tunney
Reviewed by Dick Stull, Humboldt State University
OCTOBER 21, 2007 archive
Pugilist, Pedant and Perfectionist
After his first and only defeat in the ring, heavyweight boxing champion Gene Tunney salved his physical and mental anguish by pondering the pithy perplexities of Shakespeare's retelling of the Iliad, Troilus and Cressida. Lanky, literate, blessed with athletic and mental agility, uncommon self-possession, and artistic tastes, ranging from Victor Hugo to Wagnerian opera, Gene Tunney is portrayed as a pugilistic enigma in Jack Cavanaugh's fascinating biography. A Marine Corps boxing champion in WWI who, after turning pro, went undefeated as a heavyweight (his only loss came as a light-heavyweight), Tunney was knocked down only once in his career. He retired at age 31, married heiress Polly Lauder, and for the rest of his life pursued a variety of business ventures and the arts. Tunney, like F. Scott Fitzergerald's Gatsby, was a remarkable, self-created individual. Tunney's heroic flaw, however, was that he wasn't the champ the people wanted him to be -- but what a fighter he was. What a man.
Jack Cavanaugh's wide-ranging biography chronicles not only Tunney, but also the parallel rise of his nemesis, heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey. Tunney defeated Dempsey twice, the first time to take the title from Dempsey in the "fight of the century" in 1927. Their rematch a year later became an indelible event in boxing and sport history when Tunney was knocked down by Dempsey for the only time in his career in the round that became known as the "long count." Cavanaugh takes the reader on a fabulous carnival ride through the world of boxing as well as providing a wonderful panorama of American popular culture during the 1920s.
Cavanaugh engages the reader early with Tunney's upbringing in Greenwich Village in New York. Tunney's Irish immigrant father, John, was a hardworking stevedore who labored on the docks of the Hudson River. John loved boxing and encouraged his oldest son, James, called by family members "Gene," to box, buying him gloves when he was ten years old. A tall, rangy kid, Gene Tunney learned how to fight not only for self-protection but also to defend his two younger brothers. It's not clear that Tunney ever loved fighting -- he was simply very good at it, as he was at almost everything he was to do in life from boxing to literature to business. He was highly disciplined, adept at learning and adapting from previous mistakes, and had unusually high self-confidence in his mental and physical abilities.
Cavanaugh also plumbs fascinating biographical information about heavyweight champion and contemporary rival, Jack Dempsey. Dempsey's relentless, snarling, back-'em-up with hooks and uppercuts from out of his trademark coal miner crouch served as a marked contrast to Tunney's master-boxer style. Dempsey's story -- going from town to town, fighting grown men in bars while still a teenager -- is boxing true grit. A charismatic fighter before, during, and after becoming champion, Dempsey had his share of image problems, stemming from a highly publicized divorce as well as the incorrect, yet public, perception that he avoided fighting in WWI. Dempsey was immortalized as an American icon in the famous George Bellows painting depicting him being knocked out of the ring (in one of eleven total knockdowns in less than four minutes) in his fight with the Argentinean "Bull of the Pampas," Luis Firpo. Firpo, who incredibly became a successful businessman and one of the wealthiest people in South America, commented, "so many writers pushed him [Dempsey] back in the ring it looked like he was getting a back massage!"
Cavanaugh also describes an eerie foreshadowing when Dempsey and Tunney accidentally met on a ferry in New York. Tunney, recognizing Dempsey, strode over and introduced himself. Dempsey, as affable and friendly outside the ring as he was a raging pit bull inside, even advised Tunney how he could wrap his right hand to protect a knuckle that Tunney had previously injured. The right hand, of course, was one of Tunney's most damaging weapons in his future domination of Dempsey in their subsequent twenty championship rounds against each other. A fascinating digression in Tunney's tale is Cavanaugh's discussion of the great lightweight champion Benny Leonard, about whom writer Budd Schulberg said, "I think that Leonard was to many young Jews what Ali became to young blacks many years later." Cavanaugh tells the "you can't make this stuff up" story of Leonard's savage pounding of Irish Eddie Finnegan in a fight that took place in western Pennsylvania. Amidst the din of anti-Semitic catcalls and insults aimed at Leonard, Finnegan startled Leonard by begging in Yiddish for Leonard to take it easy on him -- telling him that his real name was Seymour Rosenbaum!
Still another fascinating and entertaining side story is Cavanaugh's mention of five-time Tunney opponent Harry "The Pittsburgh Windmill" Greb. An incredible fighter who threw hailstorms of legal and illegal punches from every angle, Greb rarely trained, was a wanton womanizer, had perfect hair, powdered his face, and defied common sociological explanations as to how and why he ever got into and liked the fight game. Greb was the only man ever to beat Tunney, so badly, in fact, that writer Grantland Rice said it was "like a butcher hammering a Swiss steak." Harry Greb, who is ranked by boxing historian Burt Sugar ahead of Dempsey, Tunney, and Ali (#5 out of the hundred greatest fighters), is fabulous and, of course, ultimately tragic.
But there's much more. Cavanaugh tells the machinations behind another "fight of the century," the Jack Johnson versus Jim Jeffries title fight in Reno, Nevada, in 1912. And then there are the stories of the Jack Londonesque life of boxing promoter Tex Rickard, quotes by "Golden Age of Sportswriters" characters, like Damon Runyon, Grantland Rice, Ring Lardner, W.O. McGeehan and the hard-drinking-ukulele-playing Hype Igoe … and there's more, incidental to Tunney. But who cares? It's vaudeville, it's a Broadway musical revue, it's boxing, and it's great.
The second half of the biography is more straightforward from the reader's standpoint as it chronicles Tunney's two fights with Jack Dempsey. Tunney's taste for reading the classics made for a lot of press. Tunney, for his part, was annoyed, sometimes disdainful, and tried to play it down. But when hearing of Tunney's training camp reading habits, Jack Dempsey's bodyguard told Dempsey, "The fight's in the bag, Jack. The so and so is reading a book!"
The first fight between Tunney and Dempsey took place on September 23, 1926, in Philadelphia's Sesquicentennial Stadium. According to Cavanaugh, it was the "biggest sports attraction ever held before the largest sports crowd of all time." Attendees included, among others, the Astors, the Vanderbilts, Irving Berlin, Franklin Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt's three sons, William Randolph Hearst, Flo Zigfield, Babe Ruth, Gertrude Ederle (the first woman to swim the English Channel), Walter Chrysler, New York City Mayor Jimmy Walker, Ellis Gimbel, Leopold Stokowski, Douglas MacArthur, Charlie Chaplin, Mae West, Harry Sinclair, William Wrigley, Andrew Mellon, Charles Schwab, Bobby Jones, Arnold Rothstein, Abe Attell, eight members of the infamous 1919 Black Sox team, including Shoeless Joe Jackson, and more women (estimated at 10,000 out of a total 135,000 who came to the fight) than had ever attended a boxing match.
Incredibly, seemingly totally out of character, and after vehemently denying rumors, Tunney and a colleague took off from a New York golf course in a bi-plane and flew to Philly the day of the fight - unheard of in a day when rail travel and the automobile were the preferred public modes of transportation. Though it turned out to be a mistake (the pilot got lost in the fog and the flight was nauseating), Tunney, nonetheless, had no problem handling Dempsey. His brilliant footwork, artful clenching, and well-timed right hand leads and jabs enabled Tunney to win all ten rounds on both judges' cards. It was the first time a heavyweight championship was won by decision and not a knockout. Tunney was the heavyweight champion, and the fans never loved Jack Dempsey more.
The rematch was held on September 22, 1927 at Soldier Field in Chicago with 145, 000 fans in attendance. Cavanaugh quotes fight promoter, Tex Rickard, telling a sportswriter,
Kid, if the earth came up and the sky came down and wiped out my first ten rows it would be the end of everything because I got in those ten rows all the world's wealth, all the world's big men,all the world's brains and production talent. Just in them ten rows, kid. And you and me never seen nothing like it.
Tunney dominated Dempsey once again, but in round seven Dempsey caught Tunney with a flurry of blows that put him down. Tunney had righted himself to a sitting position and grasped the middle rope with one hand as the time-keeper counted to four. The ref, however, had been screaming at Dempsey to go to a neutral corner, starting his official count only after four seconds had elapsed. Tunney seemed to become aware at the ref's count of two, though six total seconds had expired. He watched as the ref counted to nine, then, according to Cavanaugh, "bounced to his feet." He succeeded in weathering Dempsey's assault for the rest of the round by dancing, clinching and rocking Dempsey with left-right combinations of his own. Tunney resumed boxing brilliantly, even knocking Dempsey down in the eighth round with a perfect right hand, and handily won the fight. In later interviews Tunney always claimed he took the maximum amount of time to clear his head in the "long-count" seventh round but could have gotten up any time after the ref's count of two. Dempsey, though bitter afterwards about losing, later said about Tunney, "he took the count, whatever it was, and that's what any smart fighter would have done." Promoter Tex Rickard wrote Tunney a check for $1,000,000 (Tunney's take was actually slightly less but Tunney wrote Rickard a personal check for the difference of $9554.46), which, according to Cavanaugh, made Tunney the first athlete, possibly the first person in history to get that sum of money for one evening's work. Dempsey didn't fight again. Tunney defended his title successfully with a TKO of Tom Heeney in twelve rounds almost a year later and retired. Months before his final fight, he held 500 students, professors, and reporters spellbound discoursing on the ancient fight between Hector and Ajax in Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, citing European scholars and critics, and amazing an audience who had come to hear him talk about his career as a fighter. He married heiress Polly Lauder and traveled to Europe, where he took in the museums, the theater, and the opera, and hobnobbed with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and H.G. Wells. He even carried on a long correspondence with Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, with whom he shared a number of interests, including boxing.
Though he taught his three sons to box, his four children were mainly oblivious to Tunney's career as a boxing champion since little memorabilia of his life a as professional pugilist was kept in his home. He went on to serve as the director of physical fitness for the U.S. Navy from 1941-1945 and spent the rest of his life in a variety of business ventures. He never lost his love of the arts and read avidly, attended the opera, and enjoyed the company of writers, artists, and business tycoons. He was not immune to family tragedy and triumph - his daughter Joan was accused of murdering her husband and committed to a hospital for the criminally insane. A son, John, narrowly won a Congressional seat in California after Jack Dempsey himself appeared in campaign rallies to support the son of his old adversary.
Cavanaugh quotes Los Angeles Times sportswriter Jim Murray on Tunney:
he was an austere man, pedantic, bookish, autocratic and aloof. He always acted as if he were slumming in pugilism. His fights were solo recitals. His opponents were just pianos, canvasses, spear-carriers. Something to practice his art on. He was the artist. He was like no Irishman you ever saw, but he was the greatest Irish athlete who ever lived. If you don't think so, tell me who was.
Tunney died in 1978 at the age of 81. According to Cavanaugh, Tunney's obituary ran 750 words on page 22 of the New York Times without a byline. Dempsey died in 1983 and was front page news on the New York Times with a 3,000 word obituary in the sports section. Tunney's grave-marker noted his date of birth, date of death, and his service in WWI and WWII. Nothing more.
Cavanaugh's biography is not necessarily neatly woven - as in the Garment District in New York City in the 1920s, there are plenty of loose threads. But what a great, great collection of anecdotes and quotes about boxing and about the man they rarely called champ (and his nemesis, Jack Dempsey, whom they did). The book, footnoted and indexed, includes a selected bibliography and the complete boxing records of both Gene Tunney and Jack Dempsey.
Tunney's self-made ascension from street to high society is quite remarkable - a real "American" story of success. And yet, the public could never relate to Tunney's unusual combination of pugilistic and literary erudition. Tunney was never quite a hero in sports or otherwise. What comes through loud and clear in Cavanaugh's book is that Tunney was a man of great discipline, self-insight, courage, and personal honor both in the ring and out. He didn't apologize to anyone for who he was, where he came from, or who he had become. I had to think through the "hero" thing again. So I'm glad I read Cavanaugh's book. Remarkable.
Cavanaugh, Jack. Tunney: Boxing's Brainiest Champ and His Upset of the Great Jack Dempsey. Hardcover: 471 pages. Publisher: Random House, New York, NY. (2006) ISBN-1-40004009-5.
Copyright © 2007 by Dick Stull.