Celebrities that vaulted: Tarzan Glenn Morris

Glenn Edgar Morris (June 18, 1912 – January 31, 1974) was a U.S. track and field athlete. He won a gold medal in the Olympic decathlon in 1936, setting new world and Olympic records. So technically he was a vaulter, as well as a decathlete. Morris was born on his family’s horse ranch near Simla, Colorado, the second of seven children. A natural athlete whose record in the 220 hurdles stood for forty years at his high school, Morris entered Colorado Agricultural College (now Colorado State University) in 1930. He became a star athlete for the school, excelling in several sports and being named All American in track and field. Working as an assistant coach and automobile salesman after graduation in 1934 (with degrees in Economics and Sociology), Morris began training as a decathlon athlete in hopes of competing in the 1936 Olympics. In the U.S. Olympic track and field trials for 1936, Morris scored a new world record of 7,880 points, earning him Newsweek’s sobriquet “the nation’s new Iron Man.” Morris broke his own world record, and the Olympic record, in the Berlin games, with a decathlon score of 7,900 points.^[4] It was said that Adolf Hitler never left his seat while Morris was competing, and that the Germans thereafter offered Morris $50,000 to stay in Germany and appear in sports films, an offer Morris refused.  Morris, who appeared in two movies during a brief Hollywood career, starred in “Tarzan’s Revenge” with Olympic swimmer Eleanor Holm. There was little on-screen chemistry, the plot was bad and the movie was a disappointment at the box office. Morris died of congestive heart failure “and other complications” at the veterans hospital in Palo Alto, California, in 1974 and was buried in Skylawn Memorial Park in San Mateo, California.  more