Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Hello there, this is Jimmy Powers, coming your way with
another story from The Tumult and the Shouting. Hi there,
(01:40):
this is Jimmy Powers. As we continued to read grantla
Nice's autobiography, The Tuma and the Shouting, we noticed that
considerable time is spent with Jack Dempsey. Granny throughout his
long and wonderful life, collected friendships of the greats, champions
of the Ring, the Diamond, the Fairway, and the Gridiron.
Granny saw Dempsey the first time in nineteen nineteen when
the manassa slaughtered champion Jess Willard at Toledo. He was
(02:03):
one of Granny's all time favorites. Once again, we opened
The Tumult and Shouting to the chapter on Dempsey and
in first person dwell for a moment on some of
the promotional fireworks that Dempsey was connected with during the
fabulous Golden twenties. I've often heard champions like Rocky Marciano
(02:26):
compared to Dempsey. In my opinion, Dempsey was a top boxer.
He had to be to go fifteen rounds with Tom
Gibbons when Gibbons was hungry and able. The Dempsey Gibbons
title match at Shelby, Montana was in some ways Dempsey's
most demanding fight as a promoter's dream. Both the Shelby
fight and the sharky stribbling fight at Miami Beach were
(02:47):
Grade A nightmares. In nineteen twenty three, Mike Collins, a
fight manager of sorts out of Saint Paul, had a
string of fighters barn storming through Montana. In the course
of his meanderings, he ran into a man named Johnson, who,
among other things, was mayor of Shelby and president of
the local bank. With the talk flaring around fights, somebody
(03:07):
had the glorious idea of staging a heavyweight championship fight
right there in Shelby. It would cause a land boom.
Collins called his pal at E. Kane, Gibbons's manager back
in Saint Paul, and propositioned him listen. Mike replied, Kin,
you get Dempsey out there and Gibbons will fight him
for nothing. All you got to do is pay Dempsey.
(03:28):
What do you think of that? Next, they wired Kerns,
Dempsey's manager, offering him three hundred thousand dollars for Jack
to defend his title against Tom Gibbons at Shelby on
July fourth, Kerns wired back send one hundred thousand dollars,
now one hundred thousand dollars in a month, and one
hundred thousand dollars before Dempsey steps into the ring, and
(03:49):
it's a deal. The first one hundred thousand dollars came
easily enough, and seeing they meant business, Kerns and Dempsey
headed west and set up training quarters at Great Falls, Montana,
about seventy miles Soige off of Shelby. Eddie Kane went
directly to Shelby and set up Gibbons's training camp there.
Late in June I boarded a pullman in Chicago with
a crowd of other riders, including Heywood Bruin, Damon Runyon,
(04:13):
Bide Dudley, and Hugh Fullerton. We were off by way
of the Great Northern to the wild and wooly west.
Great Falls, we discovered was a fair sized town. Visiting
Dempsey at his camp among the cottonwoods, I found him
in high humor. It was June twenty fourth, and Jack's
twenty eighth birthday. His dad was there and so was
his cousin, Don Chaffin. Don was a raw boned husky
(04:33):
from West Virginia and a paid up life member of
the famed Hatfield Clan. The camp mascot was a cub
timber wolf. Jack was giving himself daily facials with some
sort of bear grease that had toughened his face to
the general texture of a boar's hide. It was Jack's
first title defense in two years, but he looked to
be in great shape. Even walking, he seemed to slither along, snakelike,
(04:56):
his muscles glinting in the sun. I don't recall just
what I actual expected from Shelby, the fight site, but
I wasn't impressed. A town of perhaps two thousand, it
was little more than a cross road in the middle
of a desert. Press headquarters and living accommodations were in
one of the pullman cars on a siding. Gibbons was
training hard and looking forward to what I thought was
certain annihilation. Mayor Johnson and friends were beginning to realize
(05:19):
the facts of life. They were having a rough time
scraping up that second one hundred thousand dollars installment, with
still a third to follow. Kerns meanwhile remained adamant, in
fact officially called off the fight seven times. The night
before the event, endeavoring to keep fresh bulletins pumping over
the wires. Bruin Runyon and the rest of us had
long since gone nuts. At the twelfth hour, Kerns again
(05:42):
reversed his field, decided to gamble on the gate take,
and declared the fight was on. In a matter of minutes,
Shelby's main drag erupted into a madhouse. Cow pokes with
spike heels kicking up the alkali dust, bought drinks for millionaires,
and the millionaires mingled with Blackfoot Indians, many of whom
were in full tribal dress. Drifters, motorists, high society Hollywood
(06:04):
stars and sheep herders all were there, as well as
Missus Alfred Gwynn Vanderbilt and one eyed Connolly. I even
spotted May Murray peering at the revelry from the sanctuary
of her own private car. The fight was scaled at
fifty dollar ringside, and the huge wooden bowl erected for
the bout was built to hole some fifty thousand customers,
but the final count was a trickle over seven thousand.
(06:26):
When the main event finally went on, Dempsey and Gibbons
went fifteen rounds like two featherweights. I've never witnessed as
much sheer speed in a heavyweight bout. At the finish,
the decision was clearly Dempsey's, but Gibbons had remained dangerous
all the way. Dempsey resorted to every boxing trick he knew,
and as the bout unfolded, it was apparent he knew plenty,
(06:48):
but he couldn't nail the scowling, stabbing Gibbons, who fought
the fight of his life and for nothing. He never
hurt me really. After the first round, Gibbons said, but lord,
how that fell can hit. It was in the first
round Dempsey shot a straight right punch. I saw it
but couldn't duck it entirely and took it on the
top of my forehead. That's the thickest part of a
(07:09):
man's skull. But grant I didn't come out of the
days until the fourth round. I'd like to fight him
back again for money, continued Gibbons. But don't let anybody
ever tell you Dempsey can't box. Prize fights have been
used ever since Shelby as real estate promotions. And here's
another that had everybody crazy, but for a different reason.
(07:31):
This one was the Jack Sharky versus Young Stribling fight
at Miami Beach in February nineteen twenty nine. It was
blueprinted to boost Miami Beach. Once the preliminaries were underway,
a ruptured appendix killed tex Ricord. When Rickard passed away,
Bill Carry, one of the head men of Madison Square Garden,
was handed the assignment of promoting, and Dempsey was pressed
(07:51):
into service as Rickards stand in a booster of professional
hockey in New York. Carrie was the ice game's best friend,
but as a fight promoter, Carrie knew as much as
an elephant knows about contract bridge. He began spending money
so fast and with such a lavish hand that Dempsey
soon saw there would be nothing left for him. So
Jack agreed to work for nothing. I was afraid I
(08:13):
would have to pick up the check, he remarked. All
correspondents plus droves who didn't know a typewriter from a
milk can, were admitted free to the day and night revels.
Carrie had least Carl Fischer's mansion right on the beach
at the head of Lincoln Road, and as I recall,
several riders were wounded in the rush for rooms overlooking
the Atlantic Ocean. Four hotels were utilized to handle four
(08:35):
hundred and thirty five news men from all over the
world for nearly seven solid weeks. It resembled New Year's
Eve in Babylon. Everybody within fifty miles of the beach
became one of Carrie's free loaders. Headquarters for the press
gang became headquarters for everything, with the beach itself serving
as the front lawn. How many cases of liquor were consumed,
(08:56):
I don't know, but I do know that was one
of the thirstiest mobs ever and the majority of the
imbibers had no connection whatsoever with the fight back In
New York, Bill mcgean, the Tribune sports editor and one
of the best ever, decided to come down and investigate.
Bill had been roasting Carry daily in his column. When
he arrived, Bill expected Carry to have him tossed out.
(09:17):
I introduced them, mister Kerry, mister mcgean. Carry beamed his
welcome through his milk bottle lenses. And by the way,
mister mcgehan, he said, what business are you in? That
was the only time I ever saw mcgean stopped cold.
He fled the camp. He refused to write a word.
The actual fight should have made big money two hundred
(09:38):
thousand dollars at least, but it lost Sharky one when
he too might well have lost, he told me later,
Stribling hit me with a full right over the heart.
It hurt a lot. I fell in to grab him.
He beat me to it by grabbing me first and
holding on until I was ready to go on. Had
our positions been reversed, I would have murdered him. Stribling
could have been a great fighter. He was dead game,
(09:59):
but but out of the ring. He would seldom as
game in the ring during a tough fight. Yet he
would drive a shaky aircraft in front of a hurricane
or a motorcycle through a heavy wall. I have seen
him do it. He was killed on that motorcycle. Much
of the glory of the ring, if you can call
it that, rides with fighters, those lion hearted men big
and little, who never wore the crown, or if they did,
(10:23):
only for a fleeting instant. Harry Grebb, pound for pound,
perhaps the greatest fighter ever, had been a headliner for
more than ten years and was well on the down
grade when he finally got a shot at the world
middleweight crown in nineteen twenty three. One year I know
it was nineteen nineteen. Greb fought forty two bouts. Greb
(10:43):
fought anything anywhere, any time for funner money. Even Dempsey,
when Jack was on the way up, wanted no part
of Greb. Jeff Smith, another middleweight, never did get a
crack at the crown. But two hundred of Jeff's fights
are recorded in Nat Fleischer's famed ring record book. But
he fought at least six hundred bouts all over the world,
accepting all kinds of cock eyed decisions just to get
(11:05):
rematches and more important, keep meat on the table. Yes,
when Jeff Smith finally did get his shot at that champ,
it was always after the glitter had gone, when the
one time number one boy had lost his title. These
and those hard luck athletes like them remind me of
a stanza from an old verse of mine, entitled from
(11:25):
the Camp of the Beaten. I have learned something worth
far more than victory brings to men battered and beaten,
bruised and sore, I can still come back again, crowded
back in the hard tough race. I've found that I
have the heart to look raw failure in the face
and train for another start. Now. Once again, this is
(11:48):
Jimmy Powers transcribed, closing another chapter from The Tumult and
the Shouting. So long until next time.
Hello there, this is Jimmy Powers, coming your way with
another story from The Tumult and the Shouting. Hi there,
(01:40):
this is Jimmy Powers. As we continued to read grantla
Nice's autobiography, The Tuma and the Shouting, we noticed that
considerable time is spent with Jack Dempsey. Granny throughout his
long and wonderful life, collected friendships of the greats, champions
of the Ring, the Diamond, the Fairway, and the Gridiron.
Granny saw Dempsey the first time in nineteen nineteen when
the manassa slaughtered champion Jess Willard at Toledo. He was
(02:03):
one of Granny's all time favorites. Once again, we opened
The Tumult and Shouting to the chapter on Dempsey and
in first person dwell for a moment on some of
the promotional fireworks that Dempsey was connected with during the
fabulous Golden twenties. I've often heard champions like Rocky Marciano
(02:26):
compared to Dempsey. In my opinion, Dempsey was a top boxer.
He had to be to go fifteen rounds with Tom
Gibbons when Gibbons was hungry and able. The Dempsey Gibbons
title match at Shelby, Montana was in some ways Dempsey's
most demanding fight as a promoter's dream. Both the Shelby
fight and the sharky stribbling fight at Miami Beach were
(02:47):
Grade A nightmares. In nineteen twenty three, Mike Collins, a
fight manager of sorts out of Saint Paul, had a
string of fighters barn storming through Montana. In the course
of his meanderings, he ran into a man named Johnson, who,
among other things, was mayor of Shelby and president of
the local bank. With the talk flaring around fights, somebody
(03:07):
had the glorious idea of staging a heavyweight championship fight
right there in Shelby. It would cause a land boom.
Collins called his pal at E. Kane, Gibbons's manager back
in Saint Paul, and propositioned him listen. Mike replied, Kin,
you get Dempsey out there and Gibbons will fight him
for nothing. All you got to do is pay Dempsey.
(03:28):
What do you think of that? Next, they wired Kerns,
Dempsey's manager, offering him three hundred thousand dollars for Jack
to defend his title against Tom Gibbons at Shelby on
July fourth, Kerns wired back send one hundred thousand dollars,
now one hundred thousand dollars in a month, and one
hundred thousand dollars before Dempsey steps into the ring, and
(03:49):
it's a deal. The first one hundred thousand dollars came
easily enough, and seeing they meant business, Kerns and Dempsey
headed west and set up training quarters at Great Falls, Montana,
about seventy miles Soige off of Shelby. Eddie Kane went
directly to Shelby and set up Gibbons's training camp there.
Late in June I boarded a pullman in Chicago with
a crowd of other riders, including Heywood Bruin, Damon Runyon,
(04:13):
Bide Dudley, and Hugh Fullerton. We were off by way
of the Great Northern to the wild and wooly west.
Great Falls, we discovered was a fair sized town. Visiting
Dempsey at his camp among the cottonwoods, I found him
in high humor. It was June twenty fourth, and Jack's
twenty eighth birthday. His dad was there and so was
his cousin, Don Chaffin. Don was a raw boned husky
(04:33):
from West Virginia and a paid up life member of
the famed Hatfield Clan. The camp mascot was a cub
timber wolf. Jack was giving himself daily facials with some
sort of bear grease that had toughened his face to
the general texture of a boar's hide. It was Jack's
first title defense in two years, but he looked to
be in great shape. Even walking, he seemed to slither along, snakelike,
(04:56):
his muscles glinting in the sun. I don't recall just
what I actual expected from Shelby, the fight site, but
I wasn't impressed. A town of perhaps two thousand, it
was little more than a cross road in the middle
of a desert. Press headquarters and living accommodations were in
one of the pullman cars on a siding. Gibbons was
training hard and looking forward to what I thought was
certain annihilation. Mayor Johnson and friends were beginning to realize
(05:19):
the facts of life. They were having a rough time
scraping up that second one hundred thousand dollars installment, with
still a third to follow. Kerns meanwhile remained adamant, in
fact officially called off the fight seven times. The night
before the event, endeavoring to keep fresh bulletins pumping over
the wires. Bruin Runyon and the rest of us had
long since gone nuts. At the twelfth hour, Kerns again
(05:42):
reversed his field, decided to gamble on the gate take,
and declared the fight was on. In a matter of minutes,
Shelby's main drag erupted into a madhouse. Cow pokes with
spike heels kicking up the alkali dust, bought drinks for millionaires,
and the millionaires mingled with Blackfoot Indians, many of whom
were in full tribal dress. Drifters, motorists, high society Hollywood
(06:04):
stars and sheep herders all were there, as well as
Missus Alfred Gwynn Vanderbilt and one eyed Connolly. I even
spotted May Murray peering at the revelry from the sanctuary
of her own private car. The fight was scaled at
fifty dollar ringside, and the huge wooden bowl erected for
the bout was built to hole some fifty thousand customers,
but the final count was a trickle over seven thousand.
(06:26):
When the main event finally went on, Dempsey and Gibbons
went fifteen rounds like two featherweights. I've never witnessed as
much sheer speed in a heavyweight bout. At the finish,
the decision was clearly Dempsey's, but Gibbons had remained dangerous
all the way. Dempsey resorted to every boxing trick he knew,
and as the bout unfolded, it was apparent he knew plenty,
(06:48):
but he couldn't nail the scowling, stabbing Gibbons, who fought
the fight of his life and for nothing. He never
hurt me really. After the first round, Gibbons said, but lord,
how that fell can hit. It was in the first
round Dempsey shot a straight right punch. I saw it
but couldn't duck it entirely and took it on the
top of my forehead. That's the thickest part of a
(07:09):
man's skull. But grant I didn't come out of the
days until the fourth round. I'd like to fight him
back again for money, continued Gibbons. But don't let anybody
ever tell you Dempsey can't box. Prize fights have been
used ever since Shelby as real estate promotions. And here's
another that had everybody crazy, but for a different reason.
(07:31):
This one was the Jack Sharky versus Young Stribling fight
at Miami Beach in February nineteen twenty nine. It was
blueprinted to boost Miami Beach. Once the preliminaries were underway,
a ruptured appendix killed tex Ricord. When Rickard passed away,
Bill Carry, one of the head men of Madison Square Garden,
was handed the assignment of promoting, and Dempsey was pressed
(07:51):
into service as Rickards stand in a booster of professional
hockey in New York. Carrie was the ice game's best friend,
but as a fight promoter, Carrie knew as much as
an elephant knows about contract bridge. He began spending money
so fast and with such a lavish hand that Dempsey
soon saw there would be nothing left for him. So
Jack agreed to work for nothing. I was afraid I
(08:13):
would have to pick up the check, he remarked. All
correspondents plus droves who didn't know a typewriter from a
milk can, were admitted free to the day and night revels.
Carrie had least Carl Fischer's mansion right on the beach
at the head of Lincoln Road, and as I recall,
several riders were wounded in the rush for rooms overlooking
the Atlantic Ocean. Four hotels were utilized to handle four
(08:35):
hundred and thirty five news men from all over the
world for nearly seven solid weeks. It resembled New Year's
Eve in Babylon. Everybody within fifty miles of the beach
became one of Carrie's free loaders. Headquarters for the press
gang became headquarters for everything, with the beach itself serving
as the front lawn. How many cases of liquor were consumed,
(08:56):
I don't know, but I do know that was one
of the thirstiest mobs ever and the majority of the
imbibers had no connection whatsoever with the fight back In
New York, Bill mcgean, the Tribune sports editor and one
of the best ever, decided to come down and investigate.
Bill had been roasting Carry daily in his column. When
he arrived, Bill expected Carry to have him tossed out.
(09:17):
I introduced them, mister Kerry, mister mcgean. Carry beamed his
welcome through his milk bottle lenses. And by the way,
mister mcgehan, he said, what business are you in? That
was the only time I ever saw mcgean stopped cold.
He fled the camp. He refused to write a word.
The actual fight should have made big money two hundred
(09:38):
thousand dollars at least, but it lost Sharky one when
he too might well have lost, he told me later,
Stribling hit me with a full right over the heart.
It hurt a lot. I fell in to grab him.
He beat me to it by grabbing me first and
holding on until I was ready to go on. Had
our positions been reversed, I would have murdered him. Stribling
could have been a great fighter. He was dead game,
(09:59):
but but out of the ring. He would seldom as
game in the ring during a tough fight. Yet he
would drive a shaky aircraft in front of a hurricane
or a motorcycle through a heavy wall. I have seen
him do it. He was killed on that motorcycle. Much
of the glory of the ring, if you can call
it that, rides with fighters, those lion hearted men big
and little, who never wore the crown, or if they did,
(10:23):
only for a fleeting instant. Harry Grebb, pound for pound,
perhaps the greatest fighter ever, had been a headliner for
more than ten years and was well on the down
grade when he finally got a shot at the world
middleweight crown in nineteen twenty three. One year I know
it was nineteen nineteen. Greb fought forty two bouts. Greb
(10:43):
fought anything anywhere, any time for funner money. Even Dempsey,
when Jack was on the way up, wanted no part
of Greb. Jeff Smith, another middleweight, never did get a
crack at the crown. But two hundred of Jeff's fights
are recorded in Nat Fleischer's famed ring record book. But
he fought at least six hundred bouts all over the world,
accepting all kinds of cock eyed decisions just to get
(11:05):
rematches and more important, keep meat on the table. Yes,
when Jeff Smith finally did get his shot at that champ,
it was always after the glitter had gone, when the
one time number one boy had lost his title. These
and those hard luck athletes like them remind me of
a stanza from an old verse of mine, entitled from
(11:25):
the Camp of the Beaten. I have learned something worth
far more than victory brings to men battered and beaten,
bruised and sore, I can still come back again, crowded
back in the hard tough race. I've found that I
have the heart to look raw failure in the face
and train for another start. Now. Once again, this is
(11:48):
Jimmy Powers transcribed, closing another chapter from The Tumult and
the Shouting. So long until next time.
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