Did you get a load of Joe Namath in his fur coat at the Super Bowl? It reminded me of the days when he was a Super Bowl star himself. As every football fan knows, in early 1969 the underrated Jets were set to play the mighty Baltimore Colts in a matchup between the NFL and the upstart rival league, the AFL. The Packers of the older NFL had already won Super Bowls I and II. Namath, as quarterback for the Jets, “guaranteed” victory and then delivered on his promise, which did a great deal to legitimize the newer league. Only a year or so later, the NFL and the AFL would merge, and everyone would live happily ever after except for the dudes with the concussions. Given that Namath’s team was from New York, that one game would ensure that sports fans in the Big Apple would never, ever shut up about “Broadway Joe.” (The Jets haven’t won a title since, and the Jets fans consider themselves, with fairly good reason, as being one of the more put-upon fan bases in the league.)
In late 1970, Embassy Pictures released C.C. and Company, a biker movie starring none other than Joe Namath as “C.C. Ryder,” an affable moto-counterculture type who hangs out with his The character name was obviously inspired by “C.C. Rider,” the 1966 hit by Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels, a rollicking track that provides the soundtrack for the opening credits.
C.C. and Company was produced by Allan Carr, who later produce the 1978 hit Grease as well as the 1980 Village People vehicle Can’t Stop the Music. In the movie, C.C. is hanging out cheerfully shoplifting from a clueless supermarket when he and a couple of his gang mates from “The Heads” come upon a beautiful fashion journalist named Ann whose limo has stalled in the desert. Instead of letting his buddies rape Ann, he intervenes and gets them to go away, which pisses them off as well as the leader of the gang, named “Moon,” who’s played with effective menace by William Smith. C.C. and Ann begin to fall for each other as C.C. tries to extricate himself from the Heads.
The movie’s got a jocular style—but all in all, it’s pretty crappy. But this tells you everything you need to know about that era: this wasn’t some obscure release—according to Variety, C.C. and Company was the #1 movie in America for two solid weeks in October 1970!
So my only question is, when does victorious Seattle Seahawks QB Russell Wilson start filming his biker flick? Shoot, I’d settle for some kind of Fast and Furious knockoff.
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Biker Pipe: ‘Who Sez You Can’t Smoke at 60 m.p.h.?’
These are the people our parents warned us about: The ugly truth about hippies and bikers