Despite a limited release, Leon Gast's documentary feature When We Were Kings, which chronicles the 1974 Muhammad Ali-George Foreman "Rumble in the Jungle," has won critical and audience acclaim. Namely, the feature has earned approximately 1.5 million dollars as well as an Oscar for the best documentary feature of 1996. Undoubtedly, part of its success is due to America's affection and respect for George Foreman. However, it is even more clear that the major reason for the documentary's success is the mettle of the man who stands at its center, Muhammad Ali.
In his 1991 biography of Muhammad Ali, titled Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times, Thomas Hauser calls Ali "the most recognizable person on earth" (Hauser 13). Hauser's description of Ali and his relationship with America and the rest of the world is illustrative of the way many people feel about Ali:
For half a century, he has walked among us, his face as familiar as that of a close friend. Somewhere in time, he captured a blend of mayhem and magic that carried him deep into the collective psyche of us all.
Throughout his career as a boxer, America has alternately loved and hated Muhammad Ali, but there are few today who would disagree that he has been one of the greatest personalities of the twentieth century. The Arts & Entertainment Network certainly would not. It has just declared its own documentary of Ali's life to be one of the ten best Biographies of the century. And the whole world cheered when Ali lit the Olympic Torch at the 1996 Olympics despite the debilitating effect on his motor control he has suffered due to neural damage caused by the sport that made him famous.
Normal Mailer has written numerous books and essays on the sport of boxing and Muhammad Ali in particular. There is a moment in the Gast documentary, at the end of the fourth round of the "Rumble in the Jungle," that Mailer identifies as the moment that defines the character of a ma...