Back in June 2014, I penned a blog article revealing GUD's discovery that the Bears had worn red in their earliest years as the Decatur Staleys (1920), the Chicago Staleys (1921), and as the Chicago Bears (1922).
After 1922, the Bears primarily became an 'orange' team that also dabbled with navy blue. This lasted throughout the 'Red Grange' years up to and including 1932. But then, in 1933, something happened that has not been documented to our knowledge...until now.
The 1933 Bears swapped out navy for black and were a black and orange team for over a decade until switching back to navy for the 1947 season.
Now, you may ask, how can we uncover this without color photography? Well, to answer that question, we're going to the end of the story in an attempt to work backwards.
The GUD research staff, led by our very own Larry Schmitt, did a considerable amount of digging through online newspaper archives once we got a whiff of the possibility. Let's start by setting the high-end boundary.
This August 14 article from the 1948 training camp, informs the public of a scrimmage between the Bears' blue team and orange team. We are, therefore, certain that by 1948, the Bears had returned to navy blue.
We also took a deep, hard look at a rare color photo from 1948 that includes George Conner (81), Papa Bear Halas, Sid Luckman (42), and Johnny Lujack (32). If you zoom in very closely at Sid's left shoulder and Lujack's right shoulder, you can see that Sid is wearing a navy jersey while Lujack is clearly wearing black, at least for this magazine photo op, presumably during training camp.
Knowing now that we were truly dealing with the Bears having some unknown period of time using black instead of navy, the true digging began. What follows next is a summary of mentions, largely from articles within the Chicago Tribune, in which Bears' team colors are mentioned.
As you can see, there is a mention just prior to the 1947 Thanksgiving Day game in Detroit that mentions the Bears in the blue and orange. This confirms that navy was in play for 1947 as well as the aforementioned 1948 season. Continuing to scan the findings we see that 1946 mentions the 'black and orange jerseys' for the Bears as well as Bear George McAfee (black jersey) in a caption from the Bears Preseason game in Boston against the Yanks (Decatur Review).
Other articles going back in time continue to refer to the Bears in black and orange.
This lineup sheet from a September 17, 1944, game against the Giants continues to indicate the Bears donning black and orange. It begs the question...how far back did the Bears wear black instead of navy?
Continuing to move back in time we have a 1941 photo of Sid Luckman, clearly still in black. Luckman's jersey stripes and numbers appear yellow, but that is likely due to sunshine and glare on a relatively sunny Chicago day at Wrigley Field.
We were fortunate to come across an auction for an authentic Bears uniform belonging to 1938 rookie Dick Schweidler. While faded, it is still clear that the numbers, sleeve stripes, collar and pants were all black originally, not navy blue.
In this next photo we have a side by side comparison of Schweidler's black and orange from 1938 set next to the stripes of an authentic 1964 Mike Ditka jersey.
The Schweidler jersey confirms black for the Bears back to 1938, but did it go further back than that?
Yes, it did.
We next have a 'blurb' from the Chicago Tribune revealing the Bears' wardrobe prior to their appearance in the 1935 College All-Star game.
The repercussions of this 'blurb' are enormous. Why? One of the most famous images of the 1930s Bears is an artistic rendition of a 1936 Bronko Nagurski by Merv Corning. It is this uniform that the Chicago Bears' current throwback uniforms are based on...and they are wrong! The most incredulous part of this error isn't even mistaking the black for navy blue, but we'll get back to that later.
Did black continue to go further back even prior to the 1935 season verified by the College All-star Game article? Indications are that it did. Another auction, this time for a 1933-34 Link Lyman jersey and pants set again indicates black stripes and numbers on this particular jersey. This style of orange jersey was worn throughout much of the 1930s, beginning in 1933, with a variety of different number fonts, all of which featured black numbers outlined in varying thicknesses of white trim. This grants us definitive proof that the Bears' team colors were, in fact, orange and black from 1933-46 before reverting to navy in 1947.
The reporters' first hand observations alone could be taken as misidentifications from the press box, 'understandable' errors mistaking navy for black at distance. However, these jersey photos and articles together confirm beyond a shadow of a doubt the existence of a definite 'Black and Orange' era of Bears football.
Before closing, I do want to go back and force Bears fans to endure one last bit of trauma, a sort of 'Come to Halas' moment. Remember the Nagurski art? It would be simple to swap out navy and replace it with the era-appropriate black. But, there's one more problem as noted earlier. Those pants were NOT black.
Feast your eyes on the best photo GUD possesses from the Bears 1936 season, a game played on September 20, 1936, in Green Bay. First, observe the Bears in the middle of the photo. Their pants are lighter than their black jersey numbers, clearly implying that the pants are not black (instead of the assumed navy). Next, notice the helmet-less Bear on the far right on the photo. Which of his sleeve stripes do his well-lit by sunshine (the other two Bears are in the shade) pants most resemble? That's right, Bears fans. Those pants are orange.
What this means, uniform afficionados, is that the current Bears throwback uniforms, based on the Merv Corning artwork, which was in turn based on an assumed navy/orange color scheme, is not only wrong but VERY WRONG. Those throwbacks should not only replace navy with black, but the pants should be orange instead of navy, as well! Something like this...
...which would in turn provide this...!
This was one of those rabbit-holes we, at GUD, often find ourselves going down. As frustrating as it is, the part that bothers me the most is that all of the proof is out there, yet even a team as steeped in history as the Bears can get it wrong.
After all, isn't there a saying regarding what happens when you assume?
- Bill Schaefer
