Jim Brown

The Full Biography

Jim Brown. Running back. Actor. The St. Simons kid who made nine NFL seasons into an argument about what a body can refuse, then spent a long life as a man the highlight cannot file without the charge sheet.

This is his story.

The image most people still carry is a Browns jersey, a stiff arm, a man who looks like the pile has already lost. What the still cannot show is James Nathaniel Brown of St. Simons Island, Georgia, and Manhasset, a Syracuse three-sport man, a Hollywood that was a second career, an Amer-I-Can curriculum, and a death in 2023 that the public still splits between a god of the run and a man several women described as violent in a house.

He was born on February 17, 1936, on St. Simons Island, a Gullah Geechee coast of Georgia. His father, Swinton Brown, boxed and left. His mother, Theresa, went north to work as a housekeeper in Manhasset, on Long Island, and sent for the boy when he was eight. Manhasset High made him a climate before the NFL did: football, basketball, baseball, track, lacrosse. Syracuse took him. He was an All-American in football and in lacrosse, a basketball player, a track man, a body the eastern schools had not often hired to be that complete. The lacrosse is in the file. The stills skip it. He left Syracuse in 1957 as a person who had already been first in more than one sport, and as a Black athlete who had already learned what a northern campus would and would not do for him.

The Cleveland Browns took him in the first round of the 1957 draft, sixth overall. Paul Brown was the coach. Otto Graham had just retired. The fullback job became a climate in a single autumn. Rookie of the Year. The rushing title. Twelve games, 942 yards, a body that ended tackles. In 1958 he rushed for 1,527 yards and was the league’s Most Valuable Player. He was twenty-two. He did not become a role player. He became the offense.

Nine seasons. That is the whole football career, and it is enough. He led the NFL in rushing eight times. He went to the Pro Bowl every year he played. He was first-team All-Pro in eight of the nine. He won three MVP awards — 1957, 1958, 1965. In 1963 he rushed for 1,863 yards in fourteen games, a Browns franchise record that has lasted, 6.4 yards a carry, a season the league still uses as a measuring stick when it wants to say what a back is for. In 1964 he led Cleveland to the NFL championship, a 27–0 win over Baltimore at Cleveland Stadium, the title the city still uses as a true north. Frank Ryan threw. Gary Collins caught. Brown did the work between the tackles that made the rest possible. He finished with 12,312 rushing yards, 126 touchdowns, and 5.22 yards per carry. He never missed a game. He left after 1965, still first, still the measuring stick, a man who would not give a tenth year to an owner who thought he owned the year. The 1965 season was another rushing title and another MVP. He walked away from that. That is the point.

The leaving is the door into the second life. In the summer of 1966 he was in London shooting Robert Aldrich’s The Dirty Dozen, as Robert Jefferson, a condemned soldier in a suicide mission. Art Modell, the Browns’ owner, threatened to fine him for every day of camp he missed. Brown retired rather than be fined. He was thirty. He has said he left because he had something else to do, and because he could. Both are the point of having been the best. The Dirty Dozen (1967) was a hit. Ice Station Zebra (1968). 100 Rifles (1969), with Raquel Welch, an interracial love scene the ads treated as a dare. El Condor. Slaughter (1972) and Slaughter’s Big Rip-Off. Black Gunn. Three the Hard Way (1974) with Fred Williamson and Jim Kelly. The acting is a career, not a cameo: a Black star on a certain kind of 1970s picture, a body the camera already knew how to photograph, a voice that did not ask to be liked. The Running Man (1987). Any Given Sunday (1999), for Oliver Stone, a coach on the sideline of a football picture, the measuring stick hired as furniture and as a fact.

He had already, in the football years, been a civic object as well as a back. In 1967 he sat in the Cleveland Summit with Muhammad Ali, Bill Russell, and Lew Alcindor, among others, a room of Black athletes who heard Ali’s case for refusing the draft and then stood with him in public. He founded the Negro Industrial and Economic Union — the Black Economic Union — to push Black-owned business. He was, for a stretch, the most complete force the league had hired: a body that ended tackles and a man who would not be owned past the year he chose. The third life, Amer-I-Can, came in 1988, a curriculum he built for gangs and for prisons, life-management lessons he taught in rooms the highlight reel never enters. He has said the program was the work that outranked the yards. The file should hold that claim next to the yards, not instead of them.

The file also holds the houses. In 1965 he was accused of assaulting an eighteen-year-old, Brenda Ayres; a jury acquitted him. In 1968 Eva Bohn-Chin, a model, was found on the pavement beneath the balcony of his Hollywood apartment; she declined to cooperate, and the felony charges were dropped. In 1985 a rape accusation by Debra Clark was dropped after she declined to testify. In 1999 his wife, Monique Brown, called 911. He was tried in Los Angeles for making a terrorist threat and for vandalism after smashing her car with a shovel. The jury acquitted him of the threat and convicted him of misdemeanor vandalism. A judge ordered probation, domestic-violence counseling, and community service. He refused the counseling. In 2002 he served a jail sentence of several months rather than comply. He denied the allegations in every case. Several women described violence in a house. A complete life does not sand them. It also does not reduce nine seasons and a program to a mug shot. Both run.

Make sure when anyone tackles you he remembers how much it hurts.Jim Brown

The turn is the leaving and the houses. A lot of greats stay one more year for an owner. He became a man who would not. The Brown after 1965 is more complicated than a yardage pile. The pile is real. The testimony is real. The file is both.

Monique and the children have had to share a father who is a stick and a charge sheet. Friends from the Browns years describe a teammate who was first and cold and done with a coach’s speech. The Brown in Los Angeles was a man who had already refused a tenth year and would not sand a reputation either. Both are the life. Fond memory that keeps only the stiff arm is a cleaned room. A pile-on that keeps only the charges is a different cleaned room. He would not sand either stack, and the file is not allowed to sand them for him. The nine seasons remain first. The houses remain in the same piece. That is the only honest order that is also the only honest disorder. Cleveland still uses the 1964 title as a true north. The program still uses his name on a lesson. The obituaries still have to hold both, or they are not obituaries. The stiff arm is a clip. The file is the life. Both remain.

The later years

The years after the last carry were long: pictures, the program, the case, a public that would not agree on the file. He kept acting into the 2000s — Mars Attacks! (1996), He Got Game (1998), Any Given Sunday (1999), small parts that used the face as a fact. Spike Lee and Oliver Stone both hired the measuring stick as a man, not as a clip. He kept Amer-I-Can in Los Angeles and in cities that asked for it, sitting with young men the league would never draft, walking them through a curriculum he had written because he did not trust the usual civic speech. Life-management lessons. A room that is not a highlight. He advised the Browns, at intervals, as a presence the franchise could not quite retire, and he advised other rooms that wanted a Black elder who would not flatter them. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1971, first ballot, a ceremony that treated nine seasons as a completed cathedral. He accepted the gold jacket. He did not become only a gold jacket. The 1964 title team still has reunions. He went when he chose.

He married Sue Jones in 1959; they had three children and divorced in 1972. He married Monique Gunn in 1997; two more children. The 1999 trial and the 2002 jail term sat inside that marriage. She asked the police, at the time, not to arrest him, and then the state tried the case anyway. He emerged from the sentence unrepentant in public and still running the program. He has said there is no excuse for violence. He has also denied the specific allegations. The file holds both sentences and the women’s accounts. In 2013 and after, he stood with Donald Trump in rooms that surprised people who had filed him only as a 1967 Summit man. He had always been harder to hire as a symbol than the yards suggested. He said what he said. The file should not sand that either. ESPN and the league used him as a voice on the position and on the owners. He used them back when it suited the program.

He died on May 18, 2023, at home in Los Angeles, with Monique. He was eighty-seven. The obituaries led with the stiff arm and, in the better ones, kept the charge sheet in the same piece. St. Simons still claims the boy. Syracuse still claims the lacrosse stick. Cleveland claims the pile and the 1964 title. The houses other people described claim the file. Amer-I-Can still has his name on a curriculum. The league still uses the nine years as a measuring stick and still tells the ghost story of a man who left for a picture.

He had already, in nine seasons, written the public man. The fifty-eight years after the last carry were pictures, a Summit, a curriculum, a trial, a jail term, and a public that would not agree. He kept the program when the pictures thinned. He kept the argument when the league wanted only the stiff arm. Friends from Amer-I-Can rooms describe a teacher who was first and cold and done with a civic speech that had no lesson plan. The highlight wanted a god. The file wanted both stacks. What the highlight cannot hold is the count underneath: a Gullah island, a Long Island high school, four sports at Syracuse, eight rushing titles, a championship, a London set, a Summit, a program in a prison classroom, a balcony in 1968, a shovel in 1999, a jail term, and a death at eighty-seven that did not settle the argument. He had already, in nine seasons, written the public man. The fifty-eight years after the last carry were the life. Both stacks should run.

After he was gone

Every back still pays him a tax in refusal. Every owner still fears a man who will leave for a picture. The yards are the climate. The testimony is the file. Both should run, in that order or the other, but together. The Hall is in Canton. The argument is everywhere else.

He came out of St. Simons, wrecked Syracuse, wrecked nine NFL seasons, left for a movie, built a program, faced a public that would not file only the stiff arm, and died at eighty-seven. If you only remember the pile, you have the still. If you remember 1965, Amer-I-Can, and the case, you have him.

Portrait: Unknown author · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons

Jim Brown · Full Biography · 50 Plus Hub
https://50plushub.com/nostalgia/stars/jim-brown/story