High Noon for Joe Namath

By Paul Davis

It was two A.M. on a cold February morning and, as snow whipped cruelly through Manhattan's streets 20 floors below, Joe Namath sat at the bar of his penthouse apartment, sipping Scotch and unhappily rehashing the New York Jets' 13--6 play-off loss to Kansas City. The defeat had ended the Jets' one-year reign as pro football's champions and Namath felt responsible for the loss. "I was just plain lousy," he said for the second time. "Damn, I should have gotten us in for that touchdown at the end, but I blew it. It's going to be a long time before I forget that game."

Namath, wearing a white body shirt and red-and-blue-striped bell-bottoms, paused to walk behind the bar and pour himself a refill. Shaking his head in resignation, he suddenly blurted out, "Football's just no fun anymore. Man, I used to want to play football and that was it. But not now. I don't really need the money, because I have enough to retire tomorrow if I have to. And I might have to: The next good shot I get on my knees will finish me."

Namath's knees, a subject of fascination to teammates, opponents, fans and surgeons, have been so thoroughly sliced up that the state of his locomotion is literally a standing joke. He needs additional corrective surgery, but doctors have told him he'll never play again after his next operation, and Namath uneasily awaits the tackle that will end his career. His right knee, the weaker of the two and the one he stresses most when passing, may collapse even without an assist from an opposing player; the kneecap is ringed with scimitar-shaped surgical scars. Namath, still-legged and unsteady on his pins, is a partial cripple, which becomes apparent the first time you see him painfully laboring up a few stairs.

Well aware that his football career will be short-lived, Namath is now confronting the problem of what to do with himself when his playing days are done. Two logical alternatives are sports broadcasting (which he's not interested in) or movies. He started out on the latter road last year when he played a cameo in Norwood, a dismal film starring his friend Glen Campbell. "But I couldn't tell from that whether or not I'm any good at acting. Or even whether I like acting," he said, staling a bit mournfully into his glass. "One thing I like is the people, but when I was out on the set, I saw what being in movies is all about: You sit around a lot, you're in front of the cameras for a couple of minutes and then you start sitting around again until they're ready for you. That's a lot of sitting."

Show business, however, has the flash and the glamor that is now a part of him, and he finds it hard to resist. When he was offered a syndicated weekly television show of his own last fall, he accepted eagerly. The Joe Namath Show was an embarrassing mélange of self-conscious locker-room talk and football gossip, often spiced with thudding innuendoes about his sex life. "It was disorganized," Namath says now. "A lot of the time, I'd show up at the studio never really knowing just what was going to happen. I did it for the money, about $100,000, because I don't know how long all this is gonna last. I figure I might as well take what I can get while I can get it."

And while he can still afford to, Namath has lent his name--and occasionally his cash--to a series of businesses. But the most successful of these--the chain of Bachelors III bars and the Mantle Men & Namath Girls employment agency--rest on his football fame. Take him off the field and out of the newspapers and his budding empire will probably wither. Whatever he does, he's got the next couple of years by the tail; beyond that--where he'll be in five years--is a mystery. "I'll probably wind up coaching, but only in the pros, though I don't know who the hell would want to hire me," he said. "I sure don't want to be a college coach." Was football beginning to bore him? "Oh, I don't think I'm bored with it," he answered. "It's just that I'm not hungry out there anymore. Maybe it's because I don't need the money; I don't know. But I'm just not hungry anymore."

When an athlete says he's no longer hungry, it's pack-up time. In football, hungry means being orthodox in a special, savage sense of the word. To a Dick Butkus, it means throwing your body into a wall of blockers, getting repulsed three times in two seconds, but that fourth time you catch the halfback coming over tackle and you dismember him. Athletes can't fake that kind of orthodoxy. The keepers of the faith make gridiron miracles: Y. A. Tittle, Bart Starr, Johnny Unitas, Roman Gabriel and, that thrower of the obscene pass, Joe Kapp, all hold the belief. Compare the results of this unquestioning, mad religion of victory with the legacy of the faithless--Don Meredith, Sonny Jurgensen, Norm Snead, John Brodie, Craig Morton. The difference is, quite simply, that the priests are winners, while the Sunday-afternoon visitors at the altar are losers.

Or are they? Namath changed all that. He demonstrated that you can be a winner without confusing the sport with a search for the Holy Grail. "I've always been an athlete," he said. "And I've worked hard at it--you don't do otherwise when you play for coach Paul Bryant at Alabama. When I got out of school, though, I began to see that football is really just a small part of life. I knew I was less dedicated to football as a pro than I'd been in college, but I didn't want to think about all that until after I'd accomplished the goal I'd set for myself and the team--winning the Super Bowl." The Super Bowl: The New York Jets' victory over the Baltimore Colts two years ago was (the triumphs of the Mets and Muhammad Ali notwithstanding) the most dramatic professional athletic achievement of the television age. But now Namath is no longer hungry. How can he last in football without that insatiable appetite for victory?

He can't. If his head doesn't do him in, his body will: Namath's knees won't take the strain longer than two more seasons at the outside, by which time he'd like to be into something else. The something else is more likely to be acting than coaching, if only because it's easier and far more lucrative--which is why he signed up for his second movie, C. C. and Company, shot last spring in Arizona. He stars in it as a motorcycle-gang leader with a passion for fighting, drinking and Ann-Margret.

He was still working on C. C. and Company when Larry Spangler, 31, the producer of his TV show, put together a third film project, The Last Rebel, which was shot in Rome at the start of last summer. For five weeks of work, Namath was paid $150,000 plus a percentage of the gross. It had to be that way simply because he is the gimmick, the sole raison d'être of the movie; otherwise, it would still be a dust-gathering, five-year-old script written originally for Eli Wallach. As The Last Rebel, Namath plays Captain Burnside Hollis, the last Confederate soldier to walk around in field grays, bitching and moaning about how the South blew the Civil War. A few weeks after Appomattox, Hollis, defying dirty looks from his untrustworthy side-kick (Jack Elam), rescues a black man (Woody Strode) from a lynch party being held in his honor. When the three of them rein in after eluding their pursuers, nasty Elam (one of the finest Western villains extant) says to silently grateful Strode, "Last time I saved a nigger's life, he said thank you." Strode, who's obviously strong enough to crack Elam between his thumb and index finger, merely scowls in reply. Right.

In Rome, Namath was staying at the Palazzo Ambasciatori on the Via Veneto. When he met me at the door of his elegant little suite, he was clad only in a pair of tapestry bells and looking fit. Namath often tends to appear pudgy in his football gear, but, in fact, he is all muscle through his arms, shoulders and chest, and any time there's a mirror around (there was), he's in front of it absent-mindedly combing his hair or flexing his biceps or patting his stomach. He began doing a combination of all three shortly after I walked in. "Pretty good, huh?" he said, admiring himself. "I'm down to 185 already--playing weight." A quick grimace followed. "Shit, I don't even want to think about playing football. Man, it's going to be so bad this year. Guys comin' in and piling on top, banging me around--and it hurts more when you play in the cold. Everybody gets injuries and you have to take them for granted, but you never get used to being hurt. And after a game, I hurt before I get to the dressing room, and it hurts worse when you lose." But when you win? "When you win, nothing hurts," Namath replied with a laugh, but it was tinny and self-conscious.

Namath didn't want to talk football. He switched the subject to movies by pulling out a Nonfood ad, clipped from a Southern newspaper, in which he and Glen Campbell were given equal billing as the movie's stars. "That's really dishonest," he remarks. "I'm in the movie for five minutes and they're trying to get people into the theater by faking them out. My lawyers got on that one fast."

Namath was not enthusiastic about Norwood, but C. C. and Company was something else. "Had a great time making that in Arizona," he said, producing a comb and grooming a shock of black hair until it terraces his forehead just right. "You know Mike Battle, the kid who plays safety for us? He's in the film and in one scene, we have a fight and I have to grab him good. Man, I must have got carried away, 'cause I lifted him up by his chest and he thought I was gonna kill him! The whole thing was fun; we took those bikes out into the desert every day. Look at this," he said, showing me a silver-dollar-sized scar on his right forearm, a result of falling off his cycle.

Called upon in C. C. and Company to give a sustained performance for the first time, Namath feels that at least he didn't make a fool of himself and gives most of the credit to his co-star, Ann-Margret. "She's a hell of a lady," he said. "I'd heard she was difficult to get along with and stuff like that, but she couldn't have been nicer. The thing I was most worried about were the love scenes, but she's a real pro, friendly, and she made me feel comfortable. Not too comfortable, though--her husband, Roger Smith, was the coproducer."

Namath was relaxed and mellow after two long Scotches. He rarely gets drunk, because the slightest public misstep he takes is magnified into a major transgression. And, contrary to his public image, he doesn't like to talk about himself. But he was celebrating that Friday night. "Tomorrow's the last day of shooting at Cinecitta," he said. "After that, we have a week on location and then I'm done. (continued on page 188)Broadway Joe(continued from page 130) I'm ready to leave now."

Looking unhappy, he sat down uneasily on the edge of a silk-covered love seat. "This isn't going to be much of a picture, that's for sure," he said slowly. "The story's not too good and nobody seems to give a damn about the picture; I sure as hell don't. And I wanted to. There are a few scenes where I'm not too bad--scenes where I'm with Elam. You see, I can't do it by myself; I have to react to somebody, and Jack understands that. The one thing I really can't do is laugh; boy, when they tell me to laugh, it's a bitch." Namath was also upset by what he regards as his over-all lack of progress as an actor. "I've done three pictures now," he noted, "and in all three I've worked with directors who were doing their first movie. Jack Haley, Jr., in Norwood, Seymour Robbie in C. C. and Company and Denys McCoy in this one. Haley and Robbie had done a lot of television, so even if they were new to movies, at least they were in the game. No knock on Denys, but all he's done is some shorts, and too much of the time I'm all alone out there. That's an uncomfortable feeling when you're brand-new at something. I don't know, but the whole movie seems screwed up. You'll see what I mean tomorrow."

The next morning at seven, a black 1966 Cadillac picked Namath up at the hotel and drove to Cinecitta, Mussolini's vast, pink monument to the Italian film industry. On arrival, Namath was made up and dressed in a Western dandy's brown suit, then he walked around by himself, head down, memorizing his lines. He wanted to finish early, for he, Elam and producer Larry Spangler were throwing a party for the cast and crew that evening. The upcoming scenes didn't require much dialog, but Namath was nervous. As he stalked around, the director, Denys McCoy, gave him a few words of encouragement. McCoy, 32, is a fan. "Namath is really sticking with it," he said. "He works very hard; he's never late, and never unprepared. He's got possibilities as an actor, too. He gives me things I didn't think he could. He's got a lot of personal strength that comes through. And as long as he's playing off somebody in a situation that makes sense to him, he's fine." Denys, however, was far from enthusiastic about the film. He had been called in only two days before shooting started, when producer Spangler decided he "didn't feel the chemistry was right" between the previous director (and author of the script), Warren Kiefer, and himself. Denys, who, with his friend and collaborator Rea Redifer, helped rewrite the screenplay, agreed to direct the movie primarily because he is being bankrolled by Spangler for a feature-length documentary about his uncle Andrew Wyeth. "This is a corny picture," he said, "but there are plenty of good moments in it, believe me. I wasn't all that happy about doing this film--it had already been cast, and there wasn't much we could do with the script on such short notice."

The day's abbreviated shooting was ready to begin; Namath had been fidgeting for well over an hour and he was anxious to get it on. In the first of three short scenes, he was seated at the head of an oval dinner table, where he was introduced to two women who have minor parts in the film. On his left was Marina Coffa, a pretty, temperamental 19-year-old who had done some Italian television; she plays Camelia, a girl Namath saves from a runaway stagecoach and who invites him to her aunt's ranch for dinner and an overnight visit. The aunt, Madame Du Pres, seated at Namath's right, is played by Annamaria Chio, a 29-year-old Italian actress who appeared in Pasolini's Medea. The script calls for Madame Du Pres to run her hand along her dinner guest's right thigh until he puts down his fork and holds her hand. Just as that happens, Camelia runs her hand along his left thigh until he puts down his knife to hold her hand. Madame Du Pres will then complain that Namath isn't scoffing up his dinner.

The cameras began rolling shortly after nine a.m. Namath nearly gagged on a hideous-looking piece of roast chicken, but managed to gobble up a leg almost eagerly as the scene unfolded. Miss Chio's hand shot up his right thigh and he grabbed it; Miss Coffa's hand landed on his left thigh and he snared that one. Finally, Miss Chio uttered her deathless line: "Easa you mitt tendahr enough, Capitan? Ah noteece you arra not eatin'." Namath was unable to keep a straight face. "Well, it's all right," said Denys. "We'll just loop it later on." The take ended with a close-up of Namath looking seductively first at Miss Chio and then at Miss Coffa. Annamaria reacted well to his glance, but when he turned to Miss Coffa, she giggled with embarrassment and, for some reason, looked over her shoulder, leaving Namath to stare seductively at her ear. Namath asked, "What's the matter?" Marina didn't answer, because she couldn't; she speaks no English. Neither does Annamaria.

After several more takes, the scene was completed and the crew began to light another set. Namath sat down, thoroughly unhappy; he got a paper cup to use as a spittoon, was handed a little round box of Skoal (a wintergreen-flavored chewing tobacco) and occupied himself chewing and spitting. Marina Coffa went up to him and, in her quaint Italian way, put her face about three inches from his and shouted, "Sputa! Poo! Sputa!" Evidently, she did not approve of tobacco chewing. A half hour later, Namath tried to talk to both of the girls with a production assistant as translator, but all he got for his trouble was, "Marina says chewing tobacco is a filthy, disgusting habit." Joe could hardly wait for the love scenes he had to do with both of them.

Actually, he had to wait until after lunch. The film crew had screwed up and wasn't ready for another hour or so. During the lunch break, everyone evacuated the sound stage to sit outside the building in green-and-white director's chairs that had New York Jets on them. The crew, the extras and their friends quickly grabbed all the chairs, so Namath sat on the building's steps, trying to get acquainted with Annamaria; no go. I joined in the nonconversation and my lousy French was the equal of her lousy French. She told us she has a seven-year-old son in Bari, on the Adriatic coast, that she acts mostly in theater and that she was sorry if Mr. Joe was upset because she didn't speak English. Mr. Joe was not upset; she, at least, was friendly, while Marina Coffa was a pain in his ass.

I then met Al Hassan, Namath's "road manager." An intense, 34-year-old former speech teacher at the University of Maryland, Al had been in Namath's employ since February and was very concerned lest he become a freeloader. "When I feel I'm not contributing anything, I'll leave," he said. Although he and Namath's two lawyers, Jimmy Walsh and Mike Bite (who were also along on the trip), run Namanco--Namath Management Company--Hassan's most pressing duties are to answer the phone, hold foe's chewing tobacco and be a good companion, for Namath doesn't take to strangers. The two men like and respect each other, but Hassan (a look-alike for Zachary Scott) is terribly defensive about his job, because he's seen that most people Namath comes in contact with act like flunkies. (The fear is justified: I once spent a very uncomfortable half hour watching silver-tongued sportscaster Howard Cosell trying to ingratiate himself with Namath.)

Lunch was finally over and the crew was ready to resume shooting. Marina was obviously disgusted at having to kiss lips that had lately touched tobacco, but her G-rated bed scene with Namath went smoothly. In the film, Joe makes love to the niece and sneaks back into his room, where the aunt grabs him from behind just as he takes off his shirt, kisses him, and the camera does a time-honored fadeout. Nine people were watching as Namath turned to kiss Annamaria. And all nine were surprised as hell when Joe, apparently having reached the limit of his patience, exploded. "What the hell kind of a kiss is that?" he said loudly, moving away from Miss Chio. "Goddamn it, Denys, she kisses like she's nine years old! How can I look like I'm starting to make love to her if she kisses with her mouth closed?" McCoy didn't really (continued on page 256)Broadway Joe(continued from page 188) know what to say. Namath came over to me. "Isn't this the worst bullshit you ever saw? She's supposed to be an actress, we're supposed to be kissing passionately and she's giving me a kiss like I'm her cousin!" Denys went off to explain the situation to an assistant director, who, in turn, explained it to Annamaria; she'd been shaken by Namath's reaction and now she appeared even more shaken by what he wanted to do. But Annamaria played the scene according to Namath's wishes and they got it right in one take. Three minutes later, he was on his way back to the hotel. "There are typical days on this movie," he remarked, "but damn, today was too typical."

The cast party that evening was held at the Luau restaurant, a hangout for American actors working in Rome. The Luau looks like a set from a 1943 Bogart film; there are a dozen stools along the street-level bar and, a short flight of stairs down, a restaurant seating about 50 people. Bamboo-slatted walls and a three-foot fountain are the room's only distinguishing features. The lighting is bad and the food not much better, but, as Namath said, "At least they get it right after you send it back." Because the place looks run-down on the outside (and more run-down inside), actors are able to dine informally without being confronted by autograph-seeking tourists, who rarely wind up there. Attractive American girls do, though. Every night, there were plenty of pretty foxes eager to meet and sleep with Namath, but he wasn't having any. To make his Roman trip even more memorable, Joe had picked up an internal virus that rendered him sexually hors de combat.

When we arrived at the party, the Luau was just starting to fill up with cast and crew members. Namath, Hassan and I sat down at an empty table and ten minutes later were joined by Marina and her best girlfriend; Marina sat on her lap. A few more friends of Marina's pulled up chairs minutes later and they were soon having a grand time listening to her tell funny stories--pointing to Namath when the punch lines came up and every once in a while giving out with one of her sputas. "It's great to be in Rome, isn't it?" Namath said with heavy sarcasm. "I can't ever remember a place where the broads were so bad."

While Hassan tried to relieve Namath's obvious unease at being seated with seven girls who were chattering away in Italian, Marina was having a ball. She devoured a huge selection of buffet goodies, then went up again to the three long serving tables, returning this time with a piece of whipped-cream cake. After eating most of it, she picked up the rest and, for no apparent reason, threw it in Namath's face, also splattering Hassan. Both men were nearly as mystified as they were angry. Namath glared at her and then he and Hassan got up, sat briefly at another table and 20 minutes later, went back to the hotel.

Namath spent all day Sunday resting in his room, emerging in the evening to laugh through a showing of Mission: Impossible vs. the Mob and afterward stopping for a snack at the Café de Paris, the Via Veneto's sidewalk capital. In rapid succession, he ate a serving of vanilla ice cream, a dish of strawberries, a double hamburger, half a bacon, tomato and egg sandwich, a peach, a bowl of cherries and a banana split. He sat with his back to the Via Veneto's endless parade of lean, pompadoured young men and flashy microskirted signorine, because when he wasn't spotted by teenaged Southern chicks, he was accosted by bar owners anxious for his patronage and by Italian assistant directors. Or victimized by waiters, one of whom dropped an entire fruit cup on his head. (A study of grace under pressure, Namath managed to smile while wiping syrup out of his eyes and picking small pieces of peach and pear from his hair, face and shoulders.) Victoria George, a fine-looking blonde who is Namath's leading lady in the film, later said. "Instead of doing a Via Veneto--making a scene--Joe was completely relaxed about it. even though that gooky stuff had ruined his clothes. You know, before he got to Rome, I'd heard he was a cocky ass and a troublemaker, but he's not. Joe has been involved in learning how to act and all his dealings with people on the set have been beautiful; the wardrobe lady loves him and he has yet to forget a prop. Joe is so far from being on an ego trip, it's almost comical. He's very shy."

One evening, after dining at the celebrated Hostaria dell'Orso with two attractive and ambitious actresses whose toughness Namath did not admire, he said simply: "I hate girls who curse. You meet a pretty girl and all of a sudden nothing but the word fuck is coming out of her mouth. Damn, I don't talk that way in front of a woman."

On Monday, Joe awoke at 6:15 a.m., had a quick breakfast and was driven to the outskirts of Manziana, a primitive little town 30 miles northwest of Rome, where a public park had been rented for The Last Rebel's final two weeks of filming. As with most of the making of the movie, the park turned out to be another bad Italian joke. It was nothing more than a dusty dirt road surrounded by a small forest, in which there lived several particularly ugly bright-pink pigs that often trotted and snorted their way into camera range. Namath arrived on the set at 7:45 and sat in his trailer until nine, listening to Joe Cocker cassettes on a stereo he'd taken along.

The toughest scene of the day, filmed in midmorning, was one in which Woody Strode stops a runaway stagecoach. Woody, who played the black slave in Spartacus, performs his own stunts and doesn't much care for--or worry about--dialog. "I make my living doing action," he said. "Just give me a role with dirt and sweat, 'cause I sure as hell can't act." A six-foot, four-inch, 200-pound former defensive end for the Los Angeles Rams, Woody has a finely muscled body that he keeps in shape by doing eight sets of 50 push-ups (within 12 minutes) every morning. Although he looks as if he's in his late 30s, he's 56. "Guys my age--like Jackie Robinson, who was a football teammate of mine at UCLA--are old men. I'm an accident."

It was a breezeless, sunny, 102-degree day and the three male leads retired to their trailers during lunch; Strode and Elam shared one and Namath had a trailer all to himself, where he quickly went to sleep. Strode, a genial nonstop talker, has spent the past eight years playing an assortment of movie Indians and Mongolians with shaved skulls. "This is sure a funny business," he said. "If you don't look right up on that screen, forget it; it doesn't matter how good you can act."

Strode thinks Namath can't miss. "Joe's gonna be a big star in Westerns. Joe is physical and he knows how to take direction. I've seen a lot of athletes people have thought about putting into the movies, guys like Babe Ruth, Joe Louis and Paul Hornung, but they didn't come close to having the glamor Joe has. He's a very special-type person."

The special-type person had, at that moment, just risen from his noon siesta and, after a few drinks, was in a happy frame of mind for his afternoon scene: He opens the door of the runaway stagecoach, a dead cowboy falls out and Marina, aided by a dubbed-in voice, asks, "Are you a bandit?" Replies Namath, "Not so's you can tell it, ma'am." The line broke Namath up. "Not so's you can tell it. ma'am? Hey, Denys!" he shouted to the director, "who the hell's gonna believe a line like that? You gotta be kidding." Denys wasn't kidding. Said director McCoy, "I hope this will play much better when it's edited." "It couldn't get much worse," said Namath.

If Joe was looking forward to the next day of shooting at all, it was only because it marked Marina's last scene. She made the day memorable. During a break, Namath walked by her holding a cup of lemonade. Miss Coffa was moved to imitate how Joe looked while chewing tobacco, which Namath responded to by pretending he was chewing tobacco--and squirting some lemonade a few feet in front of her. Marina was the perfect picture of outraged indignation and mumbled something nasty in unladylike Italian. A few moments later, she tapped him on the shoulder. When Joe turned around, she spit an entire mouthful of orange juice in his face. Marina tried to force a laugh but couldn't: Namath's face was streaked yellow with orange juice and red with ire. He walked angrily and silently away. Five minutes later, Marina sent a production assistant to apologize for her, but it had no effect: Joe at that point retreated into a shell, spending most of his time sleeping or playing solitaire in his trailer or riding his horse aimlessly around the set. "Learned to ride when Arizona State recruited me in 1960," he said. "At least it gives me something to do beside sit on my ass while all these characters find new ways to screw things up."

Namath's disgust at film making, Italian style, was endorsed strongly by Jack Elam. A witty and sophisticated man, Elam has become rich playing a succession of grisly cowboy villains who usually bite the dust just before the end of the film (The Last Rebel doesn't deviate from this formula). Jack is blind in his half-closed left eye and, combined with a magnificently perverted leer, his countenance has been beguiling moviegoers since 1949, when he quit a highly successful career as a C. P. A. "I'll never make another movie in Italy as long as I live," he said. "This is the biggest bullshit country I've ever seen. Here, everybody working on a film is only as important as how loud they shout or how much they wave their hands. We've had to stop filming dozens of times because the crew was talking. Extras show up without their make-up and we have to wait twenty minutes for them to get ready; we're lucky when the prop men have what's called for in the script and they never, of course, provide for a contingency. These people are offended by the idea of efficiency; it's a big party to them, but if they pulled that shit once in America, they'd never work again."

Elam was, nevertheless, delighted he'd worked with Namath and he, also, is positive Joe will be a star--provided he makes a few correct decisions. "In football, you get fourteen games to a season. You can be lousy in all of them but still come back the next year," he observed. "Unfortunately, you don't get fourteen tries in the movie business; the public will only wait a couple of pictures and that's it. Joe's been in three films and what he needs now is a strong property and a good director. One smash hit, and he'll be set to make a million dollars a year as an actor."

The rest of the week, which Namath spent commuting between Manziana and Rome, played itself out slowly and uneventfully. Temperature on location reached 110 degrees and, when he wasn't in front of the cameras, Joe sequestered himself in his air-conditioned trailer.

Early Friday evening, most of the cast drove from Manziana to Cinecitta, where, at seven P.M., producer Larry Spangler was to screen three and one half hours of the film's rushes. Only Jack Elam declined to attend the screening. He explained his disinterest: "Sometimes you'll wind up with a beautiful bunch of vignettes that don't hang together as a movie, or the leading character will be great, but terrific individual performances don't necessarily make for a terrific movie. Besides," he added with a smile, "seeing the rushes on this movie would ruin my trip home."

I entered the screening room as the lights dimmed. The first hour's footage was silent; there'd been a bit of a mix-up and the sound track on a number of scenes shot at Cinecitta wouldn't be ready for several days. After a few weak jokes centering around Spangler's walk-on as a prostitute's customer and Hassan's bit as a bartender, the small audience grew restless and then drowsy. Spangler asked the projectionist to show only sound film.

Namath's scenes with Annamaria Chio and Marina Colfa were the first to come on and were greeted with great glee; watching those two fracture the English language relieved the mounting sense of failure. Strode was right about the way he handles dialog, but he looked awesome on the screen, especially when he took his shirt off, which was often. If The Last Rebel holds together at all, however, it is because of Elam, the film's cohesive center. Jack somehow made all the clichés he mouths come alive, and in the scenes he shared with Namath, Joe was visibly relaxed and believable.

Time after time, as he watched the screen, Namath's right hand darted in front of his face, shielding his eyes from scenes in which his inexperience was appallingly evident. He had not been made up properly for one close-up; several pimples on his nose stood out like the Presidents on Mt. Rushmore and Namath groaned. He was embarrassed by much of what he saw and, at several points, exhaled loudly in self-disgust. The rushes were a disaster. When the lights came on again and Namath was asked what he thought, he said, "I'm not going to say."

Joe was on the set bright and early the next morning, eager to finish up quickly. In his final scene, he and Elam leaped out of a ditch and sprinted for about ten yards. Namath hobbled out on those rickety legs, fell down, but quickly regained his feet and finished the take. The crew gave Joe an ovation--movie etiquette. Namath was unimpressed.

That evening, attorney Mike Bite described the welcome-home party planned for Namath when he arrived back in Manhattan. Fifty--or was it 150?--of New York's "best broads" were going to turn out; since no more than 30 guys would be invited, all the fellows would get laid. Namath smiled disinterestedly. He has slept with more than 400 women, by his own conservative count, but the majority of them have been football groupies, and a man can lose his taste for that sort of thing. If and when he finally marries his steady girl, a charming and beautiful blonde named Suzie Storm, who lives in Pensacola, Florida, Joe will probably be a model husband.

His problem is still what to do with his life, a life that won't be involved in professional sports. When he returned to New York that Sunday, Joe barricaded himself in his newr duplex apartment on East 82nd Street, just off Fifth Avenue, while he pondered whether or not to play this season. "I want to do something with myself, accomplish something, but I don't know what," he said, in counterpoint to the headlines that told America he was holding up the Jets for a bigger salary and/or "a big loan to resolve his financial problems," as The New York Times put it. "You can see why I don't like talking to newspapermen. I don't have financial problems, and the subject of money never once came up when I spoke to the club about playing this year," Namath remarked bitterly. And perhaps the bitterness is justified: In one column in the Chicago Sun-Times, sports writer Jack Griffin called him a "slant-eyed charmer," who "leered" into TV cameras and "whimpered" about his problems before he "postured back to work, drooped his eyelids and tossed his curls."

In the midst of the media catcalls, Joe secretly flew down to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where he thought about his career and rested in the sun (while Namath "sightings" were reported as far away as Winnipeg, Canada). And then he reported, late, to the Jet training camp at Hofstra University, a scene he understandably abhors: During the summer, pro teams are quartered in college dormitories, and the ridiculously regimented lives they lead there are not very different than the lives they led as collegiate jocks--11 p.m. curfew, two practices a day, training-table meals, putting up with a lot of juvenile pep talks dished out by megalomaniac coaches and lots of poker and drinking with the boys. Why had he returned? "I still haven't decided what else I can do," he said. "Look, it's very hard to give up something you can be the best at. And I really thought about not letting my teammates down, 'cause I doubt--as do a lot of the guys--whether the Jets could win three games if I wasn't playing quarterback."

On October 18, the Jets, having won only one of their first four games, met the Baltimore Colts at Shea Stadium in a match that would determine whether New York could make a belated run at the Super Bowl. Weakened by injuries, the Jets were without the services of, among others, All-Pro fullback Matt Snell and star defensive end Gerry Philbin. The Jets were behind 29--22 when, on their final offensive play of the game, Namath was thrown for a loss by Colt tackle Billy Ray Smith. In the process of decking him, Smith fell on Namath's right wrist, fracturing the quarterback's navicular, a small bone at the base of the thumb. After six years and 77 games, Namath would miss his first pro contest. In fact, he would miss the rest of the season; a cast would have to be worn for six weeks and an additional three weeks would be needed before Namath would be ready to throw at full strength--by which time the season would be over. "It's such a dumb injury, I suppose I can accept it," Namath said, just after New York had lost to Buffalo on October 25, dropping their record to a dismal 1--5. Sitting in the mirror-ceilinged bedroom of his apartment, Namath talked about the irony of the fracture. "I played almost the entire 1966 season with a broken bone just above the ankle and it didn't bother me much at all," he remarked. "Quarterback is the only position where the wristbone I broke could keep a player out of the line-up--at every other spot, they'd just cut off the cast on Sunday mornings, tape it and pad it and send you in to play." But by sitting out the rest of the schedule, Namath felt he could judge how much he'd miss not playing--which would determine whether he'd be back next season.

"Standing on the side lines hasn't been dull," Namath continued. "I've been helping Al Woodall, our substitute quarterback, call plays and I've found out that I know a lot about running a team. I hope this won't sound like I'm bragging, but I really don't think there are too many coaches who know the game better than I do. You know, if they took the politics out of coaching, and by that I mean not worrying about the coach having the right image, I think I could be a great coach. Let somebody else take care of public relations and let somebody else take care of being the general manager: A coach has one thing to do, and that's to win, period. Well, the only way a guy like me can really beat somebody is out on that football field."

Which is why Namath will show up to play again next season. No Mickey Mouse fracture is going to do him in; they'll have to carry him off the field with a totaled knee before he'll allow an injury to end his career. Namath would like to win another championship, but he'll settle for one more fling of autumnal glory. Movies aren't a bad way to make a big buck, but for Joe Namath, football is still where it's at.