Bud Greenspan was an American film-maker, director and producer, whose work, particularly on the Olympic Games, brought him seven Emmy awards and international renown for his stories of heroic sporting endeavour. He made the official documentaries of seven Summer and Winter Games, once describing his feeling for the event as “two weeks of love, like being in Never, Never Land”.
Greenspan enraptured his fellow-countrymen with tales of competitors struggling to overcome adversity, which was invaluable for the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in its marketing because the majority of its income has come from television companies and sponsors based in the United States. Many Americans still see the Games as intrinsically different from their popular professional team sports because competitors are viewed as striving primarily for excellence or courage for their own sake rather than for financial rewards. Greenspan supplied plenty of evidence.
The moment, which encapsulated his credo occurred at the 1968 Olympics when the Tanzanian marathon runner John Ahkwari, who had been injured, came in last, about 90 minutes after the winner. In a subsequent interview with ESPN.com, Greenspan recalled: “He was practically carrying his leg, it was so bloodied and bandaged. I asked him: ‘Why did you keep going?’ He said, ‘You don’t understand. My country did not send me 5,000 miles to start a race. They sent me to finish it.’”
Greenspan, with his glasses usually perched on the top of his bald head, would interview athletes at length to discover the moving human stories behind their lives, an approach which endeared him to the IOC, which in 1985, gave him the Olympic Order, the highest award it could bestow.
Brought up by Jewish parents in New York, he conquered a lisp in childhood to enter sports broadcasting, after graduating from New York University. He attended the 1948 Olympics in London, filing stories from a dark radio booth. His first film was about how the American black, John Davis, retained his Olympic heavyweight weightlifting title in 1952. This was bought for $35,000 by the U.S. Government to show how successful Afro-Americans could be in the United States and so counter the charges of racism by the Soviet Union.
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Another, even more famous black athlete, Jesse Owens became the next subject for Greenspan when the hero of the 1936 Olympics returned to Berlin where he had won four gold medals. Perhaps Greenspan’s most celebrated series came in 1976 with The Olympiad, which consisted of 22 hour-long documentaries, which were broadcast in more than 80 countries including the United States, so escalating the affection of his fellow-countrymen for the Games. This was followed by a docudrama on Wilma Rudolph, the first black female star sprinter and winner of three Olympic titles in 1960, and a series of vignettes for the network CBS, entitled This Day in Sports, which ran for 30 seconds every day for a year.
Greenspan authored several books, including one entitled ‘We Wuz Robbed’ about controversies in sport. Among the recognitions he received were a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Directors Guild of America in 1995 and, the following year, the George Foster Peabody Award for “distinguished and meritorious public service.” His film ‘The Spirit of the Olympics’ is on permanent display at the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland.
His wife, Constance (‘Cappy’), with whom he founded a production company, died of cancer in 1983. Greenspan died from complications from Parkinson’s Disease, from which he had been suffering for several years. He is survived by Nancy Beffa, his long-time companion and business partner.
Jonah “Bud” Greenspan, documentary film-maker, was born on September 18, 1926. He died on December 25, 2010, aged 84