I own several different paperback editions of Janet Flanner’s Paris Was Yesterday: 1925-1939, some purchased, some gleaned. Flanner, the correspondent who wrote for the New Yorker under the pen name Genêt, chronicled European politics and culture from her vantage point in the City of Lights. In one diary-style entry, she records the night in 1928 when heavyweight boxing champ Gene Tunney drank beer with playwright Thornton Wilder. An excerpt:

“Gene Tunney broke up the shop at Lipp’s when he recently entered there one night with Mr. Thornton Wilder. The heavyweight champion ordered and obtained a schooner of light beer; Mr. Wilder, because he was with Mr. Tunney, also received something to drink, doubtless not what he ordered, for service was paralyzed. The cashier, ordinarily a creature of discretion, ceased making her change; the waiters rallied round Tunney’s table shamelessly. All the French women stared, whispering, ‘Comme il est beau!’ ‘Quel homme magnifique!’ their escorts murmured without jealousy. It was a triumph which the champion accepted without too much grace. Nervously doffing and donning his hat as if the bay leaves irked him, he talked loudly, intelligently, for a half hour, and left.”