Movie Description
Go, Man, Go! is a 1954 American sports film directed by James Wong Howe, starring Dane Clark, Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee, Patricia Breslin, The Harlem Globetrotters and Slim Gaillard. Clark plays Abe Saperstein, the organizer of the Globetrotters. Poitier's character is Inman Jackson, the team's showboating center. Breslin plays Sylvia Saperstein, the love interest, and Abe's daughter. Gaillard plays himself.
The film tracks the Globetrotters from humble beginnings through a triumph over a major-league basketball team, as they struggle to overcome racial discrimination. Actual Harlem Globetrotter players portray the team in basketball action throughout the picture. The friendship between Saperstein and Jackson, and their wives, is an important storyline.
Screenwriter and producer Alfred Palca was accused by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1953 of being a Communist. He refused to cooperate with their investigations. No distributor was willing to release the film with his name credited, so he gave the producing credit to his brother-in-law, Anton Leader, and the screenwriting credit to his cousin, Arnold Becker, a pediatrician. He never worked in the film industry again. According to Palca, the F.B.I. saw his casting of Poitier as further evidence of his Communism.