He instilled a physical toughness in us, but he also instilled a mental toughness that helped carry us even when things looked to be hopeless. Even though we were down 3-1, he never let us doubt ourselves. He always preached that we could come back and win the series. He said that it’s not over until it’s over. And that attitude really started from the first day of training camp. I think that was one of the big reasons we were able to prevail in that series.
Bill Fitch was the perfect coach for us at the time. We were young, and he had a lifetime of coaching experience to share with us. He was a great Xs and Os coach, as well as a great tactician. He really understood the game. And as I’ve said, he instilled a great sense of belief in ourselves. We had the physical tools to succeed at the NBA level, but he helped give us the mental toughness that can help carry us through all types of adversity. He also taught us structure and discipline. He helped us to stay focused. I have a tremendous amount of respect for Bill Fitch.
What was it like beating Houston to win the ’81 NBA Championship?
Greatest feeling in the world. For it to all come together so quickly in Boston was something special.
Your Celtics came up short in the two seasons following that championship. Getting swept by the Milwaukee Bucks in the ’83 NBA Playoffs may have been the low point. What did the acquisition of Dennis Johnson mean in terms of winning another title?
He fortified our defensive presence, for one thing. Also, he gave us another point guard after Tiny Archibald retired. People don’t realize just how talented Dennis Johnson was, because he made the transition from off guard to point guard appear so seamless. That’s a hell of a transition, I think, and he did it comfortably. Dennis was just exactly what we needed at that time to solidify our backcourt. He gave us the defensive presence that we needed back there, and he complimented our front-court players.
Robert Parish
Bill Fitch was fired, and replaced by KC Jones. Please tell me a little about KC.
I’ve always felt like KC was one of the better coaches in the league. Personally, I would rank him among the top coaches ever in the NBA, because of his uncanny ability to relate to his players. KC knew his Xs and Os, don’t get me wrong, but the way that he understood his players was the thing that really set him apart. He was like Red Auerbach in that respect. The one thing that I always admired about KC – and there a lot of things to admire – was his ability to make that eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh and twelfth guy on the team feel like his role and his input was just as important as one through six or seven. I think that was one of the reasons why we were so successful. He made everyone feel important, no matter how big or how small their role was with the Boston Celtics. Two other coaches come to mind who were like that – Phil Jackson and Chuck Daly. They were very similar in that regard, and I think that is what made each of those coaches so successful. In the NBA, it’s so important to understand the personalities of the players, and how to get the best out of them. It takes a special talent to do that, and those three guys all had that ability.
KC speaks very highly of you.
KC always appreciated they sacrifices that I made on the offensive end. There were only so many balls to go around, which meant that someone had to make some adjustments to make it all work. I’m a low-key guy who doesn’t need the limelight, and for me it was never about putting up stats. With Larry and Kevin playing at such high levels, I didn’t get much credit for my offensive skills – that’s because they shot all the balls [laughs]. I don’t mean that in a negative way – I can’t complain about the formula, because it certainly worked. We were very successful.
Who is the best player you’ve ever gone up against, and why?
Kareem is the best player I ever played against, period. The best thing I could ever say about Kareem, is that no one ever devised a defense that could stop him. He figured out a way to exploit every defensive scheme ever thrown at him. He was so smart and so intelligent, and such an extremely gifted athlete. I couldn’t change his shot; Kareem was the only player that I ever played against like that. I think the reason Kareem was so effective with the hook shot was that he was able to shoot it the same way every time. It was automatic. Wilt Chamberlain was the only player that I saw who could make Kareem alter his hook shot. He’s the only one. Other than that, Kareem was able to shoot it the same way time after time. That’s the way he was able to become so proficient. Nobody ever got close to that shot, except for Wilt Chamberlain.
The 1984 NBA Finals remains one of the most-watched of all-time. Take me back.
That series against the Lakers was a war. Every game was a battle. Every possession was a battle. You had Michael Cooper guarding Larry. Cooper was one of the few players alive who could guard Larry and consistently cause him problems. He would blanket Larry and make it hard for him to take that quick first step to the basket. He would contest every jump shot. Larry would still put up great numbers, but he had to work much harder at it with Cooper guarding him. I remember Gerald Henderson stealing the ball to save us in Game 2. If he hadn’t come up with that steal, we would have gone to Los Angeles in an 0-2 hole. It was big. I remember getting blown out in Game 3 – we were embarrassed. Magic [Johnson] and James Worthy just killed us in that game – we were behind from the opening tip, and we couldn’t do anything to turn it around. That’s when Larry took his frustrations public. He challenged the team in the paper, and it motivated everyone to play harder. That next game was one of the most physical that I’ve ever played in – Kevin gave Kurt Rambis that clothesline, and Larry was going jaw-to-jaw with Kareem. Nobody backed down. We won that game, and then two of the next three to win the championship. Dennis played great defense on Magic the whole series, but he was especially good against him in those last three games. It was a classic series, and one that I’m glad we were able to win.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Robert Parish – As good as it gets
The Celtics won it all again in 1986. Where does this team rank among the all-time greats?
In my opinion, I would have to say that it was in the top five teams of all-time.
Bill Walton’s play pushed that team to another level. Tell me about Bill.
What Bill brought to the Celtics was his toughness. He brought his knowledge of what it takes to win it all, because he was a huge part of that championship team in Portland. He was a former All-Star, a former NBA Most Valuable Player, and one of the best passing big men of all-time. And what made him so special that year was his humility. He had been one of the league’s greatest players, and yet he was willing to come off the bench and provide the punch that we needed. He set a great example for that second unit. He was willing to put his ego aside for the good of the team. Forget about basketball; how many athletes of his stature would be willing to take a lesser role for the overall good of the team?
I remember when the Celtics traded for Bill. We had to give up Cedric Maxwell, a good friend and a very good player, and suddenly we have another quality center on the team. Bill didn’t hesitate to call me as soon as the trade was announced. He wanted me to know that I was still the starting center, and that he wasn’t coming to Boston to take my job. He said that he was coming to help. It was a class move on his part, making that call. He didn’t have to do that, either – that was something that he did on his own. He was not asked to call me, or encouraged to call me. That was something that he wanted to do, out of respect for me. And I’ll never forget that. And Bill was always a player that I respected and admired from afar, because I always liked the way he played the game on both ends of the floor. And that’s how I prided myself – I wanted to be consistent on both ends, and not just be a one-dimensional player. And that’s the same way that Bill Walton played the game. He excelled on both ends, and he was probably the best passing big man that I’d ever seen.
Where were you when you heard the news that Len Bias had died? And what effect did it have on the future of the Boston Celtics?
Riding down the highway. Actually I was going down the Mass Pike [Massachusetts Turnpike] and I heard it on the radio. I thought it was the station’s way of telling some sort of cruel joke. I didn’t want to believe it. I had to think twice about what I’d just heard. I was like, “Man, they’ve got a weird sense of humor.” That’s what I said to myself, because it wasn’t funny at all. And then it turned out to be true. It broke my heart.
Bias’ death hurt the team in a big way, because he was going to be the next big star. The heir apparent to Larry Bird. But let’s not forget about Reggie Lewis. Think how good the Celtics would have been with those two players. They were going to be the future cornerstones of the Boston Celtics. In my opinion, we would have won at least – at least – one more championship if we had both Reggie Lewis and Len Bias.
Robert Parish
The Celtics and Pistons waged war on the hardwood. What stands out in your mind about those physical games with Detroit’s Bad Boys?
The intensity. The competitiveness. The adjustments made by both coaching staffs. I thought it was two great teams battling one another – one of them was on the decline, and the other team was on its way up. It was a classic rivalry – I liken it to the Celtics’ rivalry between teams like the Philadelphia 76ers and Los Angeles Lakers. That’s how intense it was. It was a war. I respect those guys and what they accomplished, and how competitive they were. They were finally able to get by the Celtics and win a couple of championships of their own. Whether or not you liked the Detroit Pistons, you had to respect them for the way they played the game.
Everyone, it seems, has a favorite Red Auerbach story. Do you have one that stands out?
One thing I always respected about Red was his honesty. He was always honest. If Red told you something, you could believe him. He never lied. He was never full of pretense. Red was all about the business of winning championships. Which brings me to another thing I admired and respected about Red; whatever we needed, Red always seemed able to find that one particular player to put us back on top. When we needed someone to put the clamps on Magic Johnson, Red went out and traded for Dennis. We won the championship that next season. When we needed someone to provide a spark off of the bench, Red traded for Bill Walton. We won the championship that next season. He could always find that player to make us a better team, and I respected him greatly for that.
That’s the thing I respected about the Lakers, too. They would always go out and get what they needed, whether it was a coach or a player. I liked that about L.A. Hopefully the Celtics will get it back. They’re definitely headed in the right direction, that’s for sure.
Robert Parish
Of your time spent with the Boston Celtics, do you have a fond memory or an amusing story that stands out most?
Yes. This has something to do with Johnny Most, our radio announcer. I don’t know if you know this or not, but Johnny was a chain smoker. I can’t remember for sure, but it was either Danny Ainge or Kevin McHale who replaced some of Johnny’s cigarettes with some of those party poppers. Those are cigarettes that explode when you light the tip. So, they replaced about five or six of Johnny’s cigarettes. He would light one after another and they would explode. Well, after about the third one he caught on that someone had tampered with his cigarettes. He got so mad! He went on this swearing rampage – he broke out swear words I’d never heard of before [laughs]. Talk about a colorful delivery! It was one of the funniest things I’d ever seen in my life.
One time, Johnny fell asleep and somebody tied his shoelaces together. He got up to go to the bathroom and stumbled. I think KC caught him – he didn’t hit the floor – and he went on another one of those swearing tirades. We couldn’t stop laughing, and the harder we laughed the madder he got. Johnny Most had that distinctive voice, and as he got madder his voice got higher. It was unbelievable [laughs].
Final Question: If you could offer one piece of advice on life to others, what would that be?
Believe in yourself, no matter what. If you believe in yourself, and have confidence in yourself, then you can accomplish anything.
https://i0.wp.com/www.fifteenminuteswith.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/the_robert_parish_interview2.png?fit=600%2C400&ssl=1400600Michael McClellanhttps://www.fifteenminuteswith.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/FifteenMinutesWith_NewLogoPrototype.pngMichael McClellan2020-06-08 02:22:132020-07-03 00:39:35Robert Parish – The Chief
Written By: Michael D. McClellan | Picasso once said that where others have seen what is and asked why, Picasso himself saw what could be and asked why not. He backed up this bold proclamation by ripping apart conventional art and giving us the jaw-dropping Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. Gone were the whimsical figures and haunting landscapes of his Rose Period, replaced instead with ugly, angular women rising from jagged fragments of shattered glass. Rather than painting to imitate nature, Picasso abandoned 600 years of artistic refinement to produce his signature masterpiece, emerging with what is considered the rupture moment between the art of the past and the art of the future. As it turns out, Picasso was just getting started. He soon took a (figurative) sledgehammer to centuries of pictorial art and introduced the world to Cubism, said to be the most momentous innovation in art since the development of perspective. The stream of masterpieces that flowed through Picasso during his lifetime – works that include Le Rêve, The Weeping Woman, and Guernica – validated his genius and secured his place among the greatest artists to ever live.
Which brings us to Mario Andretti. There have been racing legends before Andretti, trailblazers like Alberto Ascari and Stirling Moss who helped legitimize Formula One racing during its infancy, and there have been stars who have come after Andretti, charismatic drivers like Lewis Hamilton who have elevated the sport into a different stratosphere. In between is a prolific, groundbreaking body of work by a man whose name, like Picasso’s, is deeply ingrained in popular culture. If something goes awry, it’s said to have gone a bit ‘Picasso.’ If you ‘Drive it like Andretti,’ you’re the unquestioned alpha at whatever it is that you do. Jay-Z Jay compares his own fame to that of the prolific painter and sculptor, rapping, “What’s it gonna take/For me to go/For y’all to see/I’m the modern day Pablo/Picasso baby.” A Tribe Called Quest raps, “See, lyrically I’m Mario Andretti on the MOMO/Ludicrously speedy, or infectious with the slow-mo/Heard me in the eighties, J.B.’s on ‘The Promo.’”
Mario Andretti and Lady Gaga, together at the start of the 100th running of the Indy 500. May 29, 2016. Photo courtesy of Mario Andretti
You can’t counterfeit that kind of street cred. It’s a
binary proposition, ones or zeros, on or off. Some of us have it. Some of us
don’t. And while there’s no magic formula, the ingredients include crazy amounts of God-given talent, a tireless work ethic, a
magnetic personality, boundless drive, utter fearlessness, and insatiable
curiosity. Check those boxes, mix with good fortune, and you might have
an infinitesimal shot at someday being the next Mozart, the next Michael
Jackson, the next Tiger Woods.
Maybe.
Which brings us back to Mario Andretti. Andretti’s place in our lexicon is long since secure, but his journey from the Italian hillside village of Montona to auto racing’s summit is anything but a straight line affair. There are plenty of detours and pit stops along the way, anxious moments when the dream seems an unobtainable figment of his imagination. Who could blame him if doubt creeped in? Formula One boasted sophisticated cars driven by men like Ascari and Moss on famous tracks like Monza. The Andretti’s lived in a village on a hill. There were no automobiles to speak of in Montona, only horses and buggies and bicycles. And then the war came, and with it hardline communism. A converted monastery in Lucca provided a safe haven, but it did little to propel the dream. Who reaches racing’s summit after fleeing to a refugee camp with only the belongings that can be carried and the clothes on your back? Who has time to dream in a place where bed sheets are all that separate the living spaces of complete strangers, and where there is no running water in your space…only water that you would go and get and carry in?
The Andretti family in Montona, Italy 1947 From left: Mario, his mother Rina, his sister Anna Maria, Aldo, and Alvise “Gigi” Photo courtesy Mario Andretti
Still, Andretti dreamed. He and his twin brother, Aldo, had careened recklessly down that steep Montona hillside in a four-wheeled cart constructed by a neighbor who was a carpenter, terrorizing the old ladies unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Then, in Lucca, the brothers befriended the owners of a small parking garage on the edge of town, where they were eventually given the responsibility of parking cars.
They were twelve at the time.
As close as brothers could be, Mario and Aldo were equally consumed by the same dream, holding steadfast to the belief that one day the racing gods would reward them for their faithfulness and make them race car drivers. Then, in 1954, the two guys who owned the parking garage took them to Monza, where they got their first real taste of Formula One, and where they got to see their hero, Ascari, in his red Ferrari 625. Ascari was a revelation. While the sight of their driver battling in the corners thrilled the brothers to no end, the gulf between watching the Italian Grand Prix and racing in it seemed as vast as the distance between the Earth and the Sun. That distance only seemed greater a year later, when their father, Alvise Andretti, announced that he was emigrating his family to the United States. Little did anyone realize it then, but that move would provide young Mario with his missing ingredient.
Good fortune was about to play its part.
~ ~ ~
In 1955, the Andrettis arrived in Nazareth, Pennsylvania,
with just $125 to their name. It had taken three full years for Alvise to
obtain the necessary visas to make the move, a requirement of which was gainful
employment. Alvise’s brother-in-law, who had lived in the United States for
many years, lined up a factory job in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, and by June
the family had started their new lives in America.
Mario’s first car – 1948 Hudson Hornet Sportsman Left to right: Larry Slutter, Bill Tanzosh, David Solt, Aldo Andretti, Mario Andretti, and Bob Noversel Photo courtesy Mario Andretti
The Andrettis were visiting the brother-in-law a few days
later when lights from a nearby fairground flooded the night sky. Soon the roar
of engines could be heard. The brothers ran the mile-and-a-half to the
fairground, watching slack-jawed through the fence as brutish-looking modifieds
chewed their way around the dirt oval. In many ways the spectacle seemed
prehistoric, even for the times, but to the brothers it was a scene straight
from heaven. They were only 15 at the time – a full six years away from the legal
driving age – but that didn’t matter one bit. Like everything else in Mario
Andretti’s world, he was about to stomp hard on the accelerator and go full
throttle toward the dream.
~ ~ ~
After two years of careful planning, Mario and Aldo had
assembled a team of high school classmates, taken out a loan, purchased a car,
and then set out to make that car as competitive as it could be on that
half-mile dirt track in Nazareth. By the age of 19, that car – a 1948 Hudson
Hornet Sportsman – was ready to race. Problem was, the brothers were two years
too young to drive.
For Mario, the way around this problem was simple: Lies and
forgery.
Boyish in looks and smallish of stature, the brothers concocted
an elaborate, bullshit backstory that included racing Formula Junior in Italy. A
couple of fake driver’s licenses later, and they were suddenly street legal. Sure,
eyebrows were raised, but how do you fact check a story like that from
Nazareth, circa 1959?
Just like that, Mario and Aldo were cleared to race.
Nothing would ever be the same again.
~ ~ ~
They took turns racing the Hudson. A coin flip determined that Aldo got to drive first and he went out and won his race. Mario, not to be outdone, won in his debut a week later. The celebrations stayed between them, because their father didn’t have a clue as to what was going on.
He’d tan their hides if he did.
~ ~ ~
Everything was going according to plan until a vicious crash
at Hatfield Speedway left Aldo in a coma and a priest reading him his last
rites. It’s the kind of thing you can’t keep secret. As Mario remembers it,
Alvise, who spoke very little English, let the palm of his hand communicate
with Mario’s backside. Miraculously, Aldo emerged from the coma with his cognition
intact, and by then Mario was already at work on a replacement car.
~ ~ ~
Mario at full throttle?
It goes something like this: Mario registered 21 modified
stock car wins in 46 races in 1960 and 1961, his reputation growing with each
victory. Soon he found himself moving from stock cars to midgets to sprint cars
and back again. In 1964, he made his Champ Car open wheel debut on April 19,
1964 at the New Jersey State Fairgrounds in Trenton, New Jersey. Andretti
finished eleventh in the USAC National Championship that season.
In 1965, Mario ran his first Indianapolis 500. He qualified fourth and finished third, winning Rookie of the Year, and in the pit lane he met Colin Chapman, the founder of Lotus Cars. A conversation ensued, during which Andretti explained to Chapman that his sights were set on Formula One. Chapman promised him a car as soon as he was ready. That season Andretti beat A.J. Foyt to become the youngest-ever national champion at age 25. He repeated as national champion in ’66, winning 8 of 15 events. By then he was racing anything and everything, on any surface anywhere, and under any conditions. In total, Andretti drove 14 different cars in 51 races in 1966, taking 14 victories in four of them. He ran in NASCAR and Can-Am, too, while still pursuing a full Champ Car schedule and racing midgets on dirt if he had a free weekend.
In 1967, Andretti finished second overall at the end of the
IndyCar season, but he made his biggest noise by winning the biggest NASCAR
race of all, the Daytona 500. The win was lauded by everyone except NASCAR
purists, who couldn’t comprehend how an open wheel driver could take the top
prize in their sport. Andretti was named Driver of the Year.
Mario Andretti, winner of the 1967 Daytona 500, poses with his wife, Dee Ann. Photo courtesy Mario Andretti
“Those guys didn’t like an open-wheeler coming down and
beating them,” Andretti says with a laugh. “The next day, the newspaper
headline said: ‘All of Dixie Mourns Andretti Victory.’”
In 1968, three years after their meeting at Indy, Andretti made
that call to Chapman. He tested the Lotus 49 at Monza, where 14 years before he’d
pressed his nose to the fence to cheer on Ascari. As unthinkable as it might
sound, Andretti took the pole position in his debut at the 1968 United States
Grand Prix at Watkins Glen.
A year later, in 1969, Andretti won his third national
championship in a season that included the crown jewel of IndyCar – the
Indianapolis 500. This win didn’t come easily. Andretti crashed car owner Andy
Granatelli’s new four-wheel-drive Lotus in practice, forcing co-chief mechanics
Clint Brawner and Jim McGee to hastily prepare an old Hawk chassis. Andretti
qualified it in the middle of the front row. This win was especially satisfying
considering Mario’s spate of bad luck at Indy, a run that had some calling it
the “Andretti Curse.” In ’66, he’d placed his car on pole, only to blow a
cylinder after a few laps; in ’67, a slipping clutch doomed his chances; in ’68,
it was engine failure that sent him packing. On this day, there was no curse. Andretti
led 116 of the 200 laps, beating runner-up Dan Gurney to the finish line by 2:13:03.
After the race was over, Granatelli planted a now-famous kiss on Andretti’s
cheek.
1969 Indy winner Mario Andretti in the Brawner Hawk with Aldo the day after race — photographer unknown Photo courtesy Mario Andretti
“It was a happy moment,” Andretti says. “I remember that big
kiss from Andy Granatelli. I can still smell the garlic [laughs]. I knew how
much it meant to Andy, because he only cared about Indianapolis. It was
everything to him. To be able to do it for him after all the glitches was very
special.”
As the 1970s rolled around, Andretti continued a
mind-boggled racing schedule that included grand prix, USAC dirt races, and endurance sports car races.
He drove a Ford GT40 at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. He won the 12 Hours of Sebring
three times in six years. In 1974 he was named the United States Auto Club
National Dirt Track Champion. In 1975 he plunged into Formula One full-time; three
years later he won 6 grand prix events on his way to the 1978 Formula One World
Championship. In becoming the first (and still only) driver to ever win the
Daytona 500, the Indianapolis 500, and a Formula One Championship, Andretti was
honored with his second Driver of the Year Award.
In 1984, Andretti won his fourth national championship and was
again named Driver of the Year Award, making him the only driver to win that
prestigious award in three different decades.
Mario Andretti behind the wheel, 1971 German Grand Prix — photographer unknown
In 1991, Andretti, at 51, finished seventh in the Indy car standings, while his son Michael won the championship. Andretti also competed that season against his other son, Jeff, and a nephew, John (Aldo’s son), making it the first time four family members raced together in the same series.
The last of Andretti’s record 407 Indy car races was in September 1994. His 52 Indy car victories are second to A.J. Foyt’s 67, and his 67 pole positions remain No. 1 on the all-time list. He is enshrined in 24 Halls of Fame – including the International Motorsports Hall of Fame, the Automotive Hall of Fame and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Hall of Fame. He has received hundreds of awards and recognition. Among the most prestigious, he was named Driver of the Century by the Associated Press (tied with A.J. Foyt), he was knighted by his native Italy in 2006, and in 2008 the Library of Congress in Washington DC added him to its Living Legends list. And on the lighter side, but undoubtedly affirmation of his charisma and popularity, he was in the first Pixar Cars movie voicing himself and GQ Magazine named him one of “The 25 Coolest Athletes of All Time” (Feb. 2011).
~ ~ ~
More than anyone before or since, Picasso reinvented art. He
was the master of a new, modern movement, swinging a wrecking ball through
centuries of tradition and destroying the hackneyed clichés of representative
art. He would try anything, no matter how outrageous, in his quest for
innovation. He lived into his nineties, and worked as if to defy death. His
later pieces were of mixed quality, as the baton of shocking, revolutionary art
had been passed to others who, across the Atlantic, were busily splattering
paint and printing soup cans. Not that it mattered. By then, Picasso’s place in
history had been secured.
Andretti racing family at Nazareth Speedway 1991 Photo courtesy Mario Andretti
Times change, and Mario Andretti too has passed the baton. The spotlight and adoration now goes to a new generation of drivers, brand names like Lewis Hamilton and Daniel Ricciardo, who generate more money in one year than Andretti did over the course of his entire career. There is no jealousy. How can there be? The dream, which seemed so unobtainable as that child in a refugee camp, has been realized many times over. He’s traveled the world. Paul Newman became one of his closest friends. Everyone from Jay Leno to Lady Gaga have climbed into a two-seat racing car with him, and his name is mentioned in lyrics by artists as varied as Amy Grant, Alan Jackson, the Beastie Boys, and Ice Cube.
“I have no complaints,” he says with a smile. “I never gave
up on my dream, and I never settled. I never had a Plan B.”
Even in old age, Picasso kept living life to the fullest. He enjoyed his fame and his wealth, buying a vast fourteenth century chateau in in the hills of Uzès, France. Andretti never left Nazareth, but his 22,000-square-foot home is filled with glass trophy cases featuring decades of racing prizes and memorabilia, including items celebrating that 1978 Formula One championship. In 1996, two years after he retired from racing, Andretti bought a 53-acre vineyard and winery in the far north part of Napa. It’s but one in a myriad of other business interests in the Andretti portfolio, but it runs deeper than that. The vineyard connects Andretti with his childhood in Montona, where his dad managed several farms, mostly wheat fields for bread and grapes for wine, before the war changed everything.
Mario in the courtyard of the Andretti Winery in Napa, California. The Andretti Winery opened in 1996. Photo courtesy Mario Andretti
“My one thing I regret more than anything is that my dad didn’t get to see the Andretti Winery in Napa Valley,” Andretti says. “Managing a vineyard is what he knew and loved; his life back in Italy managing farms, including a vineyard. That’s what his life was all about before the war. I think he would have felt somewhat satisfied had he lived long enough to see the Andretti Winery. He lost his livelihood to Communism, maybe he would have felt that we won it all back. Seeing the Andretti name on a vineyard in Napa Valley would have given him a sense of pride, he’d finally have the appreciation of something he understood.”
When Picasso died, he left behind an estate of 43,000 works,
which is easily the largest recorded output of any artist ever. Mario Andretti,
like Picasso, worked prolifically, his instrument of choice a steering wheel
instead of a paintbrush, his medium a track instead of a canvas. Picasso’s
genius illuminated the twentieth century like a comet. The same can be said of
Mario Andretti, who is far and away the most versatile driver the world has
ever seen.
Please take me back to your childhood in Montona, Italy.
I spent the first 15 years of my life in Italy, the first seven years in Montona. My twin brother and I were born in Montona, Italy in 1940. It was shortly after the start of World War II. Montona was a medieval town on a hill in the Italian countryside. To get to the highest point, you need to climb 1,052 steps, the longest stairway in the world. It’s about 35 miles from the city of Trieste, inland from the Adriatic Sea. Montona was a typical mid-evil village, with very narrow cobblestone streets. We loved it there and my father owned and operated several farms, mostly wheat fields and grapes. We played freely and happily on the cobblestone streets, amid ancient churches and a bell tower. But the town was forever changed by the end of World War II. Montona, located on the Istrian peninsula, was ceded to Yugoslavia as part of the post-war political settlement, leaving us trapped inside a Communist country. Those years were certainly anything but normal by any standard, but as kids we knew nothing else. We had started school in Montona and did all of the normal things that you do at that age, including doing the chores and playing outside with the other children who were around at the time. When the war was over, there were a lot of uncertainty and there was a sense that something dramatic was happening. But did we understand Communism? No. As kids you just roll along.
Did most of your extended family live in Montona?
Yes, everyone. My grandparents owned a small hotel by the train station in Montona. There was a very famous restaurant in their hotel, and my grandmother was an incredible chef and very well known. There was no refrigeration, so she would have to go to the butcher two or three times a day to get fresh meat for whatever she might be serving. Because Montona is positioned on a hill, I think it was two kilometers down the hill and back up just to get to the butcher. I remember my mother and my grandmother making these trips up and down the hill every day. When we left Montona for Lucca, my grandparents went with us.
Mario and Aldo Andretti
Is it true that you
and your brother terrorized the neighborhood in a small cart at the tender age
of six?
That’s very true [laughs]. There was a local carpenter who lived next door to us in Montona, and he built us a little flatbed cart on wheels. We called it a buggy, but it was like wagon with no sides. Just flat. There was a pretty steep hill above us, then a level plain in front of our house, followed by a sharp turn, and then the hill continued on down. It was all cobblestone and bumpy. And only about six feet wide. Aldo and I could both fit on the cart and we’d take turns steering down the hill, crashing into walls. We used to scare the little old ladies coming up the hill, and they would get so mad that they complained to my dad’s Uncle, who was a priest in Montona. He was my great-uncle and we called him “Uncle Priest.” So the old ladies would go to the house where the priests lived and complain that we were reckless on the cart. My great uncle would defend us. That’s when the concept of speed started to be ingrained in us. Why did we want to be daring at such a young age? I cannot explain that to myself, but I always say that I was born with a steering wheel in my hand. I think it was meant for me to be a race driver.
In what ways were you effected by World War II?
We lost our home, our farms, my dad lost his livelihood. World War II had begun right around the time I was born, and when it ended our town Montona fell under Communist rule. We stayed for a few years hoping things would work out, but we eventually left Montona as refugees when my brother and I were seven years old. Our first stop was a central dispersement camp in Udine. About a week later, we were dispatched to a refugee camp.
A close-up photo of Mario Andretti’s home in Montona, Italy Photo courtesy Mario Andretti
Our parents had a difficult decision to make once territory in Italy became occupied by Yugoslavia, which was three years after the war ended. The borders were realigned at that time, and we were suddenly trapped in the region of Istria, which was handed over to Marshal Tito and the hardline communists of Yugoslavia. Everything changed dramatically under that regime for Italians living in this region. There were some very dangerous areas if you were of Italian descent, areas where the Yugoslav Partisans carried out “foibe massacres,” which literally refers to mass killings by which the corpses were thrown into foibas, or deep, natural sinkholes. For everyone else, you succumbed to what the rules were. In the case of my dad, the family owned vast parcels of land on which he had seven tenants. Before Tito, he was the administrator of that land. Then, all of a sudden, it all belonged to the state, so if he had decided to stay he would have been working for the state. That’s because all of that land became the government’s property and he owned nothing. That is what hardline communism is all about.
How many Italians fled the region following the war?
I think some 85% of the Italian inhabitants of that region left. There was a decision to be made. It was straightforward: You were allowed to leave with only the belongings you could carry, or stay. Some left for America. Others to Australia or Canada. Wherever you thought there was your best bet. And some people stayed. If you left, there was a non-binding pact that was made between the Italian and the Yugoslav governments. It said that the inhabitants who were part of the Istrian exodus would be compensated for what they left behind at a price that was agreed among them. There were promises of payments to be made. So we left thinking we’d be paid for the belongings and property we left behind. It never happened. With respect to our family, I think there was only one initial payment made while we were still in the refugee camp. That was it. So basically, my parents had to start a life all over again in America with nothing.
Mario Andretti
What are some of the things you remember about life in
the refugee camp?
We were refugees for 7½ years, from 1947 until 1955, in the Italian city of Lucca, one of the regions of Tuscany. The refugee camp was an old monastery that had become a college, and we spent the first three years in a converted classroom with several families. Everyone hung blankets to separate their quarters. Eventually my dad’s uncle (the priest), pulled some strings and they moved us to two classrooms as our quarters, which was then occupied by our grandparents and us. You had to make do with the very basics, but we were always clean and dressed properly, and never hungry and never cold. That is a credit to my parents for keeping us all happy with very little, and doing their best to make sure that family was as comfortable as possible. Even though we were living in the refugee camp, I thought Lucca was nice. There was a school and an opera house, a church. As kids, you only know what you’re exposed to and I knew of no place else. And living in a refugee camp doesn’t mean you go hungry or that you’re cold. You just exist. I still went to school and my dad worked odd jobs.
One of my favorite places as a child was Viareggio, a beautiful resort on the Tuscan coast – basically at the beginning of the Italian Riviera. We could bicycle there – all the way to Pisa. Another one of my fondest memories was the sports car race called the Mille Miglia, a thousand mile race. One of the segments ran through the Abetone pass, near Florence. Once a year, my brother and I would watch from the side of the road. It was magical to us and that’s about the time we fell in love with auto racing. We’d go back home (to the refugee camp) and pretend for days and weeks that we were race drivers. As kids you can be pacified with your imagination.
Let’s talk cars. What inspired you to drive?
It was while we were in Italy that I was developing a love of cars and racing. Aldo and I, for some odd reason, became enamored with cars right from a very young age in Montona. My dad didn’t own a car – only a bicycle. The only car that existed in our town of about 400 inhabitants was the one owned by the town doctor. I remember Aldo and I seeing a 1946 Ford that somehow made its way through the city shortly after the war. Everyone thought that that was really something. To us, it was unbelievable, inspiring and jaw-dropping. When we moved to Lucca, there was a parking garage right next to the entry of the refugee camp where we were staying. We started hanging around at the parking garage, looking at all the cars, and we ended up befriending the owners – two guys named Sergio and Beppe. They liked us. And then, at the age of 12, we started parking cars for them. We learned to drive in that parking garage.
Were you aware of
Formula One as a child?
In those days, motor racing was more popular than any other sport in Italy. And the world champion at the time was Alberto Ascari – my idol. I was very aware. Back then, Alpha Romeo, Ferrari and Maserati were involved, and you had the golden years of drivers such as Alberto Ascari, Juan Manuel Fangio, and Stirling Moss. These drivers were just incredible individuals and protagonists during that era. My brother and I were at the impressionable age at the time, and we both became enamored with the sport.
In 1954, the two guys who owned the parking garage invited Aldo and me to go to Monza with them to watch the Italian Grand Prix. It was unbelievable. I watched my idol, Alberto Ascari, driving his Ferrari and fighting with the Mercedes. Ascari was fighting hard and raising dust in every corner. There was just something about Ascari’s spirit, something that just captured me.
Two-time Formula 1 World Champion Alberto Ascari
Did you ever get to meet Alberto Ascari?
I never met Alberto Ascari. Sadly, he was killed a year after Aldo and I saw our first race at Monza. Alberto Ascari was killed in 1955, about a month before we arrived in America. In 1992 he was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame posthumously. I had the honor of presenting him for induction, and presenting the induction medal to his son, Antonio. It was an honor for me beyond anything I could ever imagine because Alberto Ascari was my absolute idol and the inspiration for wanting to become a race car driver.
Did watching that Italian Grand Prix in 1954 seal the deal? Is that when you decided to become a race car driver?
Yes, that day at Monza is when my dream began. The die was cast that day. Not only did I want to be a race driver….. I wanted to be Alberto Ascari. And it truly was as impossible as anything that you could think of at the time. Two kids in a refugee camp dreaming of being world champions.
How did you end up immigrating to the United States?
We kept correspondence with an uncle on my mother’s side, who had immigrated to America in 1909. At one point, he suggested to my dad, “Well, if things don’t get better, why don’t you think about coming to America? I will do whatever I need to do to guarantee that you have a job and a place to stay in order to obtain visas.” My dad applied for visas in 1952, and three years later our visas were granted. Suddenly it was decision time. We had been in the refugee camp seven-and-a-half years. For me and Aldo, that was age 7 to age 15. We had almost forgotten about the visas. Then my dad gave us the news, “We are going to America.” Trying to make it seem less monumental, he told us we’d go for five years, and maybe come back. That’s how he broke the news to us. Done. In 1955, we immigrated to America. It took 11 days on the Italian ocean liner Conte Biancamano. We arrived into New York Harbor on June 15, 1955. We didn’t speak English and had $125 to our name.
Mario Andretti – 1967 Daytona 500
Were you already thinking about racing cars in America?
As kids in the Italian refugee camp, we followed the sport as closely as we could and we continued to dream about racing cars. We didn’t know much of what was going on in the United States, or what the racing scene was like, but we did know that there was some racing in America because of a film that Aldo and I saw in 1951. It was called To Please a Lady, starring Clark Gable and Barbara Stanwyck. It portrayed Clark Gable as a race car driver in Indianapolis. So, we knew that there was racing and we had heard of Indianapolis, but at the same time, when we learned we were leaving Italy, we thought, “There goes our dream. Or, even worse, our life is over.”
Call it karma, but I’ve read where your uncle lived about
a mile from a racetrack.
We arrived in America on Wednesday, June 15, 1955 and were settled in Nazareth, Pennsylvania by Thursday. Little did we know at the time, but the local racing season was in full swing. Races that were happening at the local level in Nazareth were held on Sunday night, at what was called the Northampton County Agricultural Fairgrounds. It was later known as the Nazareth Speedway. So anyway, we were at our uncle’s house, which was only about a mile-and-a-half from the fairgrounds, and we were lounging around on a Sunday evening. We looked outside, and we could we see bright lights off in the distance, and then, all of a sudden, there was this huge roar of engines. Aldo and I just looked at each other – we couldn’t believe it – and we immediately followed the noise, which led us to the fairgrounds.
That track changed your life.
I remember peeking through the gate there, and we could see these brutish-looking modified stock cars. They were making all of this racket, but it wasn’t racket to us. It was music to our ears. Aldo and I looked at each other in amazement. These were not the sophisticated Formula One cars we had seen in Italy. But this type of racing looked doable. In that instant, we were on a mission.
We started planning on the same night that we saw those
stock cars for the first time. Two years later, at age 17, we assembled a team
with four other buddies and started building our first car. I always say that
we had one geek in the group. That was very important. You have to have that
guy who knows everything, and he steered us in the right direction. His name
was Charlie Mitch. Never to be forgotten.
October 2, 1960 — Mario posing at the Nazareth half-mile dirt track with his third car Photo courtesy Mario Andretti
Your first car is now legendary in racing circles. Please
tell me about it.
When we started building our car we didn’t follow the standard blueprint, so to speak. We went with something different, based on what Charlie Mitch suggested. It was actually a very, very intelligent strategy on his part. He said, “Mario, Aldo, you can’t just go out there and build something similar to what they are running, and then hope to beat them. You’ve got to do something different.” So Charlie reached out beyond the local level and into the national level, which was NASCAR at the time. He learned that the cars that were actually winning a lot of the short track races were the Hudsons. Ironically, the Hudson factory had officially withdrawn from NASCAR around that time, so there was a lot of information and parts available, and our focus became to accumulate as much of that as possible. We begged, borrowed, and went to the junk yard every day looking for parts. We even borrowed $500 from the local bank, and used the money to pay for information from one of the prominent teams. In fact, the team was dissolving, so we bought information from them and that was very key to our success. What we ultimately built was something different. It was a 1948 Hudson Hornet Sportsman, and it had a lot of muscle.
The dream was starting to become reality.
The dream is what drove it all. Pure passion. Manic pursuit of our dream to be race drivers. I remember so vividly when it seemed so unobtainable. Things started falling into place just two days after we arrived in America. In the blink of an eye we had a plan. We were still going to school and all of that sort of thing, but we were already thinking way ahead. We were also very motivated; when we started building the Hudson, it looked like it would be four years before we could race it – at least legally – but the car was finished in two years’ time. We figured, “Well, we are not going to wait.” We were two years too young to be able to legally drive, because in those days, to drive professionally, you had to be 21. That’s when we decided to fudge are birth dates on our driver’s licenses, so that we could start driving at age 19.
How do you go about getting fake driver’s licenses in 1959?
We befriended the local editor of the Nazareth newspaper, Les Young. He did a good job on our licenses, changing our birth dates to make it so that we could drive. Back then there were no computers, so we got away with it. The fact that it worked was surprising, because we looked very young. We didn’t look 21. And we were small of stature to boot. The local race organizers said, “Well, what background do you have?” And we lied….. saying that we used to race Formula Junior in Italy. Here again, there was no way to double-check us. We fibbed our way in. We had one car and two drivers. Aldo won a coin toss between us and got the first drive, and low and behold, he wins the very first qualifying heat with that car. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Then he turned around and won the feature. As I said, at that point we owed $500 to the local bank, and in that first race we won something like $150. Which was amazing. That’s how it all began.
A couple of fake IDs,
and suddenly you’re trading paint on a dirt track – now that is determination!
You know how we got away with a lot of this? We figured we need to look like race drivers. In those days, at the local level especially, nobody really had specific uniforms, but in Italy they had racing uniforms. So, when we showed up at the fairgrounds to race, we each wore a Salas Sports uniform that we got from the two guys who owned the parking garage in Italy…a white one, and a blue one…I wore the white, and Aldo wore the blue. We looked so damned professional and nobody questioned whether we were eligible to race or not. We were determined to do anything that we needed to do to be able to look the part. Then Aldo goes out and wins the race. I just couldn’t believe it!
One problem with fudging our driver’s licenses – once I reached the age of 21, I didn’t want to be 23, so I had to figure out a way to get back to my proper age. Needless to say, I had to start backtracking. You know what is interesting? Some of the stories we made up are still going around as fact. You read some of these old-timer journalists that cover our sport, and when they reminisce, they write that Mario and Aldo used to race Formula Junior in Italy, which is total baloney.
Mario Andretti
Aldo won his first race. How did your first race go?
Talk about pressure! Of course I had to win the following
weekend, which happened. We were winning races, but we were also crashing, and doing
all of the normal things associated with the sport. That’s okay, it’s all part
of the game. That’s how it all started for us, and it couldn’t have been any
better. I still remember all of this so vividly.
Did your parents know that their underage sons were racing cars?
That was the other battle. We didn’t dare tell my dad what we were doing because anytime you mentioned racing he would stop us cold. He knew that kids could be crazy and that they could get into all sorts of things, but racing was something he didn’t want us involved in. He thought it was too dangerous. Naturally, we didn’t dare tell him what we were planning, and for good reason. Once we started racing we didn’t even tell my mother…but you know moms. They have that sense. Although she somehow knew what was going on, she was of a different mentality and was more accepting. Part of it had to do with our Uncle Bruno, who was her brother. He was one of these daredevil types. So, my mom was caught in the middle and she decided to turn a blind eye. The problem was that we were doing some winning at the local level. At work, my dad’s boss would come up to him and say things like, “Hey Gigi, your kids are really, really doing well,” but my dad had no idea what the hell he was saying. He thought he was getting accolades for his own work or something like that, so he would smile proudly. Of course he had been in America for four years, but still spoke very little English, so that’s probably why he didn’t catch on. Thankfully for us, he was still in the dark.
You each had two wins in your first four races, and then
came the race that changed everything.
Please tell me what happened at Hatfield Speedway.
It was the very last race of the season, an invitational
that was held in Hatfield, Pennsylvania. To qualify, you had to be in the top
three in points on tracks within a 150 mile radius. Both Aldo and I qualified,
even though we would alternate racing every other weekend. Since we were pretty
successful up to that point we entered our car, which was the Sportsman. This was
a modified race, and even though our car was not a modified, it was still fast
enough for a third of a mile track.
I got to ride in another modified from Allentown, so I was already qualified for the 100 lapper. Aldo was in the qualifying heat. He was running second, which, had he finished in that position, he would have been qualified for the feature. I was wanting him to hold his position and finish just like that, but he was trying to beat the track champion, a guy by the name of Freddie Adams. With about two laps to go, Aldo hooked a guardrail. The car went end-over-end-over-end. He suffered a fractured skull as a result of the crash. He was given his last rites that night at the local hospital. That’s how my dad found out that we were racing.
Mario Andretti
What were the next days and weeks like?
Aldo was in a coma for a long time before he came around. About 85 days. Our car was crashed, so I was already building a new car for next year. This was while he was still in the hospital. One of the doctors said, “When you talk to your brother, he probably hears you. He’s not responding, but just talk to him about things that would stimulate him.” I kept saying, “Hey, Aldo, you may have had this crash, but we are already building a new car.” So I would visit and tell him all about this car, and our plans for the following year [laughs].
Is it safe to assume that your dad was upset that you’d
been secretly racing when Aldo got hurt?
Of course! My dad beat the crap out of me for doing what we were doing without him knowing. When Aldo finally came to, it took him a while to start talking. His first words to me were, “I’m glad you had to be the one to face the old man.” [Laughs.]
Aldo eventually recovers. How long was it before he was
behind the wheel again?
Aldo did have to take a sabbatical. He didn’t race the whole
following year. I think my dad felt vindicated, and he probably thought that we
had learned our lesson about the dangers associated with racing. The worst
thing was that my dad found out that we were racing again. If he had a better
command of the English language, I think he would’ve disowned us [laughs].
These were precarious times in our house. As I said, my poor mother was caught in the middle. She was on our side, which was obvious even though she tried to appear neutral, so this created tension. Later on my dad realized that he couldn’t fight his kids because they were hellbent on pursuing this dream, so he eventually started to soften up. He would ask Aldo, “Hey, how’s Mario doing?” And then he would ask me the same thing, “Hey, how’s Aldo doing?” And then, of course, he became a great fan and supporter of ours.
Mario Andretti – 1967 Daytona 500 Champion
Your racing world expanded greatly – and rapidly – during
the early 1960s. Please take me back to those formative years.
Because I loved driving so much, I was looking at all of the different disciplines in our sport at the top level. The one thing that I wanted to do immediately was to get out of stock cars and get into single seaters, which was more of the purest form of the sport. Racing in open wheel, single seaters was how I got into midgets and sprint cars, which was part of the ladder system to get into the top level of Indy car racing. It was me going from steppingstone to steppingstone. As soon as you start winning in one category, you want to progress and go to the next level. It’s just like going to school, where you want to progress and go to the next grade. You don’t want to repeat the same level. You don’t want to repeat the same grade. You’ve got to move on. And that’s what happened with me. As soon as I started winning in whatever category I was in, I wanted to go to the next level, then the next level, and then the next. The progression continued for me until 1964, when I got my first chance to compete at the top level of Indy cars.
As you said, your ultimate goal was open-wheel racing.
You quickly made a name for yourself in IndyCar, but you didn’t stop there.
1965 was really a pivotal year for my career. I won my first
championship car race at the Hoosier Grand Prix, which was on a road course at
Indianapolis Raceway Park. I finished third at the Indianapolis 500, was named
Rookie of the Year, and won the series championship at age 25, becoming the
youngest season-ending national champion in history at that time. That was my
very first full year in IndyCar. Then I backed it up with another championship
in 1966. During the next couple of years, 1966 and 1967, I got a little more
into sports cars and other disciplines. In ‘66 I raced in the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
I raced sports cars and stock cars. And then, lo and behold, in 1967 I won the
biggest stock car race of them all – the Daytona 500 – which was another
launching pad for my career.
Mario Andretti
You also had your eye on Formula One.
By 1965, things were starting to happen that would fulfill my dream to get into Formula One. In 65, the winner of the Indianapolis 500 was Jim Clark with Lotus. I was third in that race and named Rookie of the Year. Rookie of the Year is a big deal at Indy. At the banquet it is the most coveted award after the winner. So, the whole month of May I tried to befriend Jimmy and [Lotus founder] Colin Chapman, and as we were saying our goodbyes at the end of the banquet I said, “Colin, someday I would like to do Formula One.” Colin looked at me and said, “Mario, when you think you are ready, you call me and I will have a car for you.” I mean…oh my God, I thought I couldn’t believe my ears in that moment. In 1968, I felt that it was the time. I called Colin and I said, “Colin, I would like to do the last two races of the season, the Italian Grand Prix and the U.S. Grand Prix.” He said, “Alright, I will have a car for you.”
What was it like slipping behind the wheel of a Formula
One car for the first time?
My first acquaintance with the car – a Lotus 49, designed by
Colin Chapman and Maurice Phillippe in 1967 – was in Monza, in Italy. It was a
test day, and I immediately felt right at home because I had been winning road
races in Indy cars. So at Monza, I was the quickest in that test vis-à-vis
Ferrari.
You were set to race in the 1968 Italian Grand Prix, but
then…
It’s a long story here, but I was in the running for the season championship in the States. I’d finished second to A.J. Foyt in 1967, barely missing out on the championship in the last laps of the last race in Riverside, California. I was in the running again in 1968, and the Monza race fell on the same weekend as a USAC championship race held in Indianapolis, the famous Hoosier Hundred. Well, this race was happening on a Saturday. So I only had the Friday to qualify for the Italian Grand Prix, then fly back to the United States on Saturday to race in the Hoosier Hundred, and then fly back to Italy on Sunday to race in the Grand Prix. It turns out that there was a 24-hour rule regarding international events – basically it forbade drivers from racing in two major events within a 24 hour period – but I had an understanding with the organizers, and also with the Automobile Club of Italy, and they were going to waive that rule. So I qualified for the Grand Prix on Friday, and then I flew back to the States and I raced in the Hoosier Hundred, where I finished second to A.J. Foyt, and then I flew back to Italy the next day. I arrived there on time, only to find that a last-minute protest had been filed. My car was literally on the starting grid with all of the other drivers, but they would not allow me to start. We think it was Ferrari that protested. It was very disappointing, but sometimes those types of games are played between teams.
That bit of gamesmanship only delayed your Formula One
debut.
My very first start was the U.S. Grand Prix at Watkins Glen
two weeks later. I put the car on pole against Jackie Stewart, and that was
actually my debut in Formula One. Things were just happening to go my way,
quite honestly. I still had to put up a great fight for it, but so many things
were just going in the right direction. I’ve always felt so blessed that, throughout
my career, I’ve been able to pretty much pursue my most ambitious dreams and
come away with some good results. Winning the pole in my first Formula One race
is an example of that.
You’ve mentioned winning the Daytona 500 in 1967. Please
take me back.
I had developed a great relationship with Ford from the beginning
to my rookie year at Indianapolis. They had introduced a new overhead cam
engine, so we were armed with that. I won two consecutive championships with
Ford, and in 1967 I expressed my desire to do some stock car racing. Actually,
it was not my first experience – I had raced stock cars for Smokey Yunick the
year before, without very much luck. But in 1967 I think I was with the right
team. We had some early difficulties but we overcame all of that and on race
day I was competitive from the get-go.
Mario Andretti – 1967 Daytona 500 Champ
You led that race 112 of the 200 laps, and you were
dominating the field. And then you pit, as does your teammate, Freddie
Lorenzen. That’s when things get interesting.
Your own team, Holman Moody, seems determined to sabotage you from
winning the Daytona 500.
When we came in for the final pit, I was leading and Freddie
was behind me. They kept me up on the jacks and they let Freddie go. He was
just about at Turn 1 before they let me go. I was so pissed, as you can
imagine. I drove like I was qualifying because I was so upset, and before you
know it I had caught and passed him. We were lapping Tiny Lund going into the
back straightaway, and Freddie was right behind me. I couldn’t shake him. All
of a sudden, Tiny motioned me to go by on the outside. He went to the center of
the track on the back straightaway, and I went right up to him and I dove to
the inside to startle things. Freddie backed off because I don’t think he
expected that. I pulled away from him at that point, and when I looked back he was
pretty small. He never caught me.
That win in the Daytona 500 surprised a lot of people.
I’m sure not everyone was happy with it, including Ford;
they wanted Lorenzen to win, not me, because it was a one-off race for me. But
I felt like it could have been my day, and I fought hard, and it became my day.
To win the biggest race but yet it’s not your specialty, it holds a lot more
value. And here again, it did wonders for my career. Suddenly, if I wanted to go
to any of the other disciplines, I would have the opportunity to be with a top
team.
People might not
always think about racing being a team sport, but teams are critical in Formula
One, NASCAR, and IndyCar.
I look back on what made me successful and I asked myself why, and it’s because I was surrounded by the best people in the business. You shouldn’t profess to know what you don’t know. If you want to achieve something that is obviously ambitious, surround yourself with people who can help you achieve something that you could not possibly do alone. Motor racing is a very complex sport. It’s not like tennis, where all you need is a racket. This is racing. For me, it was important to work with the absolute experts in their own areas – the best engineers, the best mechanics, and all of that. As a race car driver, you cannot perform miracles on your own. Being part of a driven, knowledgeable team gave me the opportunity to win because they were providing me with winning equipment. These were lessons learned early on that I carried with me through my racing career and right into my various business ventures today.
You won nine races in 1969, including the Indianapolis
500 and the season championship. Did you feel like you could win IndyCar’s
biggest event so early in your career?
I felt right at home at the Indianapolis 500 from the get-go.
I finished third in the Brawner Hawk during my rookie year in 1965, and in ’66 I
won the pole. In 1967 I won the pole again, and I felt confident in ’68 even
though I failed to finish the race. So, going into the race in 1969, I felt as
if I had a good chance to win.
Take me back to the 1969 Indianapolis 500. You had a
crash that changed everything.
We arrived there with state-of-the-art equipment. We had the
Lotus 64, which was four-wheel drive and a derivative of the turbine cars, with
a very advanced type of chassis. In practice I went very fast and was breaking some
records. Two days before qualifying, the right-rear wheel hub sheared off, and
I had a huge crash in Turn 4. There was fire and everything else. I was lucky
to escape with just some burns on my face. Graham Hill and Jochen Rindt, who
were racing for Team Lotus at this time, were also driving the four-wheel drive
Lotuses, and these cars were withdrawn after my crash. So we also had to
withdraw our spare car, also a Lotus, leaving me with a car that we never
intended to race.
Mario Andretti – Inside the Brawner Hawk (’69 Indy 500)
The Brawner Hawk.
The Brawner Hawk! All of this happened on a Thursday, so I only had Friday and Saturday morning practice to get that one up to speed. And then, in qualifying, I was somehow able to put the Brawner Hawk in the middle of the front row. So, here again we were very fortunate that we were able to do that. And then, in the race, I had a lot of overheating problems and one tire that wouldn’t come off during my pit stops so we were only changing 3 tires and one tire ran the entire 500 miles…. but still, I was always up in the top three, and I led for more than half of the race. Ultimately, the damn thing just hung together. It turned out to be my magic car. I remember in the post-race tear down when we pulled the transmission apart. It seemed like everything just crumbled out of the case – the gears were all black and blue and had obviously gotten very hot. But, thank the Lord, it held together long enough to win the race.
You became an Indy 500 legend with that win.
1969 turned out to be my only victory there, but I always felt competitive at Indy. In 1981 I actually won that race, but there was a very big political aspect to it. Still, I am third in all-time in laps led there, and led more laps than all but one of the four-time winners. So, even though victory has eluded us a few times, the Indy 500 has been great for the Andrettis. I say us because my son Michael was also very competitive there. He dominated Indy on his way to becoming one of the most successful drivers in the history of American open-wheel car racing, but he never won the Indy 500. And Michael’s son – my grandson Marco – is now an IndyCar driver. He also has come close, but hasn’t won the 500.
Mario Andretti – 1969 Indianapolis 500 Champ
What do you think of when you hear the name “A.J. Foyt.”
A.J. Foyt was five years my senior, so he was obviously very
established by the time that I came up through the ranks. He was certainly the
yardstick. Any race that you were hoping to win, you had to go through A.J.
Foyt at one time or another.
Let’s talk rivalries.
I think I’ve matured
over the years when it comes to rivalries. Today I’m able to see how healthy
rivalries can be, which wasn’t necessarily how I looked at it at the time. Rivalries
elevate your game. There is always going to be somebody who is better than you,
and that makes you work harder. It gives you every incentive to say, “You know
what? Somehow, I’ve got to raise my level. I’ve got to do something better.” And
when you have an opportunity to reflect, you say, “Thank goodness I had those
rivalries and those challenges.”
And A.J. Foyt was not the only one. There were others
through the decades that you had to deal with. The first pole that I got in
Formula One – who did I beat? The guy that was the yardstick: Jackie Stewart.
My very first race that I won in South Africa, who finished second? Jackie
Stewart. The second race, at the Questor Grand Prix, who finished second to me?
Jackie Stewart. As you look back through time, those are the things that mean
something, and that’s where you put value on the achievement. When you are
somehow able to succeed with your main rival finishing second to you, it gives
you all of the encouragement that you need. You suddenly have the confidence to
feel like you belong on this stage.
Your Formula One career really took off when you started
driving for Lotus.
I joined Team Lotus on a full-time basis at the right time.
Colin Chapman was such a genius, and he was somehow able to be 100% dedicated
to the sport without being distracted by his other business interests. For
example, he had an automobile company and a boat company at the same time that
he was involved in Formula One. I experienced great success racing on his team.
In fact, if it hadn’t had been for so many engine and reliability failures in
’77, I would have won the Grand Prix Championship that year as well.
Mario Andretti – 1978 – Lotus ’79
You won four Grand Prix events that year, including in
Monza where it all began.
As a Formula One driver, one of the highlights that year was
representing the United States and winning the ’77 U.S. Grand Prix West at Long
Beach. And then, to be able to turn around and win the Italian Grand Prix later
that year, in my home country, was something that I had never thought would be
possible. So can you imagine the satisfaction that I derived from that
accomplishment? Winning in Monza where it all began for me as far as the
ultimate dream, and then winning in the States, where we had immigrated to
start a new life.
You clinched your first and only Formula One Championship
at the’78 Italian Grand Prix. Please tell me about this crowning achievement.
It was a great season. We battled through a lot of issues,
including some engine problems, but nevertheless I was able to overcome some
obstacles to win that championship. I finished first six times that season,
including the season opener in Argentina in the Lotus 78. Then, we switched to
the Lotus 79 and won in Belgium, Spain, France, Germany, and the Netherlands. And
on top of that, to clinch the points championship in Monza, that couldn’t have
been a sweeter moment.
Ronnie Peterson (left) and Mario Andretti — photographer unknown Photo courtesy Mario Andretti
That series-clinching win in Monza was overshadowed by the
devastating loss of friend and teammate Ronnie Peterson.
That day is forever bittersweet. It’s 1978 at the Italian Grand Prix in Monza……this race had huge significance for two reasons: First, I was back in my native Italy, in the exact place where the dream began for me. On the track where my brother and I had watched our first race with the two guys from the parking garage. But I wasn’t a spectator this time. I was sitting in the cockpit. I really had come full circle. This race was also going to determine the Formula One World Champion. It would either be me – or my teammate and best friend Ronnie Peterson. At the start of the race, there was a horrific crash and Ronnie plowed through the guardrail. His car erupted in flames. I won the World Championship that day…Ronnie Peterson died. It should have been the happiest day of my life. My lifelong dream – that had begun when my brother and I were 14 years old and were spectators at Monza – was now complete. I was World Champion. But my best friend and teammate was dead. The combination of triumph and tragedy was unbearable.
Our sport can be so rewarding, and so cruel at the same time. But, that’s the way it is. When you decide that this is your sport, you have to deal with all of it. If you’re going to be part of it, you have to take the good with the bad. As much satisfaction as I derived from this business, there were just as many moments that were difficult to live with. And it started with Aldo’s accident at the very beginning.
The grief of losing a close friend like Ronnie never leaves you. Things are never the same. Because you can never clearly say to yourself, “Now, I can finally celebrate and forget about the other…because you can’t.” So, it just stays with you forever. As much as you try to rejoice, there’s always that ‘but’ in the back of your mind. “Yes, but…” There’s always that ‘but.’
How do you overcome something like that and get back to
racing at the highest levels?
You have to realize that some things are just out of your control. Some people wonder how those that suffer misfortune continue? When is something so devastating that you fold up? Quitting and walking away from your business is an option. But what you have to realize is that some circumstances are out of your control. Maybe the equipment fails you. Or it’s something else. Like it or not, you are going to have some good days and some bad days. You can’t be too overconfident when things are going well. At the same time, you can’t be overcome by setback, or heartbreak or tragedy. You have to manage both. Focus on what’s next. Success takes the appropriate response. So does heartbreak. Don’t let a setback be the final word. Some stretches of our lives are just going to be more difficult than others. There were many trying moments after that, and many times it was hard to keep the energy going, but that’s what you have to do if you are going to succeed. You need that energy to be able to exist, and exist in a way that you are able to perform at the top level.
You are one of 13 drivers who have won two of the three legs
of the Triple Crown of Motorsport. For a competitor like you, what does it mean
to be in such exclusive company?
It means a great deal, but I also look at it this way; as far
as winning Indy, Daytona, and Formula One, nobody else has done that. That’s
what I cling to. Dan Gurney won some IndyCar races, and he won Motor Trend at
Riverside, and he won Formula One. The Triple Crown can be determined in many
different ways, but my Triple Crown is winning Indy, Daytona, and the Formula
One World Championship. That is still all my own. Nobody has done that, and we
will just have to wait and see if someone can match it. Nevertheless, I am very
proud of that part of my career.
Where did you meet your friend, the late Paul Newman?
I met Paul Newman in 1967 at a Can-Am race in Bridgehampton, Long Island, where I was driving for Ford. At the time I didn’t have a specific commercial sponsor on my car, and then, on race day, there is a big Paul Newman insignia on the front of my car. I was surprised and somewhat intimidated, because all of a sudden, Paul Newman shows up with his wife, Joanne. I think, “Oh my goodness, I guess he expects me to win today!” And on top of that, my car was not a very good one [laughs]. Nevertheless, that’s how I first met him. The very next year he was filming a movie in Indianapolis called Winning. It’s here that he’s introduced to racing, and then before you know, he arms himself with a national SCCA license and he starts racing. He completes in SCCA professional and amateur events, wins four national championships, and becomes a team owner in the Can-Am series. In 1983, I was the one who brought Paul Newman and Carl Haas together to form a new IndyCar team, which I joined. Over the years we would run into each other, usually at events held around a race. Once he became the team owner, that was a relationship that was made in heaven.
Mario Andretti and Paul Newman Photo courtesy Mario Andretti
From what I understand, Paul Newman ended up becoming one
of your closest friends.
Quite honestly, he became one of the most precious friends that I had in my life. I drove for 12 seasons for the Newman/Haas team. We had some great success, and won 18 IndyCar races after I came out of Formula One with them. So again, it was just precious times. There are so many things that I remember with such a great fondness about Paul, things outside of track. What an individual he was, one of the true people who made and left a mark in your life for many reasons. And there was something about this man that, not just because of his prominence, and his superstar status, made him so special. You just had to really know him intimately to appreciate what he was all about. I was one of the fortunate ones to have had that opportunity.
You’ve been named Driver of the Year in three different decades.
It certainly wasn’t a goal. It wasn’t something I was aiming for. It just happened. There are a lot of things that factor into my longevity, including luck. The awards are the fruit of the labor, of working as hard as you can toward accomplishing your goals. Then, to be recognized in that fashion…you can call it the icing on the cake. That’s how I look at those things.
You are a legend and a pop culture phenomenon. Your name appears
in song lyrics by Ice Cube, Alan Jackson, The Beastie Boys, Amy Grant, Gwen
Stefani, A Tribe Called Quest, and Charlie Daniels to name a few.
Again, it’s just one of those things that either happens. And when it does, it is extremely flattering. That’s the only way I can put it. Just like when you are invited to be inducted into a Hall of Fame. You have to pinch yourself. It’s that type of thing.
You drove Lady Gaga around the track at the Indianapolis
500.
Lady Gaga was an absolute delight. An amazing wonderful soul. She was so genuinely kind, so incredibly nice. I led the field at the start of the Indy 500 in the two-seat IndyCar and she was my passenger. She was soaking it all in that day, and the fans loved her. It was really enjoyable and epic to have her as a part of that day; it was actually the 100th anniversary of the running of the Indianapolis 500. Having her in the seat behind me…really a treat for me.
Who has more cars, you or Jay Leno?
That would be Jay Leno. Big time [laughs].
Mario Andretti
Please tell me about your Napa Valley winery.
The winery was not really a product of a specific plan. But during the last year of my racing career in 1994, called my Arrivederci Tour, an agency came up with an idea to have a commemorative label on a bottle of wine. It was done with the Louis Martini Winery. It sold very well and I enjoyed having it. One thing led to another, and the next thing you know, we bought a vineyard and have been in this business for 22 years now. I’m very proud of the Andretti Winery. It has been an enjoyable project.
Final Question: You’ve achieved great success in your life. If you had only one piece of life advice to offer someone, what would that be?
There are plenty of clichés out there, but the one thing that suits me is very simple: Follow your dreams and work hard. Vision is only one percent. The other 99 percent is hard work.
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