Documentary to revive Revere’s 1964 tainted football legacy

City will honor the 1964 RHS Football Team with halftime ceremony at season opener Friday, Sept. 6, at Harry Della Russo Stadium

By Dom Nicastro

They are the greatest 1-8 Revere High School football team of all-time: the 1964 RHS Patriots. They’re also likely the most talked-about 1-8 Revere football team. Or any 1-8 football team, for that matter.

That includes conversations still happening today between former teammates. In their hearts, they believe they’re not a 1-8 team. They believe they are the unbeaten Class B champions who captured the title with an 8-0 win over rival Winthrop two days after Thanksgiving.

History says otherwise, though. For the record books, the 1964 Revere High School football team is most definitely a 1-8 team because eight of those games resulted in a forfeit. Revere had an ineligible player: star running back Paul Nuell. The Massachusetts Secondary Schools Principals Association made that decision when Revere was 7-0-1 heading into that Thanksgiving showdown with Winthrop.

Thanks to the efforts of a young filmmaker – Revere football alum, 2016 graduate and current assistant coach Brandon Brito – those conversations around the 1964 team will be immortalized in a documentary airing in November. And the City of Revere will celebrate the 60^th anniversary of that historic season by honoring some of those players from 1964 in a halftime ceremony at Revere’s season opener against Whittier Tech on Friday, Sept. 6, at Harry Della Russo Stadium. The game starts at 6 p.m.

Brito’s documentary is expected to air Nov. 23. The city is planning a premiere party.

This all began when Brito was making a short documentary on Revere football for a college class; 1964 came up, of course. He was enlightened, intrigued and fascinated.

“I kind of stumbled upon an article about four or five years ago, remembering Revere’s golden age of sports,” said Brito, 27, a Boston College graduate and Master’s student who teaches health at Garfield Elementary School. “And there was a comment under that article that said, ‘Why no mention of the 1964 football team that went undefeated? We had to forfeit all our games, but we still played on Thanksgiving, and we won, and we showed people that we were still unbeaten and that we were still the best.’ I thought that was an amazing story.”

Amazing enough to start work on his documentary – tentatively titled “Beach City Blues.” Brito traveled as far as Las Vegas and Fort Lauderdale, Fla., for interviews.

That Vegas interview? Perhaps the documentary’s central figure: ineligible player Paul Nuell, who missed the Thanksgiving Day game. Why ineligible? Was it the right decision? Was there justification to strip a Class B championship from the hands of dozens of Patriots players?

You’ll have to catch the documentary for that one. That’s Brito’s intention: re-spark dialogue and capture a pivotal moment in Revere’s decorated athletic history through those who lived it six decades later.

“It just kind of blindsided everybody,” Brito said of the decision to forfeit the Patriots’ seven wins and one tie before that Winthrop game. Pressed by The Advocate to divulge Nuell’s take all these years later in the documentary, Brito said, “I’m not going to say it yet, but it’s pretty interesting what he has to say about it.”

The late Silvio Cella coached the 1964 team. A former Marine and standout athlete at Revere and Boston University, he coached the team for 28 years and is in the Massachusetts High School Coaches Hall of Fame and the National Football Federation Hall of Fame. He coached the team like it was the Marines, according to one of the interviews in the documentary’s trailer.

Revere’s current coach – Lou Cicatelli – said it’s going to be great seeing members of the 1964 team on the field during his team’s season opener this Friday, honoring one of the program’s all-time great clubs. “That was something else,” Cicatelli said of the 1964 season. “They had a great season with a lot of turmoil. Brandon has done a great job with all that, and he does a lot for the football players. He’s a great kid to have around.”

Brito’s documentary includes interviews with Coach Cella’s children – Mike and Gina – and 1964 players, including Alex Moschella, Victor Mancini, Nuell, Jim DelGaizo, John DelGaizo and Billy Cintolo. Brito thanked countless Revere people with city and historical ties for helping gather footage, photos and color on the team.

His 2:30 trailer, on Brito’s YouTube channel, is riveting and is at 1,800 views as of early September. It dropped seven months ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQgoGRaTOYM

Here are some soundbites from the trailer:

• “We had a certain edge about us. You know, football was everything to us. We weren’t scared. … We were the Beach Boys. When you played against another town, they considered us punks.”
• “Our kids stayed together like brothers. They wanted to play together and they wanted to fight together.”
• “We spent the whole summer working out in 1964 and we just hit the ground running with a team that didn’t have a lot of talent, but really understood what they were doing and what they wanted to do.”
• “We were undefeated, but right smack in the middle of the week, the headmasters came down with their ruling that we were now 0-8. There was quite a shock when it happened.”

Brito, the filmmaker, was a captain and three-year starter for Revere football. Filmmaking has always been a passion, and why not start his career with another passion: Revere and football? “This is the first big full-length movie that I’ve ever made,” Brito said. “And this is going to set the tone for a long career in filmmaking going forward. I think there’s no better way to start, really.”