Sports International With Bud Palmer’s 1963 special, “Stirling Moss—Portrait of a Hero,” tells the story of British Formula One racing star Stirling Moss as Bud Palmer interviews Moss. The segment is complemented with additional interviews of contemporaries of Moss. The film opens with footage of driving down streets in London, then cuts to the British Racing Drivers’ Club (00:52). Interviews with friends and competitors give their thoughts on Moss. An unidentified man talks about Moss picking the wrong cars (01:04), as Moss will only drive British cars, likely costing him a shot at winning a World Championship. Bud Palmer interviews Moss as Moss drives a convertible car (02:10) along a road in Britain. This is followed by more interviews with a number of men, including auto designer John Cooper (03:10). Palmer continues the in-car interview with Moss, with an iconic red London Bus driving behind their car (04:35); Moss talks about how difficult it was to initially get a car from a British automobile manufacturer, then he discusses his driving style when racing. The duo pulls up curbside, before the film cuts to more interviews with men (08:35), then returns to the Palmer-Moss interview as they sit in the parked car on the side of a street. At lunch, Moss tells Palmer about his rival Juan Manuel Fangio, whom Moss imitated as much as he could, modeling a lot of his racing off of Fangio. A picture shows Moss and Fangio together (10:27). An aerial shot of a Grand Prix race is followed by footage on the ground of the race. There is footage of Fangio winning races—Fangio won the World Championship five times. A crowd celebrates Fangio after a win (12:00). In the restaurant (13:40), the interview continues. Moss talks about how he was never better than Fangio and how Moss was content not winning a World Championship because, he reasons, he never would have been better than Fangio. Still photos and footage show Moss at race tracks and around race cars (15:49), including dealing with mechanical failures. Moss discusses his career-ending crash in 1962 at Goodwood where he lost control of his car while passing Graham Hill. Hill would go on to be the first Englishman to win the Grand Prix—at Monza in 1962 (23:02)—while driving an English car. Graham Hill discusses making Moss’ vision a reality. The film concludes with a shot of Buckingham Palace (24:25) and a monologue from Palmer with London’s city skyline in background.
Sir Stirling Moss (born 17 September 1929) is a British former Formula One racing driver. An inductee into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame, he won 212 of the 529 races he entered across several categories of competition and has been described as “the greatest driver never to win the World Championship.” In a seven-year span between 1955 and 1961 Moss finished as championship runner-up four times and third the other three.
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