O.J. Simpson Dead from Cancer at 76
By Valerie Milano
Los Angeles, CA (The Hollywood Times) 4/11/24 – Seldom has someone who flew so high fallen so far from grace.
You’ll be getting plenty of O.J. media coverage in the next few days. However, let’s not forget to memorialize the names of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman when re-visiting the house of horrors that is the O.J. legacy.
The Good:
O.J. was a sports hero and cultural touchstone. A success story with humble beginnings paired with triumph over adversity. He was born and raised in San Francisco. His mother Eunice worked as a hospital administrator and his father worked for the Federal Reserve and was a well-known drag queen in the S.F. area – (he would later die of AIDS in 1986). Young O.J. was afflicted with Rickets and wore leg braces until the age of five. He grew up in The Projects, joined a youth gang and was incarcerated for a brief period.
He met his first wife Marguerite in high school. She has described the teenage O.J. as “really an awful person” at that time. However, after a third arrest he met baseball superstar Willie Mays who inspired him to course correct his life and stay out of trouble.
Thus began an incredible sports career that saw him win the Heisman Trophy as a running back with USC in 1968. He was drafted first overall by the Buffalo Bills of the AFL (American Football League) in the 1969 AFL-NFL common draft. His first three years were difficult and uneventful until the Bills hired Lou Saban as head coach. Saban wisely designed the entire offense around O.J. Simpson; whereas before, Simpson was asked to block, and pass receive at the expense of his running game. Simpson went on to have a spectacular career in the NFL. At the time of his retirement, he was second on the all-time list for rushing with 11,236 yards. He was NFL Player of the Year in 1973. He won the rushing title four times. He was the only player to ever rush for over 2,000 yards in a 14-game season. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1985 in his first year of eligibility.
(Buffalo News file photo)
Nicknamed “The Juice”, he parlayed his brand into a successful career as a character actor, sports commentator, and commercial pitchman. He had serious aspirations as an actor, pointedly turning down blaxploitation roles for third or fourth billed roles in other more substantial films. Reliable authority states that James Cameron considered him for the role of The Terminator before that part ultimately went to Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The Bad:
O.J. divorced his first wife Marguerite in 1979. In 1985 Simpson would marry Nicole Brown, whom he met when she was working as a waitress at a Beverly Hills nightspot called The Daisy. They had two children. It was during this time that stories of domestic abuse began to surface, resulting in Simpson’s arrest and plea of no contest to spousal abuse in 1989. Brown would file for divorce in 1992.
The Evil:
It’s hard to overstate the symbolism and media saturation that accompanied the O.J. Simpson’s trial for the murder of his ex-wife Nicole and her friend Ronald Goldman. On the night of June 12, 1994, Nicole and Goldman were found stabbed to death in the blood drenched courtyard of Nicole Simpson’s condo in Brentwood. Nicole was nearly decapitated. All evidence (both physical and circumstantial) pointed to Simpson. He was booked and released. He then attempted to flee with his friend Al Cowlings at the wheel of the famous “White Bronco”. The chase interrupted the 1994 NBA finals and riveted the nation. Simpson reportedly held a gun to his own head and threatened suicide if he was not returned to his Brentwood estate. He was taken into custody there, and thus began “The Trial of The Century.”
The trial was broadcast live and was awash with melodrama. Marsha Clark, Johnny Cochran, Kato Kaelin became household names overnight. T.V. shows dedicated to analyzing the day’s events sprang up in the evenings like pop up vendors at your local shopping mall. Legal punditry became a thriving cottage industry. Moreover, the trial shined a spotlight on America’s judicial system as it related to race and law enforcement. O.J. was a black man, who was also a wealthy man. Was he getting rich man’s justice or was he a symbol of America’s lurid past of racial injustice and police brutality. One of the investigating officers was found to have used racial epithets regularly. All this at a time when aftershocks from the Rodney King beating and the ensuing riots still reverberated through the culture.
Simpson was found innocent by a predominantly Black jury. Some saw it as a travesty, others saw it as an even up. All I know is, the day after the verdict, the culture shifted on its axis.
Simpson won his freedom but lost his legacy. He was no longer a beloved figure. All the influence and opportunities he achieved in life evaporated. He would lose a judgement in civil court that found him responsible for the deaths of Nicole and Ron Goldman. A 50-million-dollar judgement. He was at worst hated, at best feared and ridiculed. He still got women, but not love. At the end of the day, he loved Nicole and had to live every day knowing her fate. His self-penned book “If I Did It: Confessions of a Killer” straddles that dark nether region between parody and atrocity. Ironic, that the royalties for this act of debasement would eventually be awarded to the Goldman family. His life became a quagmire of lawsuits, judgements, and arrests.
He finally went to prison but not for murder. In 2007, he was charged with kidnapping and robbery at gunpoint. What was he stealing? The sports memorabilia he himself once owned. He would serve 9 years in state prison. He returned to society a broken and irrelevant man. Not yet dead but getting there.
No idea what they’ll write on his tombstone. However, most appropriate would be this line from a Bob Dylan song:
“…I never knew what I had, till I threw it all away.”
