Educational Media Reviews Online

This film is a tribute to the 1960 American men’s ice hockey team that won the first U.S. hockey gold medal in Olympic competition. In the late 1950’s, making the Olympic team was as far as a young American could hope to go in hockey. Many left (or lost) jobs to compete in the 1960 Olympics. Players in the professional leagues, NHL included, were often given subsidized housing and off-season jobs to supplement their meager salaries and enable them to continue playing the game they loved. The USA had never beaten Canada in international competition and, even on the ice, the cold war raged between the Soviets and the Americans. American TV first broadcast parts of the winter Olympic Games from Squaw Valley.

This is a well-crafted film, a skilled blending of vintage black and white and color footage with live interviews of many surviving players of the U.S. and Canadian teams, coaches, sports writers and sports historians. These images are augmented by excellent drawings by Kevin Cannon, a professional cartoonist from Minneapolis. The result is a grand overview of the world political and sports landscapes of 1956 through 1960 with a detailed look at the US Olympic Hockey Team and its progress from 1959 through the 1960 Olympics.

This is a very fine film that will appeal to hockey players and fans and to sports writers and historians. I guess it should come as no surprise that this team was “forgotten” in light of the overwhelming media hype and post-game success for many players on the 1980 “Miracle on Ice” team. Remember being told to turn off the sports news if you didn’t want to know the score before you watched the 1980 game on tape delay? Recall the NHL careers of such 1980 Olympians as Neal Broten and Bill Christian? The 1960 game went off at 8AM (11AM Eastern time) on a Sunday … some of the “Forgotten Miracle” players reported to their regular jobs on Monday. Still, a great story well told!