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Jim Brown Biography
Jim Brown born James Nathaniel Brown is a former professional American football player and actor. He was a running back for the Cleveland Browns of the National Football League (NFL) from 1957 through 1965. Considered to be one of the greatest football players of all time, Brown was a Pro Bowl invitee every season he was in the league, was recognized as the AP NFL Most Valuable Player three times and won an NFL championship with the Browns in 1964.
He resulted in the league in eight out of his nine seasons in rushing yards, and by the moment he retired, most of the significant scoring championships had been broken. He was appointed the biggest professional football player ever by The Sporting News in 2002.
Brown received unanimous All-America awards playing college football at New York’s Syracuse University, where he was an all-around player for the football squad from Syracuse Orangemen. He was also outstanding in basketball, track and field, and lacrosse. The football squad subsequently retired its jersey number 44. In 1995, he was inducted into the Football Hall of Fame College.
Brown passed the ball 2,359 times in his professional career for 12,312 rushing yards and 106 points, all records when he retired. He averaged 104.1 rushing yards per match and is the only player in the history of NFL to average for his career over 100 rushing yards per match. His rush of 5.2 yards is second best in running backs. Brown was enshrined in 1971 at the Fame Pro Football Hall. He has been appointed to the all-time NFL 75th Anniversary Team, which includes the finest players in the history of NFL. The Browns are retiring his number 32 shirt. Brown became an actor shortly after his soccer career and had several major roles throughout the seventies.
Jim Brown Age
Brown was born on February 17, 1936, St. Simons, Georgia. He is 83 years as of 2019.
Jim Brown Height
He stands at a height of 6 ft 2 in (1.88 m) and a weight of 232 lb (105 kg).
Jim Brown Image
Jim Brown Daughter| Jim Brown Children
He has two daughters; Karen Brown Ward and Kim Brown and three sons Jim N. Brown Jr., Kevin Brown and Aris Brown
Jim Brown Early life
Brown was born to Swinton Brown, a professional boxer, and his daughter, Theresa, a homemaker, in St. Simons Island, Georgia. Brown gained 13 letters playing soccer, lacrosse, baseball, basketball, and running track at Manhasset Secondary School.
Mr. Brown credits his self-confidence for growing up on the island of Saint Simons, a community off the coast of Georgia where his grandma raised him and where racism did not directly impact him. He moved to Manhasset, New York, on Long Island at the age of eight, where his mom was working as a housewife. He became a soccer star and athletic legend at Manhasset High School.
The New York Times, 2002 movie review.
He averaged his basketball squad with a record of 38 points per match on the then-Long Island. This record was later shattered by Carl Yastrzemski of Bridgehampton, the future Boston Red Sox star
Jim Brown College sports career
Brown was the team’s second-leading rusher as a junior at Syracuse University (1954). He hurried 666 yards (5.2 per carrying) as a junior. Brown was an all-American first-team choice in his senior year in 1956. He completed third in voting for the Heisman Trophy and set high season rush average college records (6.2) and most rushing touchdowns in a single game. Brown ran for 986 yards— the country’s third-largest despite playing only eight games in Syracuse — and scored 14 points. He rushed for 197 yards, scored six touchdowns, and kicked seven extra points for a school-record 43 points in the regular-season finale, a Colgate 61–7 rout. Then in the Cotton Bowl, he rushed for 132 yards, scored three touchdowns, and kicked three extra points, but a blocked extra point after Syracuse’s third touchdown was the difference as TCU won 28–27.
His achievement as a multisport athlete might have been more spectacular. He excelled in basketball, track, and particularly lacrosse in relation to his soccer achievements. As a junior, he was the basketball team’s second-leading scorer (15 ppg), earning a letter to the track team. He completed third in the decathlon of the Nation Championship in 1955. He averaged 11.3 points in basketball in his junior year and was named a lacrosse All-American second-team. The Carrier Dome has an 800 square-foot tapestry depicting Brown in football and lacrosse uniforms with the words “Greatest Player Ever”.
Jim Brown Lacrosse
He is in the Lacrosse Hall of Fame.
Initiated in 1957, the National Lacrosse Hall of Fame has annually inducted individuals based on outstanding lacrosse achievement and/or contribution. The mission of the Lacrosse Hall of Fame is to honor men and women, past and present, who by their deeds as players, coaches, officials and/or contributors, and by the example of their lives, personify the great contribution of the sport of lacrosse to our way of life.
Jim Brown Movies
1964 Rio Conchos as Sgt. Franklyn
1967 The Dirty Dozen as Robert Jefferson
1968 Dark of the Sun as Ruffo
Ice Station Zebra as Capt. Leslie Anders
The Split as McClain
1969 Riot as Cully Briston
100 Rifles as Lyedecker
The Grasshopper as Tommy Marcott
Kenner as Roy Kenner
1970 … tick … tick … tick … as Jimmy Price
El Condor as Luke
1972 Slaughter as Slaughter
Black Gunn as Gunn
1973 Slaughter’s Big Rip-Off as Slaughter
The Slams as Curtis Hook
1974 I Escaped from Devil’s Island as Le Bras
Three the Hard Way as Jimmy Lait
1975 Take a Hard Ride as Pike
1977 Vengeance as Isaac
1978 Fingers as Dreems
Pacific Inferno as Clyde Preston
1982 One Down, Two to Go as J
1985 Lady Blue as Stoker
1987 The Running Man as Fireball
1988 I’m Gonna Git You Sucka as Slammer
1989 L.A. Heat as Captain
Crack House as Steadman
1990 Killing American Style as Sunset
Twisted Justice as Morris
Hammer, Slammer, & Slade as Slammer
1992 The Divine Enforcer as King
1996 Original Gangstas as Jake Trevor
Mars Attacks! as Byron Williams
1998 He Got Game as Spivey
Small Soldiers as Butch Meathook
1999 New Jersey Turnpikes as Unknown
Any Given Sunday as Montezuma Monroe
2002 On the Edge as Chad Grant
2004 She Hates Me as Geronimo Armstrong
Sucker Free City as Don Strickland
2005 Animal as Burwell
2006 Sideliners as Monroe
2010 Dream Street as Unknown
2014 Draft Day as Himself
Jim Brown Professional Football Career
Brown was selected by the Cleveland Browns in the first round of the 1957 NFL draft, the sixth general selection. In his rookie season’s ninth game, he rushed against the Los Angeles Rams for 237 yards, setting an unbeatable NFL single-game record for 14 years and a 40-year rookie record.
In 1958, Brown shattered the rushing one-season record, gaining 1,527 yards in the 12-game season, shattering Steve Van Buren’s prior 1,146-yard NFL mark in 1949. Brown led all players with a stunning 17 touchdowns scored in this MVP season, besting his closest competitor, Raymond Berry’s broad receiver Baltimore Colts, by 8.
After nine years in the NFL, he left as the record holder of the league for both one-season (1.863 in 1963) and career rushing (12.312 yards), as well as the all-time leader in rushing touchdowns (106), total touchdowns (126), and all-purpose yards (15.549). He was the first player ever to reach the 100-rushing-touchdown milestone, and since, despite the league’s expansion to a 16-game season in 1978 (Brown’s first four seasons were just 12 games, and his last five were 14 games), only a few others have done so.
Brown’s record of scoring 100 touchdowns in just 93 games stood until during the 2006 season LaDainian Tomlinson did it in 89 games. Brown holds the record in all-purpose yards for full seasons leading the NFL (five: 1958–1961, 1964), and is the only rusher in NFL history to average over 100 yards per match for a career. In addition to his rushing, Brown was a great recipient from the backfield, catching 262 passes for 2,499 yards and 20 touchdowns, while adding another 628 yards of kickoffs.
Brown was voted in the Pro Bowl every season he played, and in his final Pro Bowl game, he left the league in style by scoring three touchdowns. Despite not playing the past 29 years, he achieved these records. Brown’s six matches continue an NFL record with at least four touchdowns. Both Tomlinson and Marshall Faulk have five touchdown games with four.
Brown resulted in the league eight times in rushing a record. He was also the first NFL player ever to jump for more than ten thousand yards.
He told me, ‘Make sure when anyone tackles you he remembers how much it hurts.’ He lived by that philosophy and I always followed that advice.
Brown’s 1,863 rushing yards remained a Cleveland franchise record in the 1963 season. Currently, it is the oldest franchise record of all 32 NFL teams for rushing yards. The only O exceeds his average of 133 yards per match that season. The 1973 season for J. Simpson. While others have compiled more prodigious statistics, it is necessary to consider his running style along with statistical measures when viewing Brown’s standing in the match. He was very hard to deal with (shown by his leading 5.2 yards per carrying), often needing more than one defender to get him down.
Brown retired as the all-time leading rusher of the NFL after nine seasons in July 1966. He held the record of 12,312 yards until Walter Payton broke it during the 10th NFL season of Payton on October 7, 1984. Brown remains the all-time leading rusher of the Browns. Brown will be 11th on the all-time rushing list as of 2018.
Cleveland won the NFL championship in 1964 during Brown’s career and was runners-up in 1957 and 1965, respectively his rookie and final season.
Jim Browne Early Films
Before the season of 1964, Brown started an acting career playing a buffalo soldier in Rio Conchos, a Western action film. The movie debuted at the Hippodrome Theater in Cleveland on October 23, attended by Brown and many of his teammates. The response was tippy. Brown was a useful actor, one critic said, but the overcooked plotting and implausibility of the film was “a strong melodrama for the unsqueamish.”
Jim Browne MGM
Brown shot his second movie in London in early 1966. MGM’s The Dirty Dozen cast Brown as Robert Jefferson, one of twelve convicts sent to France during World War II to assassinate German officers meeting before the D-Day invasion at a castle near Rennes, Bretagne. Production delays due to poor weather meant that he missed at least the first portion of the Hiram College campus training camp, annoying Cleveland Browns owner Art Model, who threatened to charge Brown $1,500 for every camp week he missed. Brown, who said earlier that 1966 would be his last season, the last year of a three-year contract, instead announced his retirement.
In a 1967 episode of I Spy called “Cops and Robbers,” Brown played a villain.
Dirty Dozen was an enormous hit and a multi-film agreement was signed by MGM. His second studio movie was Dark of the Sun (1968), a Congo action movie where he played a mercenary who was the best friend of Rod Taylor.
Also for MGM was Ice Station Zebra (1968), a costly adventure movie based on a novel by Alistair MacLean in which Brown-backed Rock Hudson, Patrick McGoohan, and Ernest Borgnine.
Jim Browne Leading Man
In his first lead role in The Split (1969), MGM cast Brown on the basis of Donald E. Westlake’s Parker novel. He’s been paid for the job for $125,000.
It was followed by Brown with Riot (1969), an MGM prison movie. Both it was strong hits at the box office, along with The Split. Biographer Mike Freeman credits Brown with becoming “the first black action star” because of the roles he depicted in the 1968 hit movie Ice Station Zebra, such as the Marine captain.
Brown went to the Fox of the 20th Century for his first Western 100 Rifles (1969). Brown was billed over Raquel Welch and Burt Reynolds as co-stars and had a love scene with Welch, one of the first scenes of interracial love. In Spike Lee’s Jim Brown, Raquel Welch reflects on the scene: All-American.
Brown had a change of pace at MGM with Kenner (1969), an adventure movie partially set in India where Brown plays a guy who is a young boyfriend. He starred in the same studio as a sheriff in… tick… tick… tick… (1970) a further hit.
Brown appeared in The Grasshopper (1970), a National General Pictures drama where he played an ex-soccer player who became Jacqueline Bisset’s lover. More typical was El Condor (1970), also for National General, a Western shot in Spain by John Guillermin.
Jim Browne Blaxploitation
Shaft’s release (1971) resulted in an increase in blaxploitation films. Black Gunn (1972) for Columbia; Slaughter’s Big Rip-Off (1973); The Slams (1973), back at MGM; I Escaped from Devil’s Island (1973); and Three the Hard Way (1974) with Fred Williamson and Jim Kelly.
With Williamson, he did a Western spaghetti, Take a Hard Ride (1975). Blaxploitation’s popularity ebbed in the mid-seventies and Brown made fewer movies.
Jim Brown Net Worth
Brown is an American former professional football player and actor who has a net worth of $50 million. Jim Brown earned his net worth as a professional football player, actor and real estate investor. His athletic career began in college at Syracuse University.