Several executives from HBO were riding together out to a Richmond, Va., graveyard where Arthur Ashe, tennis star and rights crusader, would be buried. As the bus drove past thousands of spectators-some weeping, others holding signs-who lined the streets, HBO board chairman Michael Fuchs told his companions: “We really ought to do something on Arthur.”
That “something” 18 months later turns out to be a one-hour documentary, “Arthur Ashe: Citizen of the World,” that debuts at 9 p.m. Tuesday on the pay-cable network. Ashe, who died Feb. 6, 1993, had been part of the HBO Sports family for 11 years as a tennis analyst before losing his fight with AIDS.
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“We made a commitment right there,” says HBO executive producer Ross Greenburg of that fateful ride. “What you try to do is put enough people together who have a passion for Arthur and an understanding of his life. You try to put together a documentary that will send out the message that Arthur had.”
Thus the film, while showing Ashe’s triumphs at the first U.S. Open tournament and later at Wimbledon, is filled more with Ashe’s off-the-court life than with his tennis playing.
“We made a decision early on this was not going to be a tennis film,” says writer Frank Deford, a close friend of Ashe’s who did the script. “You couldn’t justify a tennis film. Arthur was a good player, but no one would suggest for a moment he was one of the great ones.”
Ashe used his position as a “good player” to crusade for civil rights and AIDS research and against apartheid, which led HBO back to South Africa for an interview with Nelson Mandela.
“You can’t tell the story without going the full nine yards,” says Greenburg. “Not to go to South Africa would have been dishonest. Right from the start, we knew we would spend 58 out of 60 minutes on all these causes.”
Spending any time at all would have embarrassed Ashe, says Greenburg. “He’d understand, but he’d hate all this attention.”
The script, read by Ossie Davis, was “very much a labor of love,” says Deford. “It wasn’t something I found unbearable. Maybe it was easier for me in an odd way because I wrote a book about a daughter who died of cystic fibrosis. Obviously, as much as I might love Arthur, writing about your flesh and blood, a little child, is even more difficult. So I had gone through that experience before.”
Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe hadn’t. While Ashe’s widow felt it was too soon for her to be interviewed, she cooperated in other ways, supplying pictures and stories.
“His life was pretty well documented,” says Deford, “because he was this distinct figure. It was all laid out. I knew where I wanted to go. In many respects, I served a purpose at the beginning of the (project) in discussing what we wanted to do and where we wanted to go, as I did at the end, when I wrote the words. I had sort of a dual function.”
Besides contributing the words, Deford also supplied some of the film. “When we went to Africa (back in the ’70s), I took my Super 8 camera along and took some movies,” he says. “I wish I’d taken more pictures of Arthur clowning around.”
Which is the side of Ashe the public seldom saw.
“I hope the film provides a celebration of his life,” says Deford. “Of someone who managed, in a rather dramatic and emotional time, never to be swayed, but to walk the line of principle. And he always did.”
Yet, adds Deford, “He was a nice guy. He was very much flesh and blood. I wanted to show a public figure, especially an athlete, can be a whole person. Particularly for young kids who aspire to some sort of athletic career, Arthur is the shining example. You have to be as much as you can off the court as well.”
And now that it is all done, what does Deford want?
“I’d like people to remember Arthur as a decent human being,” he says. “He really was a citizen of the world.”
Other stuff: ESPN2, which celebrates its one-year anniversary Saturday, is now available in 15.2 million households nationwide. None of those, however, are in Chicago. . . . ESPN opens its 16th season of college basketball coverage with “Midnight Madness” from Cincinnati, Florida and St. John’s at 11 p.m. Oct. 14, with Robin Roberts as host. . . . Former two-time champ Hector “Macho” Camacho battles Pat Lawlor in a 10-round welterweight bout at 8 p.m. Tuesday on USA Network.
Random thoughts: You couldn’t ask for a better college football telecast than ABC’s coverage of the Colorado-Michigan thriller. . . . Fox’s pregame show lead-ins keep getting sillier. Erik Estrada? . . . Best scoop: NBC’s Jim Gray reporting Baltimore as the front-runner in the Rams relocation sweepstakes. . . . Wasn’t it interesting that Fox, with Jimmy Johnson on the payroll, opened the show talking about ESPN’s Phil Simms possibly joining the Cardinals, while ESPN opened its pregame show talking about the Johnson-Barry Switzer feud? . . . Where does HBO, now with two ex-heavyweight champions (Riddick Bowe and Lennox Lewis) but no titlist under contract, go from here? . . . And wasn’t Ron Pitts an improvement over Jerry Glanville as a game analyst on Fox’s Bucs-Packers telecast? Not only were his comments more intriguing, but Pitts allowed play-by-play man Kenny Albert room to do his job.