Category: boxing

The Sunday Paper

In the past two weeks, I’ve come to understand why Kim usually waits until Fridays to post her 1947p stories. Ever since this leap year, I’ve found myself with the Sunday paper, which, while jam-packed with Bullock’s ads, real estate ventures, and fashion spreads (this week, an entire section devoted to shoes!), is rather short on crime and mayhem. After all, who wants to dwell on such things on the Christian day of rest?

And after the stories of the past two days, perhaps there’s some sense in that. Unable to top the likes of baby farms and superman love cults, I suppose it’s fair to say that I’m feeling a little blocked.

figlaxative

California fig laxative:  it "can’t harm children."  If that’s not a ringing endorsement, I don’t know what is.

lewtendler

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And take a look at this plug for Jewish boxing legend Lew Tendler, as he prepares for his upcoming bout. Does the "S" stand for Southpaw or sexy?

Don’t Die Over Spilt Milk

fightnews
From Eagle Rock to Valley Falls, NY, men around the United States were taking the news of Jack Dempsey’s defeat very much to heart.
 
In Detroit, James Dempsey, 54, keeled over dead while arguing over the defeat of his namesake with a co-worker, while a 33-year-old man from Bridgeport, CT became overexcited while listening to the fight on the radio, and also died of a heart attack.
 
In particular, the infamous Long Count took a steep toll of frail listeners.  Benjamin Moore of Monterey Park and James Chilson of Eagle Rock both gasped, clutched their chests, and fell over during the 9-count.  Neither lived to discover the final outcome of the fight.

The Long Count to Death

LONG COUNT HEADLINE

September 17, 1927
Bell

young boxer 1920s

When two amateur fighters faced each other in the boxing ring at the Cudahy Athletic Club in Bell, each expected to emerge victorious…they could never have imagined that one of them would die.

The young pugilists had been promised two dollars apiece by fight promoter and referee, A. De Weese. Harold Williams, seventeen, of 580 Wilcox Avenue, Bell, was upright for barely two minutes before he was knocked to the canvas three consecutive times by James Campbell, nineteen, of 4549 East Sixth Street, Los Angeles. Harold died of a brain hemorrhage at the scene.

At the coroner’s inquest Harold’s brother Loren who had witnessed the fight, stated that Harold was given a “long count” (longer than ten seconds) by referee De Weese and so was allowed to continue fighting when he should have been counted out. De Weese and Campbell were arrested for manslaughter and each held on $10,000 (119,712.07 USD 2007 dollars) bail. Charges against them would be dismissed when Municipal Judge Baird ruled that there had been no violation of the California Penal Code.

Harold’s may be one of the saddest long counts, but the most famous long count in boxing history is still five days in the future.

Dempsey vs TunneyThe much anticipated rematch between defending heavyweight champion Gene Tunney, the “Fighting Marine”, and former champion Jack Dempsey, the “Manassa Mauler”, will be held at Solider Field in Chicago on September 26, 1927. Tunney will dominate for the first six rounds, but during the seventh round he will find himself in a corner being pummeled by a savage combination of punches that will drive him to the floor.

Referee Dave Barry ordered Dempsey to return to a neutral corner, but the former champ ignored him for approximately nine seconds. Those few seconds would prove crucial. According to the rules the referee was not allowed to begin the count until Dempsey had returned to a neutral corner. It is very likely that Dempsey’s delay cost him the championship. Tunney had thirteen to sixteen seconds to recover during the long count.

Tunney dropped Dempsey briefly during the eighth round – he retained his title and retired undefeated.

Dempsey retired after his bout with Tunney and opened a restaurant in New York City.

A Final Fight

March 26, 1927mystery
Hollywood 

It’s a crowded 3am at the Crescent Club in the heart of Hollywood…just another old bungalow reconstructed into a, uh, tea room. A variety of Volstead violations are in full swing when a fight started, the lights went out, there were sounds of a struggle and furniture cracking, and by the time police arrived to a nearly empty room, pugilist and actor Eddie Diggins, 24, lay dying, stabbed through the heart. Film comedian Lloyd Hamilton cared for the doomed Diggins, while Charles Meehan, noted local bootlegger, was unconscious on the floor with a split to the skull. Diggins died in Hamilton’s arms.

crescentbar 

Those filmfolk known for frequenting barrooms were questioned (there being no small number there) but only Hamilton, having remained at the scene, could give a description of Meehan being hit by a chair before the lights were extinguished. While police found ten gallons of wine and five quarts of vermouth were uncovered, the murdering knife used on Diggins was unfound. Meehan, in the prison ward of General Hospital, could shed no light on anything.

Come March 27, Deputy Assitant District Attorney Dennison advanced a new theory: that Diggins had fallen on a crystal chandelier smashed in the melee. Sisters Rosie and Josie St. George, who had been in evidence that night, were found and questioned; Rosie had been working hat check. She stated that Diggins first became embroiled with Jack Wagner, and that Meehan then fought with stunt man Billie Jones, and that thereafter the great fight ensued, wherein Mrs. Diggins and Mrs. Irene Dalton Meehan escaped with the help of Diggins’ buddy John Sinclair.

mrsdiggOn March 28, a dozen witnesses gathered to present inquest testimony. The memories of all and sundry were hazy at best, agreeing that there was bar, chandelier, bottle and window glass involved, table legs used as clubs, and chairs swung with abandon. Members of a Coroner’s jury reached the decision that Diggins had met his death from “a sharp instrument in the hand of a person or persons unknown to us, with homicidal intent,” while an eighth juror agreed with Dennison’s theory, concluding that “the wound was caused by a piece of glass, accidental.” From the morgue he was taken to O’Donnell Sunset Mortuary, and from there to the grave, where he remains silent to this day.

Signs of the Times

November 5, 1907boozesign
Los Angeles

Just as an innocent toke of reefer leads to a lifetime of laudanum addiction, everybody knows that electric signs lead to…neon!

Neon wouldn’t be introduced to the United States until 1923 (specifically, at the Earl C. Anthony Packard dealership, 10th & Hope Street).  That first reefer toke, though…that was the electric sign…

Property owners of 1907 argue that electric signs, particularly those of the swinging variety which jut from the façades of buildings, make the streets look tawdry.  Moreover, they nullify the illumination systems on principal business streets, and will become eyesores and nuisances.

The Mayor, however, is outspoken in favor of electric signs.  They illuminate business thoroughfares, and are an ornament to the city.  A man of vision, our Mayor Harper.

But what to do, then, with the Jim “de champ” Jeffries’ new saloon sign on South Spring?  He has had one built and installed, swung over the sidewalk, “bearing in letters as big as one of his mitts the magic pugilistic name.”

While this type of signage violates numerous and sundry City ordinances, the Board of Public Works has ignored similar signs in the downtown area that advertise cafés and theaters, who are crying foul in that municipal authorities have allowed such signs to hang for the last year.  Because of Jeffries’ transgression, he and all other sign owners received letters from the City Attorney demanding the removal of any and all projecting signage, the worry being that should these signs become commonplace, “the sidewalks would be converted into tunnels darkened and obstructed by a covering of advertising signs.”

Moreover, a proposed ordinance shall prohibit signage advertising liquor.  Can this be?

Mayor Harper stands firm.  What will become of our city?

electricyouthHere’s a vision of the future:  electric signage along Broadway, ca. 1920, as pictured in, uh, this book.

Of Boxing and Booze

August 14, 1907julepnomore
Los Angeles

Colonel and Cracker alike are swarming our borders!

Dateline—The Peach State—Sherman’s march to the coast was less an indignity than that done by the last state election:  all liquor establishments are to be outlawed on January 1.  Now the march is of capital out of Georgia—an estimated $3,000,000 in taxes and licenses in 08.  As the steady, self-righteous hand of the WCTU has not as yet clamped itself upon the great metropolis of Los Angeles, wholesalers and barmen alike are arriving en masse.  

Those in the LA liquor trade welcome our Reb brethren, at least so that they may assure their bit by securing locations and concessions for the newcomers.  The local liquor lobby has hit up City Hall for an extension of the Liquor Zone, and has petitioned to increase the number of saloons in LA to 250.

Despite a collective Angeleno fondness for drink, it is the civic duty of 1947project to provide a temperance lesson:

Some years ago, Harry Stuart was a pugilist of renown, his nose broken repeatedly in the ply of his noble trade.  Then, as a barkeep on West Third, he was LA’s authority on the pugilistic arts, and oft served as referee for Tom McCarey’s Fight Club, which held forth in the old Hazard’s Pavilion (in 1907 the site of the great Auditorium facing Central Park).  Stuart was famous for the way he yelled “b-r-e-a-k!” that amused spectators; his downfall was an unpopular decision in the ring which awarded a trophy to colored boxer Billy Woods, over Al Neil.

Bad luck turned worse after Stuart built a fight club at the westerly end of the Third Street tunnel, which prompted uproar from the tony neighbors.  The City Council passed an ordinance confining such clubs to a certain district in the Eighth Ward.  To make matters all the more discouraging, Stuart was stung by a spider on his left eye, destroying the sight thereof.  

He found menial employment soliciting monies for a weekly publication, and after collecting nearly $100 ($2,052 USD 2006), decided to go on the drinking spree to end all drinking sprees.  It lasted three weeks.

After the money was gone and the booze was consumed, he wrote notes to his wife in San Francisco, the Los Angeles Coroner, and his employer.  In them he stated that drink had put him “down and out” and that he had nothing to live for.  From his note to the Coroner:  “Booze has been the cause of my downfall, and I am daffy…my wife will meet the expense of having my worthless body burned.”

Stuart, after losing his last fight, this one to a bottle, swallowed a solution of bromide in his Bunker Hill room at 244 North Grand.
stuart