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Yahoo
02-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
An iconic Chiefs win inspired a famous artist's painting. Its whereabouts are a mystery
Fifty years after Thomas Hart Benton suffered a heart attack and died at age 85 while working in his Belleview Avenue studio, his legacy still resonates as one of the most significant American artists of the 20th Century. Some of his most celebrated works are prominent from the state capitol in Jefferson City to the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum in Independence; from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City to the Smithsonian America Art Museum in Washington, D.C. And then some, particularly around what 90 years ago became his adoptive hometown of Kansas City. But because it's nearly a century since Benton was propelled into fame in 1934 when his self-portrait was featured on the cover of Time magazine and since he rarely ventured into the sports realm, an anomalous creation late in life — and the fascinating way it came to be — has remained relatively obscure through the years. When the Chiefs in February returned to New Orleans for a Super Bowl for the first time since winning Super Bowl IV there in 1970, they evoked the scene that inspired Benton's 'Forward Pass' painting and seven accompanying sculptures focusing on Len Dawson under duress about to throw a pass. If you haven't heard much about it over the decades, it's also because the whereabouts of the painting are a mystery. At least publicly. When it was unveiled at the Kansas City Club on the eve of Benton's 83rd birthday in April 1972 with one of the bronzes, Benton told The Star he planned to sell the sculpture. As for the painting, he said, 'I'll put it in storage.' So … where did it end up? Most likely as an undisclosed part of a private collection, it seems. The Thomas Hart Benton Home & Studio State Historic Site was unsure and referred questions to the Benton Trust via the official Thomas Hart Benton website, which did not respond Thursday or Friday to an emailed request to clarify where it is. Which leaves us with a trail apparently gone cold. After Benton's death in January 1975, the Columbia Daily Tribune wrote, 157 of his works were added to the existing collection of his art at The State Historical Society of Missouri in Columbia. But it's not there, curator of art collections Joan Stack said via email, adding, 'I wish we did!' At a glance online, it appeared it may be at the Wichita Art Museum — especially since the website said 'image restricted by copyright holder.' Alas ... 'Wish we did, but we don't,' said the museum's Kirk Eck, noting it was an original lithograph. Down another avenue, upon Benton's death several thousand of his works were under the trust for which he'd appointed UMB Bank as co-trustee and co-executor. And according to Stack, Creekmore Fath, the author of 'The Lithographs of Thomas Hart Benton,' said it was part of Benton's estate when he died. But even that route is a labyrinth. Because in a sensational twist, Benton's heirs in 2019 sued UMB seeking $85 million, alleging, among other things, that it had lost more than 100 pieces of his art. In a 59-page judgment last year, Jackson County Circuit Court Judge Mark Styles Jr. concluded that the bank had not breached its fiduciary duty and that only five works were unaccounted for. Those, he added, were not paintings but 'likely sketches or studies' of a value estimated to be $35,000 — the amount he awarded the heirs. Meanwhile, Benton's grandson, Anthony Benton Gude, told The Star that to the best of his knowledge 'Forward Pass' had never been held by the trust and said he thought it had been sold before his grandfather died. 'I do believe it's in Kansas City somewhere,' said Gude, who recalled his grandfather's enthusiasm both for the work and the Chiefs. Wherever it might be, it figures to have immense value. In 2017, a study (basically a near-final rendering, in this case with some subtle differences in detail) for 'Forward Pass' realized a price of $588,500 through Christie's. Although 'Forward Pass' was pegged to Super Bowl IV, it actually was a composite. Because while the arrowhead logo on his helmet and red No. 16 jersey distinguish Dawson and other jersey numbers suggest receiver Otis Taylor and offensive lineman Mo Moorman and Dave Hill, the background appears more like old Municipal Stadium than that Super Bowl site of Tulane Stadium. And the opponent's colors (including blue helmets) and jersey numbers don't align with those Vikings. Moreover, despite the fact he became what might be considered the team's first celebrity fan — one whose office to this day still features an old Chiefs seat cushion — Benton once told The Star he would seek to avoid making any painting or sculpting 'too readily identifiable' so as to enable selling copies 'without the stamp of partisanship.' So 'Forward Pass' basically was 'in honor of Super Bowl IV …' Steve Sitton, the outgoing historic site administrator at the Thomas Hart Benton Home & Studio said days before the Chiefs lost Super Bowl LIX 40-22 to the Eagles. 'I don't think it was supposed to depict' the game. While Benton indeed was at Super Bowl IV with the team, then-Chiefs coach Hank Stram's son Dale told me, the painting and sculpture largely were derived from sketches on the sidelines of Chiefs practices and games over a roughly three-year period first mentioned in The Star in November 1969. 'From a distance, the diminutive, slightly stooped figure with a silver-topped cane along the sidelines during yesterday's player warmup at the Chiefs-San Diego game looked totally out of place, yet at the same time vaguely familiar,' The Star wrote. His 'remarkably twinkling eyes,' the story continued, were focused 'on the explosion of power triggered by the snap of the ball. … He absorbed the thud of shoulder pads, the crunch of helmets, the grunts of exertion, the groans and curses of disappointment and pain.' What compelled Benton the most and what he'd seek to bring to life was what he called 'the magic moment (of) the second the ball is released for a pass while the blitz is on' — something he soon began painstakingly working toward. 'It will be wonderful if I can capture this,' he said that day. 'Being down here on the field has opened up a whole new dimension on the game. Now, I can really appreciate the action of football.' The very endeavor was an improbable, even seemingly incongruent, foray into Benton trying to animate football. Not that he disdained the game. The 5-foot-3 Benton, born in Neosho, Missouri, said over the years that he had played in high school and even at the semipro level. Before his fame, he chose boxing and wrestling as subjects because he could get immersed in the dynamics up close. For that matter, he was such an avid sportsman that at age 81 in 1970 he was the subject of a Sports Illustrated story headlined 'The Old Man and The River.' But he had avoided portraying football in the work, he told Sports Illustrated in 1969, because it was so hard to see the 'men in armor' under the helmets and behind the facemasks. All that began to change through his friendship with civic leader Dutton Brookfield, then the chairman of the Jackson County Sports Complex. As Benton wrote in a lithograph edition kept at the home, 'I have an overgrown crony in Kansas City named Dutt who is a football fan with a box at the Kansas City football stadium. He is six foot seven inches tall and therefore a real matching companion … 'One October afternoon, he took me to see the Kansas City Chiefs play. I had never seen a pro football game, and I was fascinated with the spectacle and with the game itself.' That soon led to a relationship with Stram, who invited him to be on the sideline for practices and games that included the Super Bowl (If only some of the exchanges between Benton and the equally fascinating Stram had been mic'd up along the way — as Stram was for that Super Bowl.) Even from afar at first, Benton told The Star, the 'color and spectacle (of football) knocked me out.' As it happened, at times that was almost literally the closer he got. At one practice, 'Pro!' magazine wrote in 1971, Benton was concentrating so intently on interior line action that a stray punt hit him in the head. 'No damage,' the story reported. 'He said he had a firm grip on the pencil.' Consumed with movement as he was, informed by a lifetime of trusting his eyes and sketches more than cameras, Benton also had a firm notion of how he'd go about his venture into the gridiron — a process that also was reflected in his 1970 sculpture 'Contact.' As Sitton last month looked at that piece featuring a ball carrier and would-be tackler about to collide, he considered how well Benton knew art history and art theory. The scene in 'Contact,' he said, 'is actually intentionally almost a copy of a battle scene off (a centuries-old) Etruscan vase.' Just add, say, spears and shields, he continued, and it's an ancient battle scene Benton 'repurposes' as football. No doubt the same could be said for the underpinnings of 'Forward Pass.' The Etruscan influence on Benton, Pro! wrote, was such that 'he could deliver a lecture about it.' 'It's sufficient here,' that story added, 'to say that he tried to make his figures move — or seem to be caught in mid-action.' With Benton inspired by the notion that 'a curved line produces more action than a straight line,' as he put to the magazine, he began to convert his sketches into maquettes (scale models for sculptures) and molds whose dismembered remnants can still be found in the studio. By way of example, Sitton sorted through a box and said, 'there's the arm.' Along the way, Benton also used live models in his studio to try to further harness the energy and imagery as he created the sculptures that also became the basis for lithographs en route to the painting. A painting few know about and fewer have seen — but that speaks to another aspect of a still-thriving legacy all these years later.
Yahoo
09-02-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
The Chiefs aim to make history where they won their first Super Bowl title. Philly stands in the way
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Clark Hunt was not quite 5 years old when he settled into his seat in Tulane Stadium beside his parents to watch the Kansas City Chiefs, the franchise his father had founded in the brazen days of the AFL, as they played the Minnesota Vikings in Super IV. Hunt doesn't remember the game itself. But once in a while, photos will surface that he has never seen before. 'I do have a photo of me sitting with my parents in the stands, right? I think they were benches. It sort of looked like a corner,' said Hunt, now 59, who assumed control of the Chiefs when his father, the visionary Lamar Hunt, died in December 2006. 'I guess that shows you how things have changed,' Hunt said. Indeed, it's a safe bet that Hunt and the rest of his family had comfortable seats in a luxury suite when the Chiefs faced the Eagles on Sunday at the Superdome. Led by Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce, and with a celebrity fan base that includes Taylor Swift and Caitlin Clark, the Chiefs were chasing an unprecedented third consecutive Lombardi Trophy. The fact was not lost on Hunt that they were trying to make history in the same city where they won their first Super Bowl with a 23-7 victory over the Vikings on Jan. 11, 1970. In fact, Hunt seemed to view the coincidence as something closer to kismet, a point that he underscored by pointing out that the Chiefs spent this week practicing at Tulane University. 'I hate to say I don't have any memories from that Super Bowl,' he said, "but getting to go to Tulane where we're training and being literally a stone's throw from the old stadium where we won Super Bowl IV is really special. 'I always think about my parents Super Bowl week,' Hunt added, 'There's no way not to. But this one is going to be special.' There's an argument to be made that nobody had a greater influence on the big game than Lamar Hunt. The oil magnate was part of the 'Foolish Club' that founded the AFL, back when they were being kept out of the NFL, and he was instrumental in the merger years later that ultimately brought the two professional football leagues together. In a letter to NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle, Hunt mused about the pending title game, saying: 'I have kiddingly called it the 'Super Bowl,' which obviously can be approved upon.' He was inspired by the must-have Christmas gift of the year that his wife, Norma, had gotten Clark Hunt and the rest of the kids: the Super Ball, made by toy company Wham-O. Lamar Hunt regularly attended the Super Bowl, though he never saw his Chiefs play in it again. They wouldn't make it back until Andy Reid arrived in town, and Mahomes and Kelce helped Kansas City beat the 49ers in February 2020 — five full decades after they triumphed over the 'Purple People Eaters' and the rest of the Vikings at Tulane Stadium. Norma Hunt continued to attend the Super Bowl until her death in June 2023. At the time, she was one of four people — and the only woman — who had attended every game, beginning with the Chiefs' loss to the Packers on Jan. 15, 1967. The Chiefs were back Sunday for the fifth time in six years. And they were chasing a threepeat against the Eagles, the team Kansas City beat a couple of years ago in Glendale, Arizona, to win the first of its back-to-back championships. 'I would say every Chiefs fan is spoiled, and that includes me, right? Because it has been such a special five or six years," Hunt told a small group of local reporters this week. 'And I think we know we're spoiled because of the journey that it took to get to this point, and the five decades we went without getting back to the Super Bowl.' This was the 11th time that New Orleans played host to the big game, tying Miami for the most of any city. The French Quarter had been packed all week with fans wearing Chiefs red and Eagles green, creating a kaleidoscope of Christmas colors stretching from Jackson Square to Canal Street, and bubbling all the way up to the Superdome. The home of the Saints, and the de facto replacement for Tulane Stadium, was hosting the game for the eighth time. 'I don't think any of us really could have dreamed it being like this, and having the success we've had,' Clark Hunt said. 'My dad would have loved it because in his heart, he was a fan — him and my mom were fans, first and foremost. And he would love it for our fans, because that was always a focus of his.' ___ AP NFL: Dave Skretta, The Associated Press
Associated Press
09-02-2025
- Sport
- Associated Press
The Chiefs aim to make history where they won their first Super Bowl title. Philly stands in the way
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Clark Hunt was not quite 5 years old when he settled into his seat in Tulane Stadium beside his parents to watch the Kansas City Chiefs, the franchise his father had founded in the brazen days of the AFL, as they played the Minnesota Vikings in Super IV. Hunt doesn't remember the game itself. But once in a while, photos will surface that he has never seen before. 'I do have a photo of me sitting with my parents in the stands, right? I think they were benches. It sort of looked like a corner,' said Hunt, now 59, who assumed control of the Chiefs when his father, the visionary Lamar Hunt, died in December 2006. 'I guess that shows you how things have changed,' Hunt said. Indeed, it's a safe bet that Hunt and the rest of his family had comfortable seats in a luxury suite when the Chiefs faced the Eagles on Sunday at the Superdome. Led by Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce, and with a celebrity fan base that includes Taylor Swift and Caitlin Clark, the Chiefs were chasing an unprecedented third consecutive Lombardi Trophy. The fact was not lost on Hunt that they were trying to make history in the same city where they won their first Super Bowl with a 23-7 victory over the Vikings on Jan. 11, 1970. In fact, Hunt seemed to view the coincidence as something closer to kismet, a point that he underscored by pointing out that the Chiefs spent this week practicing at Tulane University. 'I hate to say I don't have any memories from that Super Bowl,' he said, 'but getting to go to Tulane where we're training and being literally a stone's throw from the old stadium where we won Super Bowl IV is really special. 'I always think about my parents Super Bowl week,' Hunt added, 'There's no way not to. But this one is going to be special.' There's an argument to be made that nobody had a greater influence on the big game than Lamar Hunt. The oil magnate was part of the 'Foolish Club' that founded the AFL, back when they were being kept out of the NFL, and he was instrumental in the merger years later that ultimately brought the two professional football leagues together. In a letter to NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle, Hunt mused about the pending title game, saying: 'I have kiddingly called it the 'Super Bowl,' which obviously can be approved upon.' He was inspired by the must-have Christmas gift of the year that his wife, Norma, had gotten Clark Hunt and the rest of the kids: the Super Ball, made by toy company Wham-O. Lamar Hunt regularly attended the Super Bowl, though he never saw his Chiefs play in it again. They wouldn't make it back until Andy Reid arrived in town, and Mahomes and Kelce helped Kansas City beat the 49ers in February 2020 — five full decades after they triumphed over the 'Purple People Eaters' and the rest of the Vikings at Tulane Stadium. Norma Hunt continued to attend the Super Bowl until her death in June 2023. At the time, she was one of four people — and the only woman — who had attended every game, beginning with the Chiefs' loss to the Packers on Jan. 15, 1967. The Chiefs were back Sunday for the fifth time in six years. And they were chasing a threepeat against the Eagles, the team Kansas City beat a couple of years ago in Glendale, Arizona, to win the first of its back-to-back championships. 'I would say every Chiefs fan is spoiled, and that includes me, right? Because it has been such a special five or six years,' Hunt told a small group of local reporters this week. 'And I think we know we're spoiled because of the journey that it took to get to this point, and the five decades we went without getting back to the Super Bowl.' This was the 11th time that New Orleans played host to the big game, tying Miami for the most of any city. The French Quarter had been packed all week with fans wearing Chiefs red and Eagles green, creating a kaleidoscope of Christmas colors stretching from Jackson Square to Canal Street, and bubbling all the way up to the Superdome. The home of the Saints, and the de facto replacement for Tulane Stadium, was hosting the game for the eighth time. 'I don't think any of us really could have dreamed it being like this, and having the success we've had,' Clark Hunt said. 'My dad would have loved it because in his heart, he was a fan — him and my mom were fans, first and foremost. And he would love it for our fans, because that was always a focus of his.'
Yahoo
08-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
The Big Game in the Big Easy: A History of the Super Bowl in New Orleans
There is always, locals say, something going on in New Orleans. This weekend, it's the Super Bowl. For the 11th time, the Big Easy will play host to the Big Game, adding another chapter in a long legacy of on-field drama and off-field debauchery. New Orleans hosted its first Super Bowl on Jan. 11, 1970: Super Bowl IV, featuring the Kansas City Chiefs and the Minnesota Vikings. The Super Bowl was a new invention at the time, a true crossover event between the dueling American Football League and National Football Leagues. The two leagues – which would merge into what is now the modern NFL the following season – had a few criteria for the game: it had to be played somewhere warm, and it had to seat a lot of fans. For the 1970 championship, Miami's Orange Bowl, host of the previous two years, was a strong contender, but it had just hosted back-to-back championships, and there was room for a newcomer to slide in. New Orleans mayor Victor H. Schiro won the leagues over with a delegation that included Times-Picayune editor George Healy and legendary Dixieland Jazz trumpeter Al Hirt, who proposed the city's Tulane Stadium (sometimes known as the 'Sugar Bowl') as an alternative. At the time, Tulane Stadium was one of the biggest in the country, capable of seating over 80,000 fans, and the city around it was well prepared to host huge events, with the infamous Mardi Gras already drawing tourists in from around the world. The 1970s in particular were a wild time for New Orleans, as the traditional celebration started to merge with the free-love party era, contributing to massive, raucous crowds filling Bourbon Street. More from Rolling Stone How to Watch Super Bowl 2025 Online Without Cable Patrick Mahomes Debunks Trump's Weird Lie About His College Career Kendrick Lamar's 'GNX' Drops on Vinyl Ahead of Super Bowl Performance These days, local historian Edward Brantley tells Rolling Stone, the Super Bowl hits New Orleans 'like a tornado,' filling the pockets of everyone from taxi drivers to audio/ visual techs as a horde of players, fans, press and promoters descend on the city. The past seven games have been hosted in the city's Superdome, which finished construction in 1975 and brought the heart of the Big Easy's sports culture right into the central downtown business district. Brantley says the city's remarkable density of hotels makes the city an easy sell to the NFL and associated broadcast networks. The Hyatt Regency, for instance, sits right over the Superdome, presenting the league with a funny wrinkle: they can't put up one of the teams there, because it would give them an unfair advantage of being much closer to the stadium than their opponents. Instead, the Hyatt becomes ground zero for the media frenzy: broadcast networks will set up shop on an upper floor with picture windows overlooking the dome, and print journalists will book out lower floors. No matter who's in town, though, Brantley says the Big Easy will find a way to make it about themselves. In 2019, for instance, the New Orleans Saints lost to the L.A. Rams in the NFC Championship game, in part thanks to a highly controversial missed pass interference call that went against them late in the game. Tina Howell, a local sports reporter and the editor in chief of the Saints fan blog Canal Street Chronicles, says that the city rose up and declared Super Bowl Sunday to be the 'Boycott Bowl.' Instead of showing the big game, bars and restaurants around the city put on a replay of Super Bowl XLIV, where the Saints blew out the Indianapolis Colts 31 to 17. An impromptu parade sprang up, featuring revellers dressed as blind referees and voodoo dolls with the NFL logo on them. A concert featuring local acts like Big Freedia and Choppa raised $57,000 for a local charity. Brantley remembers bars putting up 'DO NOT SERVE' printouts with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell's face on them. 'We were there to celebrate our team and what we'd accomplished that year,' Howell said. 'It wasn't a sad celebration.' It may have been, however, just a little bit petty — thanks in part to the protest, the Super Bowl itself, featuring the Rams, was one of the lowest-rated in NFL history. In other years, though, NOLA has hosted some absolute barn burners, including Brett Favre's dominant win for the Green Bay Packers in Super Bowl XXXI (he threw for 246 yards, two touchdowns, and ran in another score for good measure); the Pittsburgh Steelers' blitzkrieg 66-yard drive, led by quarterback Terry Bradshaw, which secured the win in the team's first appearance in Super Bowl IX in 1975; and 49ers legend Joe Montana's dominance of the Denver Broncos in 1990's Super Bowl XXIV. In recent years, there's been even more hijinks: the 2013 'HarbaughBowl,' between brothers John and Jim Harbaugh coaching the Baltimore Ravens and San Francisco 49ers, respectively, saw a controversial power outage early in the third quarter. Conspiracy theorists say the extended break in action — the game was stopped for 34 minutes — contributed to the Niners almost-game-winning rally from a 28-6 deficit. The Ravens won, but fans are still in the dark about what happened. Locals, however, have no doubt: Entergy, the local power utility, screwed something up. 'You know the Captain Picard facepalm meme?' Brantley says, laughing. 'If you talk about the power outage, any local will just give you that and mutter 'Entergy.'' The city's geography also contributes to the exuberant nature of the celebration. The modern Super Bowl goes down walking distance from New Orleans' famous French Quarter, and the bars and restaurants will be packed. In the wild days of the late 1980s and 1990s, Brantley says, bars along Bourbon Street would pay strippers to show off their goods on the long gallery balconies lining the road, and host ceremonial light pole-greasings to stop revelers climbing them. This year, the city has to deal with notoriously rowdy Eagles fans, who are famous not only for climbing light posts and starting borderline riots when their team wins or loses. But Brantley says his city is more than prepared for that. Many of the city's historic light poles and columns in the French Quarter are already equipped with 'Romeo Catchers,' or rings of curving spikes that deter lovers (or in this case, Birds fans) from climbing them. 'People always say they come here and they take a piece of the city with them when they leave,' Howell says. With Philly fans in town, that just might be literal: the Big Easy might have to count their Romeo catchers when big game crowds go home. Best of Rolling Stone Every Super Bowl Halftime Show, Ranked From Worst to Best The United States of Weed Gaming Levels Up
Washington Post
07-02-2025
- Sport
- Washington Post
An NFL legend killed himself and his wife. His kids hoped he'd make the Hall of Fame.
The waiting and wondering for Jim Tyrer's children, who have hoped for years that Pro Football Hall of Fame voters might be able to judge their father solely for his on-the-field accomplishments, ended Thursday night when he fell short of the necessary votes for inclusion in the Class of 2025. Tyrer, an offensive tackle who was a member of the American Football League's all-decade team of the 1960s and three AFL championship teams as well as Kansas City's Super Bowl IV championship squad over his 14-year career, had moved closer to induction in December when the Hall's Senior Committee announced he was among senior finalists for the Class of 2025.
