Laurence Stallings: Red Grange

Barry Greenwald Dept: Stallings was the novelist who, assigned to cover a 1925 football game between the University of Pennsylvania and Illinois, whose star was the legendary Red Grange, became overwhelmed by the narrative possibilities, according to Vancouver Sun. Greenwald has embraced the challenge not only of telling the story of that '81 Cup victory, but of framing it in the multilayered socio-political context of the time. No clutching at haircuts for the accomplished Toronto-based documentarian and when you listen to filmmaker Barry Greenwald talk passionately about the making of Western Swagger, his documentary film about the Edmonton Eskimos' 1981 Grey Cup victory, the story of Laurence Stallings comes to mind. After the game, as famously recounted by the late, great Red Smith, Stallings paced agitatedly in the press box, "clutched at his haircut," and cried: "It's too big. I can't write it." (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.