While William Jennings Bryan is primarily remembered for his political actions, he also had an undeniable impact on American culture. From sports to cinema, America today would be very different had William McKinley won the election in 1896. William Jennings Bryan was also a cultural icon himself. He made himself wildly popular with many from his own speeches. He had a reputation as the “Great Commoner.” But there were others working behind the scenes, most notably William Randolph Hearst and Milford W. Howard, helped show America the non-political side of the young president. For the first time in history, people from California to Maine got to see their president playing sports. Even the great Theodore Roosevelt could not match Bryan’s appeal to the average man.
-Excerpt from
America's Silver Age, Edward S. Scott, Patriot Publishers, 2017.
The first important cultural contribution of William Jennings Bryan was basketball. In 1897, Bryan had his whole cabinet shoot hoops with James Naismith and a group of athletes. It was Milford Howard’s idea to capture the event on tape. This is said to have improved Bryan’s image with the American people. For a long time it was believed that Bryan was single-handedly responsible for popularizing the sport. However, many historians have cast doubt on that popular belief, pointing out that basketball’s popularity was already spreading quickly. Nevertheless, the sport soon became associated with the president. And in the 1890s, the young controversial Bryan was not yet the nationally popular elder statesman he would become by the 1920s.
Some Republican-friendly, pro-Gold Standard publications in the East attacked the new sport as being inferior to football and baseball. But there were still plenty of Republicans who loved playing basketball. Nevertheless, the sport was clearly more popular in the West than it was in the East. In 1898 the 16 best teams in the nation met in DC for a national championship. Only three were from east of the Mississippi. One notable team was the all-black Little Rock Warhogs, who won the first two games only to lose to the Idaho Silvermen, who went on to win the championship. In 1899 professional basketball was established with 33 recognized teams forming the National Basketball League. The number of teams would soon jump to over 60. In 1903, however, the league was officially segregated. The “Colored League” as it would be called, was dominated by African-Americans, but it also included a predominantly Native-American team. When the NBL was integrated in the 1940s, many of these teams combined with nearby white teams. The Warhogs, however, remained and became a powerhouse in their own right.
In 1899, the first official professional basketball season would begin. The NBL was organized in much the same way as professional baseball. The Idaho Silvermen were defeated 30-29 by the San Diego Scorpions for the first championship title. Colleges increasingly fielded basketball teams as well. American troops brought basketball to Cuba as a result of the war. In 1898 a Cuban team challenged the US Marines to a game. The marines won and it wasn’t even close. Basketball quickly spread across North America. In 1904 in Saint Louis, basketball was introduced as an Olympic sport with the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Cuba competing. America won gold, Cuba won Silver, and Canada won Bronze. It wouldn’t return to the Olympics until 1920, however. By that time, the Philippines, China, Japan, and Russia would all have basketball teams. America would win gold every year until they were eventually defeated by Mongolia in 1944.
Bryan’s presidency had a great effect on film in America. Milford Howard had the president filmed during his first and second terms. Before Bryan, the vast majority of Americans could only know what the president looked like by photograph or portrait. Film reels were distributed all the way to California so people could see William Jennings Bryan in motion. Among the many scenes found in the reels were Bryan playing basketball, Bryan playing baseball, and Bryan with his wife and children on the lawn of the executive mansion. The films were a huge hit. After 1904, Howard became a producer. Howard Studios, based in Mobile, Alabama, was competitive with the movie industry in California for decades. He also was the first person to produce hour-length films. Common themes found in the early films he produced were greedy corporate managers challenged by courageous populist Robin Hoods and lost cause historical narrative. If it wasn’t for Bryan, he would never have achieved nearly as much fame as he did.
Bryan was depicted in countless books and films after his death in 1924. Howard Studios produced
1896 in 1926, which was an account of the battle between William Jennings Bryan and William McKinley. It was well-received by the much of the American public including the Bryan family. It is now famous for being the last major release of the silent era of American cinema. Its sequel,
1900, was released to much fanfare in 1930, but poor acting and writing made the film a flop. The 1945 film
Bill Bryan was a moderate success, but contained a large number of historical inaccuracies. Bryan and Roosevelt are depicted as eternal enemies; Bryan is shown grabbing his would-be-assassin’s gun and firing back, and Bryan is also shown as writing the Chinese Constitution.
Age of Silver, made in 1960, is easily the most famous movie on the man, and excerpts from the four hour film are shown in classrooms today. The film is largely pro-Bryan, but does not shy away from showing his shortcomings. It shows Bryan fighting for the poor and needy. It also shows him wrestling with what to do about the mistreatment of African-Americans. The climax of the movie is when Bryan gives his 1923 State of the Union address on the two forms of evil and helps convince the Senate to pass the Lodge-Wheeler bill. In 2016, a miniseries called
William Jennings Bryan began. It had 20 episodes that were an average of 45 minutes long. It was generally historically accurate and approached events from a neutral perspective. It also was noteworthy for showing the conflicts within Bryan’s cabinet. Bryan has also been portrayed negatively. In French and Russian anti-German propaganda movies of the ‘20s and ‘30s, he is shown as gleefully abandoning the Entente nations to their fates.
