- published: 29 Jul 2015
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Robert Bruce "Bob" Mathias (November 17, 1930 – September 2, 2006) was an American decathlete, two-time Olympic gold medalist, actor and United States Congressman representing the state of California.
Mathias was born in Tulare, California. He attended Tulare Union High School, where he was classmates and long time friends with Sim Iness, 1952 Olympic discus gold medalist. While at Tulare Union, Mathias took up the decathlon in early 1948, at the suggestion of his track coach, Virgil Jackson. During the summer after his high school graduation, he qualified for the United States Olympic team for the 1948 Summer Olympics held in London.
In the Olympics, Mathias's naïveté about the decathlon was exposed [1]. He was unaware of the rules in the shot put and nearly fouled out of the event. He almost failed in the high jump but was able to recover. Mathias overcame his difficulties and won the Olympic gold medal easily. He was the youngest gold medalist to win a track and field event.
Mathias continued to fare well in decathlons in the four years between the London games and the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki. In 1948, Mathias won the James E. Sullivan Award as the nation's top amateur athlete, but because his scholastic record in high school did not match his athletic achievement, he spent a year at The Kiski School, a well-respected all boys boarding school in Saltsburg, Pennsylvania. He then entered Stanford University in 1949, played college football for two years and was a member of Phi Gamma Delta fraternity. Mathias set his first decathlon world record in 1950 and led Stanford to a Rose Bowl appearance in 1952.
Bob Dylan ( /ˈdɪlən/), born Robert Allen Zimmerman on May 24, 1941, is an American singer-songwriter, musician and artist. He has been an influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly reluctant figurehead of social unrest. A number of Dylan's early songs, such as "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They Are a-Changin'", became anthems for the US civil rights and anti-war movements. Leaving his initial base in the culture of folk music behind, Dylan's six-minute single "Like a Rolling Stone" has been described as radically altering the parameters of popular music in 1965. However, his recordings employing electric instruments attracted denunciation and criticism from others in the folk movement.
Dylan's lyrics incorporated a variety of political, social, philosophical, and literary influences. They defied existing pop music conventions and appealed hugely to the then burgeoning counterculture. Initially inspired by the songs of Woody Guthrie,Robert Johnson, and Hank Williams, as well as the music and performance styles of Buddy Holly and Little Richard, Dylan has both amplified and personalized musical genres. His recording career, spanning fifty years, has explored numerous distinct traditions in American song—from folk, blues and country to gospel, rock and roll, and rockabilly to English, Scottish, and Irish folk music, embracing even jazz and swing.
Actors: Ward Bond (actor), Paul Bryar (actor), William Conrad (actor), Frank Gifford (actor), Tom Hanlon (actor), Sam Harris (actor), Harry Lauter (actor), Harold Miller (actor), Robert Nichols (actor), John Pickard (actor), Cosmo Sardo (actor), William Tannen (actor), Ann Doran (actress), Leith Stevens (composer), Walter Hannemann (editor),
Plot: California school boy and Stanford University student Bob Mathias was the first man to win two Olympic Gold Medals in the Decathlon in the 1948 and 1952 Olympics. The film begins with him as a 17-year-old schoolboy in Tulare, California where his high school track coach, played by Ward Bond, encourages him to train for the Olympics, with the Dacathlon in mind. His story, far from over, ends here with his victory in the 1952 Olympics and with Mathias in the U.S. Marine Corps. He and his wife, Melba, play themselves in one of the few movie bios that doesn't play fast and loose with the facts, especially in a bio with the subject playing himself.
Keywords: autobiographical, character-name-in-title, decathlon, olympics, track-and-field