There are a lot of characters in contemporary movies who are affable but less-than-ingenious jocks. Usually football players. Are there any examples of this kind of character in an older movie - 70s-era or prior? I’d especially like to know if there’s an example from the 40s or 50s.
This doesn’t really fit what you’re asking, but the first thing that came to my mind was Arch Oboler’s The Twonky (1953). In it, Coach Trout is a stereotypical 1950s football coach. Wears sweatshirts, blue-collar speech patterns. And then he comes up with a hypothesis about the Twonkies that is spot-on (and rather prescient). The scene was funny because he was a ‘dumb jock’ (in a way), sort of like when 400-pound Erland van Lidth de Jeude (‘Terror’) started sweetly singing in The Wanderers (1979).
If anyone’s wondering what this is about, I’m putting the finishing touches on an article I wrote for a phys-ed magazine and want to use this for part of the lead-in. I don’t just want to mention characters from recent movies, I want to have someone from something older also, but well-known. Preferably something that was as widely watched in its time as American Pie was in ours.
The quintessential example is not a movie character, but a comic book character: Moose, from the Archie comics
Chico and Harpo were pretty dumb jocks in Horsefeathers. But the football players at Darwin College aren’t particularly bright either.
For a more serious (though obscure) example, there is Toro Morino in The Harder They Fall.
“Flash, I love you! But we only have fourteen hours to save the earth!”
Sergeant York?
HUH??
The Hepburn-Tracy comedy Pat and Mike features a brilliant performance by the incredibly hot young Aldo Ray as the hilariously dumb boxer Davie.
Not a movie, but check out the sports teacher in this:
The original book from which this is taken was originally published in 1953.
Jody McCrea’s characters in various “Beach Blanket” films - variously called Bonehead or Deadhead (was he so stupid he didn’t realize his name had changed?) He always came across as the stereotypical dumb jock.
VCNJ~
In Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941) the lead character Joe Pendleton was a less than brilliant jock. Not so much dumb as average ‘Joe’ and not too savvy outside of sports and music. He was a boxer and the movie was remade of course as Heaven Can Wait.
There were some Three Stooges shorts that included “Dumb Jocks” some were nice guys and some were jerks, so it varied.