Win One for the Gipper: The Growth of a Sentence

1920–1940 · the tale in its two printings and its film

The boundary: The game, the speech as an event of 10 November 1928, and the evidence weighed as fact stand in this history's Notre Dame Football section. What stands here is the sentence's second life — the way a halftime story became, by print and film, the most famous deathbed speech in American sport, and the papers that growth left behind.

The first printing, 1928: The story entered print two days after the game, in Francis Wallace's account in the New York Daily News of 12 November 1928, under the headline "Gipp's Ghost Beat Army." Wallace, who had been Notre Dame's first publicity man and remained close to Rockne, reported Rockne's account in substance: that on his deathbed George Gipp had told Rockne that some day, when the time came, he wanted Rockne to ask a Notre Dame team to beat Army for him. Notre Dame won 12–6, Jack Chevigny scoring and saying, in the record's telling, in substance that the score was one for Gipp. Wallace insisted to the end of his own days, in substance, that the telling was not a trick and that Gipp had asked it. The sentence as first printed is short, and it is about beating Army. The famous version — the team up against it, the breaks beating the boys — is not this one.

The second printing, 1930: The canonical text is Rockne's own, in Collier's of 22 November 1930, in the "autobiography" as the magazine ran it: the deathbed scene in full dress. Of that scene, only the short core is quoted here, attributed as it must be — these are Gipp's words only as Rockne's 1930 telling reports them: "Some time, Rock, when the team is up against it, when things are wrong and the breaks are beating the boys — tell them to go in there with all they've got and win just one for the Gipper." The scene's framing lines in the magazine version are not reproduced. Murray Sperber, the Rockne scholar whose Shake Down the Thunder is the standing biography, concludes that the piece was in all probability written by Rockne's ghostwriter, John B. Kennedy — and concludes of the speech itself, in substance, that there is much evidence against Gipp having actually made such a request. Whether Rockne delivered the story in the locker room before the game or at halftime, the accounts themselves differ; the football section prints the difference. The tale's growth, though, is not in dispute, because it happened in print where it can be dated: a reporter's paragraph in 1928, a ghostwritten deathbed scene in 1930, and then the film.

The name that was never his: A tale needs a hero with a name, and the name was part of the growth. In Sperber's finding, the nickname was never used of Gipp while he lived — it appears nowhere in the record of Gipp's life, and whether it was Wallace or Rockne who coined it for the 1928 telling is unknown; after that November, Rockne used it freely. George Gipp of Laurium, Michigan, entered history in his death under a nickname he never heard.

The film, 1940: Warner Brothers' Knute Rockne, All American — Pat O'Brien as Rockne, Ronald Reagan as Gipp — carried the Collier's scene to the country, and fixed it: the deathbed request as the nation knows it is the film's, which is the magazine's, which is the ghostwriter's. The film's world premiere was held on 4 October 1940 in South Bend itself, at the Palace Theatre, with Reagan in attendance — the tale coming home to be premiered in the town where the story happened, as this history's Famous Locations section records. Its afterlife in politics — Reagan carrying "the Gipper" as his own name into a presidency — is a fact of the record in its own right and stands in the football section. What belongs here is the shape of the whole: eight years of silence after a death, a paragraph in a tabloid, a scene in a magazine, a nickname invented for the telling, and a movie — the complete biography of a sentence, every stage of it datable, which is more than most folklore ever leaves behind.

Sources:

1. Francis Wallace, New York Daily News, 12 November 1928, "Gipp's Ghost Beat Army" — the first printing of the deathbed story, summarized here rather than quoted; Wallace's later insistence that the telling was not a trick, summarized; as traced by Fred Shapiro's "Words of Notre Dame" research in Notre Dame Magazine.
2. Knute Rockne, Collier's, 22 November 1930 — the fuller deathbed scene, of which only the short core is quoted in this entry, attributed in the text to Rockne's telling; Murray Sperber's conclusion that the autobiography was in all probability written by Rockne's ghostwriter John B. Kennedy, and his finding of much evidence against the request's authenticity, as carried in Notre Dame Magazine (Shapiro, "Words of Notre Dame"). Sperber's wording is summarized, not quoted.
3. Murray Sperber, Shake Down the Thunder, as carried in Notre Dame Magazine, "Alter Ego" — the finding that the nickname was never used in Gipp's lifetime; the coinage unattributed between Wallace and Rockne. Summarized.
4. This history, Notre Dame Football section — the 1928 game, Chevigny's touchdown, the pregame/halftime difference of accounts, the evidence weighed as fact, and the phrase's political afterlife; Famous Locations section — the world premiere of Knute Rockne, All American at the Palace Theatre, South Bend, 4 October 1940, Reagan attending.