Golden Boy

Truly golden. Not Paul Hornung. He's a bit tarnished. His life is golden. Let's proceed as if this autobiography is not a piece of fiction. He truly had the luck of the Irish from the time he made it to Notre Dame, won the Heisman Trophy in a year that the Irish won only two games to landing on the Packers & being a pet of Vince Lombardi. No doubt about it, he was a great player, Hall of Fame caliber & Lombardi saw that. He was also a notrious bad boy & Vince made allowances for him. Even his most egregious error in judgement, gambling on games got him no more than a slap on the wrist. The year he sat out might have eroded his football skills but not his skill as a "player". He continued to make more money outside of football with his good looks & product endorsement, Marlboro cigarettes probably being the most famous. Every body wanted to buy him dinner or drinks or women & he let them. It's all a good story & an entertaining book. That's probably what he wanted so many years after the fact & that what it is.

AFTER READING THIS BOOK, I SEE THAT MR HORNUNG IS NOT PERFECT. THE TELLING OF HIS GAMBLING, BOOZING AND WOMANING DOES ALOT TO SPOIL HIS IMAGE AS SOMEONE YOU WOULD WANT TO IDOLIZE. AS A BOY, PAUL WAS MY HERO. HE WAS THE COMPLETE PLAYER, AND PLAYED FOR THE BEST TEAM OF THE 1960'S. I NOW SEE THAT HE IS VERY FLAWED. I DID ENJOY THIS BOOK, I FOUND HIS HONESTY VERY REFRESHING. PAUL ISN'T A BAD GUY, PERHAPS ARROGANT AND SPOILED. BUT I DO RECOMMEND THIS BOOK. I FOUND IT TO BE VERY INTERESTING AND ENTERTAINING. FOR ALL PACKER FANS WHO LIKE TO READ ABOUT THE LOMBARDI ERA.

I knew Paul a bit at Notre Dame in the 1950s, and this account of his life there and later is frank, true-to-life, and thoroughly readable. In a modest, conversational tone, he admits his errors, enjoys recalling the good times, and generally comes across as a charming rogue.

On the field and off Paul Hornung was a champion, and his memoir GOLDEN BOY details what it felt like to be the star player on a mediocre team, and then the switch, to play well on the greatest team in America, and the magic transformation, he attests, was "like a light bulb going on in your head." Booze, gambling, and lots of women did him in, but his off-season (and in season!) night clubbing is fascinating forty years on, hearing about the way he interrupted a card game between John Wayne and Ward Bond, yet not recalling Bond's name, he mumbles, "You always play the SOB, right?" Wayne says, "Yeah, Paul, he's an SOB, but he's my SOB." Hornung's not afraid to tell stories on himself. I like the way the one man called him, "Meat," and when Paul asks why, the player says, "because you're the best-looking piece of meat I've ever seen." A lot of men feel that way about Paul Hornung, there's isn't a sexual thing going on, or not much of one. The trumpeter Al Hirt gives him a $25,000 ring right off his finger, saying, "This is from me to you, I love you." It's romantic, but not sexual. Frank Sinatra called him "Pablo." Those were the glory days. But Paul made a bad mistake, he turned down Sinatra when Frank offered to stand him a drink, and as Jilly Rizzo said, "That was a no-no." In another scary sequence, paul gets rolled, his drink spiked with scopolamine, and his Rolex and money taken from him. He wakes up in Bellevue, and the police tell him, he was lucky he had something that the ambushers wanted. "If they hadn't have gotten something," said one of the officers, "they'd have killed your ass right there." He was great in his part in DEVIL's BRIGADE, though he'll never win an Oscar, and maybe he should have made more of a run at movie stardom. He's not a racist, I don't think, but at the last minute a zippy epilogue addresses this possibility in the wake of the fuss last March when he talked about blacks at Notre Dame. You be the judge. In the meantime, you've bought yourself a seat right at the forty yard line and you're in for a super bowl's worth of fun.

Paul Hornung was a great player on legendary Green Bay Packer teams in the 60's--tho his career was cut short by his gambling suspension (1963) and his injuries, his record 176 points (in a 14 game season or was it 12?) scored by passing, running and kicking still stands today. His playboy reputation and his candid no holds barred approach to life during the the burgeoning time of NFL TV marketing exposure (early sixties) captured the imagination of many football fans at the time. In the book is a photo of his ad sponsoring Marlboro cigarettes- smoking in the locker room and on the sidelines by coaches was commonplace back then. His exploits were probably of the same proportion as the late great Johnny Blood who also played for the Packers back in the ol days....Yet in this new media environment he served as a mythic catalyst to intense media hero worship that later resulted in Joe Namath and then all the rest...Hornung tells his tale in a personal manner, straight talk...really doesn't apologize for much (except for his recent remarks about Notre Dame football that were perceived as racist and got him fired from radio broadcasts of the game) and goes on to list numerous exploits, memories and good times with the high and mighty of Las Vegas showbiz...He talks about football past and present with insight and intelligence. Hornung does not dip into great exploitive detail about his off the field conquests which is refreshing. He clearly has led the charmed life and admits to most of his mistakes. I think his ongoing defense of gambling is a bit over the top but his assertion that it's not much different than wagering in the stock market also rings true. It was clear from the start his life was going to be much bigger than football and his off the field success has amply demonstrated this. He regrets not telling Vince Lombardi he loved him...thats too bad but Vince must have know that.. he had to. So as a football yesterday memory trip (especially to Packer fans) back to the real glory days of football this a very fine example. And there is no doubt this guy could score.