Knute Rockne, All American (1940) — the first production

Production began 2 April 1940 · Warner Bros.–First National · world premiere, South Bend, 4 October 1940

The production: Warner Bros.' biography of Knute Rockne — Pat O'Brien as Rockne, Gale Page as Bonnie Rockne, Ronald Reagan as George Gipp, Donald Crisp as Father Callahan — was directed by Lloyd Bacon, who replaced William K. Howard after production had begun, on Robert Buckner's screenplay, which the credits base on the private papers of Mrs. Rockne and the reports of Rockne's intimate associates. The American Film Institute's catalog, working from the trade press of the production months, records two facts that fix the film's geography: the Hollywood Reporter items in its file state that the picture was shot on location at Notre Dame at South Bend, Indiana, with Nick Lukats, a former Notre Dame football star, as technical adviser; and its production date begins 2 April 1940. The working titles in the same record — All American, The Spirit of Knute Rockne, The Story of Knute Rockne, The Fighting Irish — show how long the studio circled the subject before the title settled.

How much of it was shot here: The studio's own pressbook, printed whole on the Internet Archive, gives the honest proportions, and they are not the proportions of the legend. Most of the picture, the pressbook says, had been filmed in Hollywood, against backgrounds that were authentic reproductions of the university; the company then came to the campus, where the scenes it shot there completed the picture. The University Archives hold the photographs of that visit — Pat O'Brien, in costume as Rockne, entering Notre Dame for the first time during the actual filming, spring 1940, and O'Brien on campus with a student, Edmund Butler — and the film itself carries actual newsreel footage of Notre Dame football games inside its staged ones. The picture that resulted is therefore a hybrid, and the record prints it as one: a Hollywood studio biography with a genuine location unit on the campus it depicts, in the spring of 1940. Turner Classic Movies' account of the film states the standing plainly: it is one of only two movies ever filmed on the university campus — the other waited fifty-two years, and is the next entry in this section.

The opening: The AFI record fixes the world premiere at South Bend on 4 October 1940, the day before the general release of 5 October; the room was the Palace Theatre on Michigan Street, whose own history in this record carries the night — Reagan, Bob Hope, Rudy Vallee, Jane Wyman and Kate Smith in attendance, in the town where the story happened. The famous men of the rival sidelines appear in the film as themselves — Glenn "Pop" Warner, Amos Alonzo Stagg, Howard Jones and William Spaulding — and in 1997 the picture was chosen for the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress, which is the production record's own final word on its standing.

Sources

1. AFI Catalog of Feature Films, Knute Rockne—All American — production date from 2 April 1940; the Hollywood Reporter items summarized in the entry (location shooting at Notre Dame at South Bend, IN; Nick Lukats, technical adviser); world premiere at South Bend, IN, 4 October 1940; release 5 October 1940; the working titles.
2. Warner Bros. pressbook for Knute Rockne All American (1940), full text at the Internet Archive — most of the picture filmed in Hollywood against reproduced backgrounds; the campus scenes completing the picture.
3. University of Notre Dame Archives (ArchivesSpace) — photographs of the filming on campus, spring 1940 (GNDS 27/18; GNDS 16/04).
4. Turner Classic Movies, article on Knute Rockne All American — one of only two movies filmed on the campus; the actual newsreel footage of Notre Dame games in the film; National Film Registry, 1997.
5. NCAA.com, on the film's premiere — Warner, Spaulding, Stagg and Jones appearing as themselves.
6. The Famous Locations history in this record (Famous Landmarks, sb-fl-morris) — the Palace premiere of 4 October 1940 and its attendance, from the theatre's own history; pointed to here, not retold.