Water Polo’s Connection to Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer – The Life of Jam Handy
BRIDGEPORT, Pa. — The Collegiate Water Polo Association (CWPA) periodically likes to point out the connection of water polo to other areas of life – science, technology, pop culture, etc.
In the days leading up to Christmas, the league looks back at water polo athlete Harrison James “Jam” Handy who was born on March 6, 1886 in Philadelphia, Pa.
Don’t know who he is? Let us begin as Handy was an American Olympic breaststroke swimmer, water polo player and leader in the field of commercial audio and visual communications. A producer of training films, he is known for another production that helped launch the story of a deer with a nasal affliction.
Handy attended North Division High School in Chicago, and then the University of Michigan during the 1902–03 academic year. During his early life, Handy began swimming and introduced a number of new swimming strokes to Americans, such as the Australian crawl (regarded as the fastest of the four front primary strokes and now universally used during a freestyle swimming competition. This stroke gained additional popularity in the 1920’s thanks to Gertrude Ederle using it to cross the English Channel in 1926).
Now back to the story – Handy would often wake up early and devise new strokes to give him an edge over other swimmers. Swimming led to him winning a bronze in the 1904 Olympics at St. Louis, Missouri. Twenty years later he was part of the Illinois Athletic Club water polo team at the 1924 Olympics in Paris, France – a stretch of 20-years that established a new Olympic record for the longest period of time between first and last competition. Like his first appearance, Handy went home with a medal as the team won the bronze at that Olympics.
The 1904 Olympics were not a true international affair as tensions caused by the Russo–Japanese War and the difficulty of getting to St. Louis in 1904 contributed to the fact that very few top ranked athletes from outside the US and Canada took part in these Games. Only 62 of the 651 athletes who competed in all the events came from outside North America, and only between 12 and 15 nations were represented in all. Some events combined the United States national championship with the Olympic championship. The medal count was also skewed as the host nation won 239 of 283 presented medals – including 78 of 96 Gold Medals.
The 1904 games did have some controversy. The competition took place at Forest Park, the location of both the Olympics and the World’s Fair, in a pond called “Life Saving Exhibition Lake”. The waters were both polluted and turgid causing contamination that would claim the lives of four American water polo players via typhoid fever from e.coli bacteria in the water.
Handy survived the water and garnered the Bronze in the 400 yard breaststroke behind Georg Zacharias and Walter Brack of Germany.
His water polo appearance in Paris at the age of 38 years and 129 days made him the oldest American water polo athlete at the time – a mark erased by Charley Finn at the 1936 games in Berlin who was 39 years old and 11 days (although Finn finished in Ninth Place). Further, Merrill Moses bumped Handy down to third on the age list as he was 38 years and 359 days at the start of the 2016 games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Competing with a roster that included future Tarzan actor Johnny Weismuller in the inaugural Olympics to feature the famed slogan Citius, Altius, Fortius (Faster, Higher, Stronger), Handy and the Americans fell to eventual Gold Medalist France in their opening game (3-1 L), but rallied back to take down the Netherlands (4-2 W) to punch a ticket to the Silver Medal game versus Belgium. Belgium held off the United States by a 2-1 score, but Team USA knocked off Swend by a 3-2 count in the Bronze Medal contest.
His path to Olympic and business success – along with his place in Christmas lore – had a unique start.
Some degree of luck – and a cartoon – would help direct his track in history as during the 1902-03 academic year at the University of Michigan he was working as a campus correspondent for the Chicago Tribune when on May 8 he wrote an article about a lecture in the Elocution 2 class given by Prof. Thomas C. Trueblood.” Handy went on to describe how Trueblood had dropped to a bended knee in order to demonstrate how to make an effective marriage proposal – among other titillating elements of the lecture. John T. McCutcheon, a Chicago Record Herald cartoonist, followed the next day with a cartoon about a “Professor Foxy Truesport”.
Neither Trueblood nor university President James B. Angell were amused. Ten days after the initial article was published, Handy was suspended from Michigan for a year for “publishing false and injurious statements affecting the character of the work of one of the Professors.” Handy was told he could re-apply one year later. Instead, Handy decided to apply to a different school, but he was unable to gain acceptance to other schools because of what had happened at the University of Michigan. Handy was accepted to the University of Pennsylvania, but was told to leave after two weeks of classes.
Tribune editor Medill McCormick tried to intervene on Handy’s behalf, but Angell refused to change the suspension. So, McCormick offered Handy – who was training and competing for the Olympics – an opportunity to work in a number of departments at the Tribune. It was during his time working on the advertising staff that Handy observed that informing and building up salespeople’s enthusiasm for the products they were selling helped to move more merchandise. He also began researching exactly what made people buy a particular product.
Handy left the Tribune to do further work on corporate communications. He worked with John H. Patterson of National Cash Register, who had used slides to help train workers. With help from another associate, Handy began making and distributing films that showed consumers how to operate everyday products. After World War I broke out, Handy began making films to show how to operate military equipment. During this time the Jam Handy Organization was formed.
The Jam Handy Organization was probably best known for producing the first animated version of the new Christmas story Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer directed by Max Fleischer. After the war, the Jam Handy Organization was contracted as the Chicago-Detroit branch of Bray Productions, creating films for the auto industry, Bray’s largest private client.
General Motors selected Handy’s organization to produce short training films as well as other training and promotional materials. One such film was Hired! – a training film for sales managers at Chevrolet dealerships.
Between 1936 and 1938, the Jam Handy Organization made a series of six animated fantasy sales films for Chevrolet featuring a gnome named Nicky Nome, which showed new Chevrolet automobiles saving the day from villains, often in retellings of classic tales such as Cinderella, the subject of two of those films, A Coach for Cinderella and A Ride for Cinderella. The other films were Nicky Rides Again, Peg-Leg Pedro, The Princess and the Pauper and One Bad Knight.
Handy also produced films for other companies and for schools. He’s estimated to have produced over 7,000 films for the armed services during World War II. Handy was noted for taking only a one-percent profit on the films, while he could have taken as much as seven percent. He was noted for never having a desk at work, instead using any available work space. Handy’s suits didn’t have pockets, as he thought they were a waste of time.
Handy was married to Helen Hoag Rogers and had five children. Despite his troubles with the University of Michigan, his son-in-law Max Mallon, granddaughter Susan Webb, and great-granddaughter Kathryn Tullis received degrees from the school. Handy also received an honorary doctorate from Eastern Michigan University.
Handy appeared swimming in a 1978 commercial asking for the public to support American athletes training for the 1980 Olympic games before the boycott. At the time of his filming he was the oldest living United States Olympic medalist.
He continued swimming on a regular basis until just a few days before his death on November 13, 1983 at the age of 97.
