Jack Dempsey

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Jack Dempsey, boxing champion nearly a century ago, was not a fan of machines, except when they benefited him. The heavyweight fancied himself a John Henry, ready to reduce robots to so many buttons and bolts. In his own way, he was an Ur-Kasparov, believing no “mechanical man” could conquer him, and by extension, humanity. They were both fooling themselves, of course.

Dempsey was outraged that in the Industrial Age, work in mining and blacksmithing had been taken from humans by machines, supposedly softening men, making it impossible to nurture great fighters. He railed against “gymnasium” pugilists, though, of course, those establishments turned out better boxers than the coal industry ever did.

It was funny because Dempsey himself was dandified and softened by the rise of the machines, the recipient of a new nose courtesy of cosmetic surgery, which was intended to make his face more presentable to Hollywood’s motion picture cameras. In the dotage of his association with the sport, when he entered the ring as a celebrity referee rather than a principal, Dempsey voiced his bitter feelings to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle in an article on September 26, 1933.

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When I was noodling around the other day to find a robot image for the piece about the automated 1929 department stores, I came across an illustration of Jack Dempsey squaring off with a life-size bucket of bolts. It was the window dressing of a 1934 Popular Mechanics article in which the former champion, retired by that point, explained that he would always be able to deliver a KO to AI. I don’t know; I think the “Manassa Mauler” would have been in trouble if a robot had hit him in his pretty, pretty nose

Anyhow, it booked artificial intelligence and boxing on the same card 35 years before the computerized Ali-Marciano fight. The piece’s opening:

“I CAN whip any mechanical robot that ever has or ever will be made. Maybe that sounds a bit egotistical, maybe you will say it’s just the voice of a ‘has-been,’ but I assure you that neither is true.

I was talking over old times with my friend Captain W. H. Fawcett and during the course of conversation he remarked that undoubtedly mechanical ingenuity has done much to improve the work of many boxers.

‘That’s true,’ I answered, ‘but nothing mechanical will ever be able to whip an honest to goodness boxer. Even right now, despite the fact that I am definitely through with the ring as a fighter, I wouldn’t be afraid of any robot or mechanical man. I could tear it to pieces, bolt by bolt and scatter its brain wheels and cogs all over the canvas.’

The reason is simple: Engineers can build a robot that will possess everything except brains. And without brains no man can ever attain championship class in the boxing game. It is true enough that we have had some rare intellectual specimens in the higher frames of boxing glory, but I can truthfully say that no man ever attained genuine boxing recognition without real headwork.”

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Even in death, Tex Rickard knew how to give them a show. The “them” in this case would be the admiring public who showed up in the tens of thousands to the wake of the boxing promoter, which was held in the ring area of Madison Square Garden. He was most famous for being the honest fight promoter who wouldn’t allow fixes or mismatches, whose affiliation with Jack Dempsey helped create the first million-dollar gates and who, in 1921, brought boxing to American radio audiences for the first time, introducing sports to mass media. But Rickard’s life went far beyond organized fisticuffs. He built both MSG (the third iteration) and Boston Gardens, he was a Texas marshal, an Alaska gold prospector, a gambling hall and bar proprietor, a longtime friend of Wyatt Earp, and the founder and first owner of the NHL’s New York Rangers. The grand man was sadly felled by an appendectomy gone bad a few days after his fifty-ninth birthday.

From the January 9, 1929 Brooklyn Daily Eagle article about his final “show”:

“In the center of the great arena of Madison Square Garden, that Tex Rickard’s showmanship built, the body of the fight promoter lay in state today while the thousands who had admired him in life filed by in silence for a final view of Tex Rickard in death.

Seventy-five or more a minute they passed the bronze casket under a blanket of red and white flowers. One line to the left and one to the right. One from the 49th St. entrance and the other from 50th St. Five thousand passed and looked in the first hour, 10,000 by noon, some 30,000 before the funeral service began at 2 p.m. The Rev. Caleb Moor, pastor of the Madison Avenue Baptist Church, officiated. The burial was to follow in Woodlawn Cemetery, the Bronx.

Actresses in sable coats, longshoremen, washwomen, policemen, bankers, lawyers, children in arms, millionaires, paupers, racetrack touts, Broadway hangers-on, ministers of the Gospel…it was a strange double procession that turned out toward the 8th Ave. exit or melted away in silence among the seats there to wait for the formal services later on.

Never before had this Madison Square Garden, Rickard’s own ‘temple of sports,’ seen such a phenomenon, and no doubt will never again.

Here had been skeptical crowds, enthusiastic crowds, cheering crowds, savage crowds that snarled and called for blood. Here had been lights and gongs sounding, jazz orchestras playing, the thud of leather against human jaws, the clink of skates on the hockey ice, the whirl of six-day bicycle racers. Today dim lights pierced the shadows up there near the roof, and from the tiny windows came streaks of shadowy daylight that only added to the dark.

$15,000 Casket

The body of Rickard, in immaculate evening clothes, lay in the $15,000 bronze casket on a slightly raised platform in the very center of what had been the prize fighting ring, the rink of the hockey players. From the shoulders down nothing was visible but the roses–roses, red and white. At the casket’s head stood Sgt. Timothy Murphy, longtime friend of the promoter, at a straight and stern attention, without moving muscle as the hours dragged by. Motionless as Rickard himself.

Clustered palms formed a sort of green cathedral nave around the altar on which were the remains of the man who had risen from Texas cow puncher to a world figure. And in dimness nothing else was visible except the spot of green, the dull, motley moving files, the flowers, the somber purple and the black splotches of crepe and here and there the bright blue uniform of a Garden attendant.

And for sound, only the shuffling feet of thousands of silent mourners.

Outside the crowd grew and grew. There had been perhaps 5,000 when the doors were thrown open shortly after 10 a.m. A bit of unruliness developed then when the mounted police in an effort to line the mourners up in twos rode up on the sidewalks. Soon this quieted down. By twos and twos they formed thereafter, beginning at the side entrances and extending gradually out to 8th Ave., to 9th and to 10th. Shortly after midday some 15,000 were waiting to follow those who had already entered.

Earlier in the morning the young Mrs. Rickard had come in with Jack Dempsey and Walter Field, assistant and close friend of the dead man. They sat down beside the casket. For a brief interval there, alone with these two men in the amphitheater, Mrs. Rickard wept over her dead. There was a gigantic piece of carnations and forget-me-nots from the employees of the Garden. The New York Rangers, Rickard’s own hockey team, sent a huge wreath, and their rivals, the Americans, offered another. … Many of the big dealers in New York found themselves stripped of flowers before midnight as a steady stream of orders poured in. Smaller dealers were asked to contribute and did. And all night long, even into this morning, huge pieces of floral offerings were being carried into the cavernlike old Garden, which had suddenly become a glimmering, brilliant bed of beauty.

Draped in Beauty

The Garden entrance was draped in black. Inside there were patches of black. Inside, however, were the flowers, and all the somberness of the crepe could not take away their brilliance. They said that even the Valentino funeral, which brought thousands of floral pieces, did not approach the Rickard ceremony.”

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Heavyweight champ Jack Dempsey was one of the biggest things going in America in the Roaring Twenties, in an age when boxing was the king of sports. He was as big a star as Babe Ruth or Charlie Chaplin or Harry Houdini. Like all public figures of those days, Dempsey had a brand new audience to please: filmgoers, who could see his every imperfection in newsreels projected on larger-than-life screens. The boxer had added reason to be concerned about his punched-up mug: He wanted to make Hollywood movies. So during a three-year sabbatical from the ring, during which time he made more than ten silent shorts and starred in Manhattan Madness, Dempsey decided to get his nose fixed. From the August 10, 1924 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

Los Angeles–Whoever opposes Jack Dempsey in the next battle for the heavyweight ring championship will have an opportunity to test his marksmanship on a nice new nose.

The world’s champion has gone into retirement with a bandaged face after bowing to the filmdom fad of having one’s nose rebuilt to suit the cameraman.

Since Dempsey had been publicly connected with the motion picture industry all summer, there was no way out of it, and accordingly the plastic surgeon was given permission to cut away a piece of the boxer’s left ear and put it where it would make his nose look like Valentino’s.

It will be a week, the doctor said, before the new nose can be unveiled.”

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I’m firmly in the camp that believes Muhammad Ali legitimately beat Sonny Liston twice. The second fight, in 1965, caused so much consternation because Ali scored his knockout on a so-called “phantom punch” (which was actually an anchor punch). Howard Cosell corralled Jack Dempsey, Rocky Marciano, and journalists Jimmy Cannon and W.C. Heinz to discuss the controversy.

Postscript: Marciano “fought” Ali four years later via computer, right before perishing in a plane crash. In 1968, Heinz co-wrote the novel M*A*S*H under the pseudonym “Richard Hooker.”

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Dempsey-Carpentier, Jersey City, 1921.

Hugh Pearman’s Wall Street Journal piece, “These Knock-Down, Shrinkable Games,” looks at the transient structures that are making the London Games fiscally sensible. It reminded me that wooden insta-stadia capable of seating 50,000 to 100,000 were routinely built in a couple of months nearly a century ago for major prizefights. They were razed soon after the bout. Tex Rickard built just such a momentary edifice for Jack Dempsey’s defense of the heavyweight title against Georges Carpentier on July 2, 1921. Two excerpts follow, one from Pearman and one about the ’21 Dempsey fight stadium:

From Pearman’s WSJ piece: “Some hankered after a flashier stadium to rival Beijing’s, but a firm policy was established once the bid was won in 2005: Mindful of the legacy of neglect common among many earlier Olympic-host cities, no white-elephant buildings were allowed for London. This was to be the knock-down Games: Venues with no obvious long-term future—such as the Olympic Stadium—were designed to be dismantled entirely, while others were to be shrinkable once the huge audiences for the Games dispersed.”

From the April 26, 1921 New York Times: “Although the plot embraces thirty-four acres the particular land Rickard has contracted for includes only about six-and-one-half acres. Upon this stretch of ground the promoter will erect his giant arena with its proposed seating capacity of over 50,000. The start will be made on the arena just as soon as the ground is levelled. Rickard expects that the arena will be completed within fifty days, without rushing the workmen or necessitating overtime. It is estimated that 100 carloads of lumber will be used in its construction.”

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Great footage of the stadium at the outset of this video:

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Former heavyweight champ Jack Dempsey, the “Manassa Mauler,” the most famous athlete on earth during the 1920s, on What’s My Line?, 1965. During the interview segment, Dempsey suggests that the Ali-Liston fight was bogus.

In 1927, at the end of his run of dominance thanks to age and Gene Tunney, while he was training for a return to greatness which would never arrive, Dempsey suffered a personal tragedy when his brother, John, murdered his wife and committed suicide. An excerpt from a July 3, 1927 New York Times article:

“Schenectady–Apparently in a spell of temporary insanity due to a recurring attack of an illness to which he had been subject for several years, John Dempsey, brother of the former heavyweight champion, fatally shot his 21-year-old wife, Edna, in a rooming house here today. He turned the gun on himself, dying instantly.

The Dempseys had been estranged for about a year. They are survived by a two year-old son, Bruce.

Jack Dempsey was deeply affected when notified at his training camp at White Sulphur Springs, Saratoga Lake. He came at once to Schenectady and positively identified the bodies.

The boxer ordered his brother’s body to be sent tonight for burial to Salt Lake City, his former home, and Mrs. Dempsey’s body to be taken to Green Island.

It was announced that Jack Dempsey would cease his training activities for a few days because of the tragedy, but would not cancel his match with Sharkey, set for July 21 in New York City.”

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"There was a stool in the corner of the roped inclosure and on each stood a pair of badly damaged boxing gloves."

One of my favorite A.J. Liebling articles is “The University of Eighth Avenue,” a 1955 SI profile of old-time New York boxer Billy Ray. In the piece, Ray fondly recalls a Brooklyn barroom featuring all manner of organized violence: cockfighting, dogfighting and boxing. The tavern was across the street from Calvary Cemetery. By chance, I just happened upon an old article in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle from 1889 (a reprint of a New York Sun piece), which I think is about the same establishment. Ray had given the proprietor’s name as “Hughie Bart” and the Eagle refers to him as “Pete Hart,” but there are many similarities. The full article:

“Just across the road from the northeast corner of the old Calvary Cemetery stands a little frame structure that is called a pavilion by Pete Hart, who owns it. Mr. Hart is an old time free and easy singer, and there are few men on Long Island or anywhere else who know how to entertain non church goers better than he. Pete is a slim man, verging on the meridian of life, and has an old gold mustache. To the casual observer the pavilion is a very ordinary saloon, with no pretensions to grandeur. The first story consists of two rooms. The outer room has a little bar across one end of it and the inner room is ornamented with a lot of pictures representing calm and rural scenery; also with a few round tables, some wooden chairs and a number of young men who look as though they were given to scrapping. There is a small door in one end of this room which opens into an inclosure about thirty feet square. In the center is a rough wooden platform, fenced in with ropes. On one side are three rows of planks, the upper one being so near the low ceiling that a tall man can’t sit upon it. Behind this door is an ancient piano.

"After it was over a young fellow danced a clog and was enthusiastically applauded."

Yesterday afternoon a sign in chalk was hung about the door leading into this inclosure, which declared that admission could be had for the trifling outlay of 25 cents. A stalwart young man stood in front of the door collecting this amount from every one who entered. At 4 o’clock about one hundred and sixty men were inside and the air was heavy with tobacco smoke. There were stools in the corners of the roped inclosure and on each stood a pair of badly damaged boxing gloves, and a bottle of water. The gentlemen were all known to each other as Skinny, Freckles, etc., and after a young man had been induced to thump on the piano, various heroic efforts were put forth to induce other young men to sing. There was a stir in the doorway and two young men in tights and canvas shoes climbed through the ropes into the ring, and, after affectionately shaking hands, began to pound each other with the gloves. The utmost order prevailed during the set to. After it was over a young fellow danced a clog and was enthusiastically applauded. James McNamee of the Hornbacher Athletic Club sparred three rounds with Dan O’Hara. McNamee is a handsome young fellow and knows a lot about boxing. He has sparred frequently with Jack Dempsey and has proved himself worthy of meeting good men. He thumped O’Hara whenever and wherever he liked to the great delight of the crowd and to the astonishment of Mr. O’Hara.

Hugh Groden, who was recently whipped in a ten round go with Sailor Brown, had a hot set with Smoke Hennessey. Mr. Hennessey amused the crowd later in the day by an unexpected attack on Mr. O’Hara. It was during the last set of the day and near the close of a three round go between O’Hara and John McCormick. Hennessey sprang into the ring and with his bare knuckles tried to strike O’Hara. The latter warded off the blow and struck Hennessey so hard with the boxing gloves he wore that he sent him flying through the ropes. Among the other set tos was one between Billy Dacey and Dan McVeigh and one between Mike Murray and Billy McGibben.”

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This classic undated picture captures Jack Dempsey and Harry Houdini engaged in a mock fight for a photo op. Even though its tangential to this photo, I’ve been eager for awhile to share an insane 1930 New York Times obituary of a colorful character nicknamed “John the Barber,” who was Dempsey’s first manager. An excerpt from “Jack Dempsey’s First Manager Succumbs To Infection Of His Finger”:

“‘John the Barber,’ in private life John J. Reisler, known on Broadway for many years as a barber, fight manager and friend of the street’s great and near-great, died yesterday morning in Lebanon Hospital, the Bronx, of an infection caused by an ingrown hair on his finger. He had been in the hospital for three weeks and was surrounded by his family, including his wife, Mrs. Minnie Reisler, with whom he had been reconciled recently after a long separation. He was 53 years old.

Also at the bedside was Morris Reisler, his son, whose sentence of twenty years to life in 1923 was commuted by Governor Roosevelt last March. Morris had been sent to Sing Sing for killing his aunt, Miss Bertha Katz, whose death climaxed a family feud in which Mrs. Reisler had accused Miss Katz, her younger sister, of stealing Reisler’s affections. When Morris was released his father, whom he had seen in 1927 when he was permitted to visit the elder Reisler, who lay ill in a Bronx hospital, met him at the prison gate and escorted him back to New York.

As a prizefight manager Reisler was one of Jack Dempsey’s first managers. That was in 1915 and 1916. Although the two parted and later Reisler sued Dempsey for breach of contract, he always was proud of having known and handled Demspey in the days before he was champion.

Born in Austria, he came to New York as a young boy. He became a barber, and in that capacity shaved some of the best-known chins on Broadway. He ran several athletic clubs at various times and knew many celebrities. One of his latest fighters was Vincent Serici. Recently he had handled his three boxing sons, Johnny, Georgie and Sid.

Reisler first came into prominence, however, in 1912, when Herman Rosenthal, the gambler, was murdered early on the morning of July 16 in front of the Hotel Metropole, in Forty-third Street, east of Broadway. Reisler was one of the first on the scene, and it reached the ears of District Attorney Charles S. Whitman that he had seen something. He was subpoenaed, and told Mr. Whitman that has had seen ‘Bridgey’ Webber, one of those accused of the murder, running from the scene.

Put on the stand at Coroner Feinberg’s hearing, Reisler, who had known for years Rosenthal, Webber and others involved in the affair, recanted his story. He was fearful that gunmen in the crowd would ‘put him on the spot.’ Mr. Whitman had him arrested  for perjury and after a night in a cell he decided to tell his original story. Webber, who turned informer, was freed later, as was Reisler, after his testimony. Police Lieutenant Charles A. Becker and four gunmen, ‘Gyp the Blood’ Horowitz, ‘Lefty Louie’ Rosenberg, ‘Whitey’ Lewis and ‘Dago Frank’ Cirofici, went to the electric chair for the crime.”

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Young Dempsey demolishes a washed-up Jess Willard in 1919:

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Jack Dempsey: Enjoy the fisticuffs and remember to visit the confection stands.

Temporary stadiums are still built and torn down for some Olympic events, but the practice was pretty common for larger sports gatherings in the early-20th century when few permanent structures of tremendous size existed. No mere hole-in-the-wall could have contained a crowd for a boxing match featuring Jack Dempsey during the 1920s, when as Urban Oyster points out, he was an even bigger star than Babe Ruth.

Boxing promoter Tex Rickard outdid himself in 1921 for the Dempsey-Georges Carpentier fight, spending $250,000 to build an octagonal, wooden 91,000-seat stadium (see photo) called Boyle’s Thirty Acres in Jersey City, the largest such structure in the world to that point. A June 26, 1921 article in the New York Times fills in the details. It covered 300,00 square feet and took two months to complete. Reserved seats cost from $5.50 to $50.

Dempsey dispatched of the Frenchman quickly, knocking him out in the fourth round. According to New Jersey City University, the stands were full, though only 81,000 were paying customers (2,000 were women). The gate was close to $1.8 million. The stadium played host to several other prizefights before being torn down in 1927. A housing project was built on the land in 1950 and remains there today.

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