The Story Behind the Special Olympics is Getting the Big Screen Treatment

By Farah Cheded

Ken Kwapis’ ‘Special’ will shine a light on the underdog who helped create the Games.

The Special Olympics have been empowering and championing intellectually disabled athletes for nearly half a century, thanks to PE instructor Anne Burke, who helped co-create the Games in the ‘60s. Now, as Deadline is reporting, the inspirational story behind Burke’s part in the establishment of the Special Olympic Games (not to be confused with the Paralympic Games) will take center stage in Special, a feature film from ShivHans Pictures (Captain Fantastic, Trumbo) and In Cahoots (Happyish). In Cahoots is co-owned by director Ken Kwapis, who is also attached to helm the project. Matthew Scott Weiner, a first-time screenwriter, is set to pen the script for the as-yet-uncast movie.

The film will tell the story of how Burke’s early efforts to make sport accessible to intellectually disabled people in Chicago led to the creation of a worldwide competition that would go on to train and champion millions of athletes who might otherwise have been overlooked.

In 1965, at the young age of 21, college dropout Burke was teaching PE in the Chicago area when she attended a seminar given by Dr William Freeberg, a PE professor who believed sport was integral to improving the lives and prospects of intellectually disabled people. Inspired by Dr Freeberg’s teachings, Burke began to offer PE classes for intellectually disabled people at Chicago’s West Pullman Park in her spare time.

In her own words, the ’60s were “a time when the [intellectually disabled] were either in a state institution or in the closet”. Prior to her program, “parents wouldn’t bring them to the parks, because [non-disabled] kids would make fun of them”. However, Burke’s tactic of involving non-disabled children as “junior counselors” in her classes began to change that. Her classes not only educated her students in the athletic sense; they also helped to reduce bullying by integrating disabled and non-disabled children. After receiving a grant for $10,000 from the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation (which was run by his sister, Eunice Kennedy Shriver) in 1965, Burke expanded the program across nine more Chicago parks.

Two years after she began her classes, Burke’s set her sights even higher. Bolstered by the phenomenal success of her program, both in terms of her students’ education and the social integration it encouraged, Burke wanted to open the country’s eyes to the remarkable abilities of her students, many of whom were still treated with disdain by broader society at the time. In 1967, she set about organizing an Olympics-style competition for her students. Early the next year, she traveled to Washington, DC and won the support of Eunice Shriver, bagging the competition a $25,000 grant.

But Shriver’s co-signing, and her foundation’s sizeable check did not necessarily convince everyone. Old prejudices were still at work. As Burke told the Orange County Register in a 2015 interview, her efforts met resistance from several corners. Chicago city officials ignored requests to help Burke supply competitors with everyday necessities like food, while the then-head of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Chicagoan Avery Brundage, threatened legal action if Burke affiliated her competition with the Olympics. (Later that year, Nazi-sympathiser Brundage also ordered the medal-stripping of Tommie Smith and John Carlos, the US athletes who performed the famous Black Power salute at the Mexico City Olympics.)

Having friends in high places is always useful, and for Burke, the backing of then-Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley was invaluable. Shriver was busy taking part in her brother Robert’s presidential campaign, so it was down to Daley to pull some strings. Burke’s obstacles miraculously disappeared. That summer, a thousand athletes from the US and Canada competed in over 200 events – including swimming, running and jumping – in the world’s first ever Special Olympics.

The article The Story Behind the Special Olympics is Getting the Big Screen Treatment appeared first on Film School Rejects.