Glenn Morris

Glenn Morris

Glenn Edgar Morris (June 18, 1912 – January 31, 1974) was a U.S. track and field athlete. He won a gold medal in the Olympic decathlon in 1936, setting new world and Olympic records.

Morris was born on his family's horse ranch near Simla, Colorado, the second of seven children. A natural athlete whose record in the 220 hurdles stood for forty years at his high school, Morris entered Colorado Agricultural College (now Colorado State University) in 1930. He became a star athlete for the school, excelling in several sports and being named All American in track and field. Working as an assistant coach and automobile salesman after graduation in 1934 (with degrees in Economics and Sociology), Morris began training as a decathlon athlete in hopes of competing in the 1936 Olympics.

In the U.S. Olympic track and field trials for 1936, Morris scored a new world record of 7,880 points, earning him Newsweek's sobriquet "the nation's new Iron Man." Morris broke his own world record, and the Olympic record, in the Berlin games, with a decathlon score of 7,900 points. It was said that Adolf Hitler never left his seat while Morris was competing, and that the Germans thereafter offered Morris $50,000 to stay in Germany and appear in sports films, an offer Morris refused.

German filmmaker and documentarian Leni Riefenstahl claimed in her memoirs that during and after the 1936 Olympics, she had an affair with Morris, which she ended because of a very disparaging report about him that was given to her by a graphologist. Riefenstahl also claimed that the affair began when, after winning the gold medal, he tore off her blouse and kissed her breasts, in front of the audience of 100,000 people. In reality, Morris merely received his medal and laurel from Hitler's mistress Eva Braun in an otherwise standard ceremony.

Morris's success at the 1936 Olympics resulted in a brief flurry of fame, including a New York City ticker-tape parade and a statewide Colorado celebration. He received the 1936 James E. Sullivan Award as the top amateur athlete in the United States. He had a short stint as an NBC radio commentator.

Morris made one small film appearance before becoming the fourth Olympic athlete to play Tarzan. He appeared in only one Tarzan film, Tarzan's Revenge (1938), an inexpensive independent film produced by Sol Lesser and released by Twentieth Century Fox. Reviews for the film cited both the silliness of the production and the exaggerated acting of the theatrically untrained Morris (though Variety called him "a highly acceptable Tarzan"). After only one minor additional film role, Morris left the movie business forever.

He played four games with the Detroit Lions football team, before injury curtailed this new career, then worked as an insurance agent. He subsequently served in the U.S. Navy and was stationed in the Pacific during World War II, commanding amphibious-assault landing craft. Reportedly wounded, Morris was treated for psychological-trauma issues and spent several months in a naval hospital.