Amon Carter’s portrayal in the film 12 Mighty Orphans is a fumble
Movie ignores the fact that Amon was Fort Worth’s original mighty orphan.
By Dave Lieber
The crew members of my play AMON! The Ultimate Texan were excited when producers of the movie 12 Mighty Orphans contacted us for information on Amon Carter, aka Mr. Fort Worth.
We were told Robert Duvall was going to play the part of the owner of the Star-Telegram, WBAP-AM and Channel 5. Our producer, Rick Blair of Artisan Center Theater, offered all possible help.
A couple of years went by and now, with the movie’s debut this month, I see that Duvall is still in the movie. But he was deemed too old to play Amon, who would have been 58 years old in 1938, the year the movie takes place. Duvall is 90.
Instead, Treat Williams plays Amon. Williams got his big break when he stood naked on stage in the original Broadway show Hair. He went on to star in movies like Prince of the City.
Treat Williams is cast as Amon Carter Sr. in the movie 12 Mighty Orphans
Physically, he looks dapper enough to be Amon in his Shady Oak hat and trademark diamond stick pin in his tie.
But the only times we see Amon in the movie are when he’s making bets on the orphans who play the Masonic Home’s underdog football team. Amon is always slapping down a $50 bill.
That is at least true to the original book by author Jim Dent. Dent is now in a pre-release facility awaiting his parole after a prison sentence for multiple drunk driving episodes.
Dent wrote in his book that on the train to Corsicana for a Masons’ game, “Carter was now working his way from car to car, hoping to find a sucker willing to bet on Corsicana. The man loved to drink, gamble, and womanize. But mostly he loved to bet on football games. He managed to find a half-dozen bookmakers willing to give him the Mites plus ten, and it did not seem to faze him they were shading the line by four points.”
All of which may be true, but as the playwright behind the Amon Carter play AMON! The Ultimate Texan and a companion biography of the same name, I can tell you that by portraying Amon only as a petty gambler the movie’s creators missed a big opportunity.
Amon was the most powerful and best-known person in Fort Worth. The media mogul ruled Fort Wort for a half century, which is why so much in town is named after him. But as Dent points out, the Mighty Orphans “were so popular that they were getting more ink than Carter, in spite of the fact that he owned and operated the most widely read newspaper in the entire South.”
Here’s the missed opportunity: Amon Carter was an orphan, too. And to have the most powerful man in town come from the same broken background as these boys, well, that would have made the point much sharper that oftentimes heart and determination can make a real difference in the lives of struggling youth.
Carter’s mother died when he was a boy, and his father remarried a classic wicked stepmother. When Amon was 13, she kicked her stepson out of the house forever. The year was 1892, and Amon went off by himself in the world to find jobs. He lived an adult’s life as a young teen.
He ended up in Bowie, where he made money as a liquor bottle recycler, a chicken-and-bread boy sandwich vendor on trains that stopped in town for water and a chambermaid in a hotel, where, in exchange for working there, he received room and board.
Amon in his late teens in a series probably taken in the 1890s. Author Dave Lieber calls the future media mogul “the Original Fort Worth mighty orphan.” (Photo Courtesy of TCU Special Collections.)
His schooling stopped at the 8th grade. Although Amon Carter was one of the most brilliant men in America running all things Fort Worth, he never went to high school, let alone college.
Amon Carter was Fort Worth’s original mighty orphan.
Both the Mighty Orphans and Amon Carter showed unrivaled heart and determination, and both scored as big in life as one can get. Indeed, Amon and the Mighty Orphans together represent Fort Worth’s finest examples of success.
NOTE from Amon playwright Dave Lieber: Growing up, I lived in the same apartment building as Treat Williams. I used to see him in the elevator. Neither one of us could have ever imagined that 50 or so years later, I’d be writing about Amon and he’d be playing him in a movie. It’s a small world.
Come see Dave’s play about Amon Carter. Three shows July 16-18, 2021 at the dazzling new $21 million Coppell Arts Center. Tickets and information at www.AmonPlay.com.
Tickets are now on sale HERE..
NEW! Interview with playwright Dave Lieber
