Trailer for "The Jackie Robinson Story."

The feature film was originally conceived by a screenwriter named Lawrence Taylor but Dodgers co-owner Branch Rickey and Rickey assistant Arthur Mann rewrote Taylor's script so that a white man, Rickey, had a leading role in the movie.

Rickey didn't play a leading role in the original script by Taylor and refused to cooperate - which would've killed the project and cost Robinson a lot of money - unless he was granted full control over the film's content.

Rickey and Mann ended up completely rewriting the story.

Along w/ inventing Rickey's leading role in the movie, Rickey & Mann repurposed the film as Cold War propaganda designed to persuade an international audience that white Americans really weren't racist after all - which a Black newspaper columnist correctly predicted in advance!

The name of that Black newspaper columnist was Cyril Briggs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyril_Briggs

Briggs's column appeared in the California Eagle, which
@_newspapers just added, so if you ever wanted to know what actually happened in Los Angeles for most of the 20th century, now you can!

Arthur Mann, Branch Rickey's personal assistant and co-writer on, "The Jackie Robinson Story," also wrote and produced the annual blackface minstrel show that baseball writers ( @officialBBWAA) put on for MLB owners for decades.

Mann later wrote Rickey's authorized hagiography.

Advertisements for the feature film, "The Jackie Robinson Story," touted that it was "Directed by ALFRED E. GREEN who gave you 'The Jolson Story.'"

"The Jolson Story," was about the most infamous blackface minstrel show singer of all-time: Al Jolson.