Beyond Glory

by David Margolick

  A few days later Schmeling visited Louis in Pompton Lakes. The two performed for the photographers, first around a pool table, then with Schmeling quite literally whispering nothings in Louis’s ear. One black paper detected “a clear dislike” between them. Schmeling never took his eyes off Louis in the ring, and afterward he was beaming, ostensibly because he’d picked up yet another flaw. Someone asked Schmeling if Farr had a prayer against the Bomber. “Everybody has a chance,” Schmeling replied. “Even Shirley Temple.” On August 26, Schmeling had another contentious encounter with the boxing commissioners. Then he feasted on movies as rain forced a four-day postponement of the Farr fight. When Louis and Farr finally squared off in Yankee Stadium, the police presence was sparse; Louis had made interracial fights routine. To Considine, the applause for Schmeling was clear evidence that the boxing public “would tolerate no further gypping of the German.” “If that spontaneous demonstration for Maxie is the off-shoot of a ‘boycott,’ then I wish someone would boycott me,” Parker wrote.

  The fight was dull, at least for Louis’s fans. Louis bloodied the Welshman but could not put him away, partly because he’d hurt his hand early on. Spoiled and fickle, the mob once more turned on Louis. When the decision for him was announced, boos resounded throughout the stadium. While five thousand men and women in Farr’s hometown lit a bonfire for his moral victory, Harlem was bewildered and gloomy. “He iss not more the same Louis,” said Schmeling. His greatest fear, he said, was that someone else would get a shot at Louis’s title before he did. Braddock said he’d have beaten Louis that night, too. So, too, did Baer. The press pum-meled Louis far worse than Farr did. “Joe Louis lost everything but his heavyweight title last night at the Yankee Stadium,” the Herald Tribune reported. “His footwork is atrocious; his headwork, nil,” Jimmy Powers wrote in the Daily News. When Louis and Schmeling met up again, Ring predicted, the German would win in five rounds. Even Louis’s greatest backers despaired. With a punch that “would hardly knock over a pillar of thread spools,” Farr had made Louis “look dumb, timid and futile,” wrote Parker. “Never a mental giant, Joe was the personification of stupidity in this fight. He couldn’t think his way out of a subway turnstile. Schmeling would have slaughtered him.” Maybe it was time to reassess Louis altogether. “The Alabama-born darky was rushed to the front at a time when the field was unbelievably bad,” wrote Harry Grayson in the World-Telegram. “Through the medium of a string of stumblebums he was built up as a Dark Destroyer.”*

  Following its marching orders, the Nazi press downplayed the fight. “Bomber Without Bombs” was how the Reichssportblatt summarized it. AND THEY CALL THAT A WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP! read a Hamburg headline. The comparatively low attendance, thirty-five thousand, was a triumph of a different sort, proof that Americans hadn’t been hoodwinked by a bogus title bout. The Daily Worker was more sympathetic. Criticizing Louis’s performance, it said, could only be compared to faulting Babe Ruth for hitting merely a single, two doubles, and a triple. The Defender’s Al Monroe was also steadfast. “Instead of the milling, man-eating panther of old, the champion was a steady, plodding fighting machine,” he wrote. “He was a boxer with a purpose and not a killer seeking blood.” Some marveled at Louis’s fair-weather fans. “If he knocks his man out in a jiffy, they call his opponent a set-up,” Fleischer complained. “If he fails to score a knockdown, he is dubbed a phoney [sic] and when the fans find his opponent on his feet at the end of the bout… then ‘bum’ is the title given him.”

  Black writers saw jealousy and frustration in the criticism: Louis had annoyed white reporters who preferred short fights and long evenings at the nightspots, the Defender claimed. Feeding black anger was what many considered Clem McCarthy’s biased play-by-play, which left some thinking Farr either had won or should have. “It would be better for the fight game, racial and international understanding, if Clem never broadcast another fight,” the Amsterdam News griped. Both NBC and Mike Jacobs got numerous complaints, the network for bias, the promoter for rigging the fight. “You done me half a million dollars’ damage! I’m getting these squawks by the basketful!” Jacobs shouted at McCarthy when he ventured into the Hippodrome. The promoter threatened to end fight broadcasts if such a thing ever happened again.

  But most commentators, black and white alike, agreed on one thing: Louis had, of all things, turned dull. “Too much teaching” had spoiled him, one black paper lamented; he should unload everything drilled into him in the past year and go back to his old self. By scrutinizing him too closely and correcting mistakes before they were made, Louis’s trainers “had taken the glamour away from the colored boy,” wrote French Lane of the Chicago Tribune. Lane described how, during a recent visit to a local racetrack, Louis had been all but invisible. “It was a perfect spot for a celebrity to strut his stuff,” he wrote. “Imagine Gable, Ruth or Dempsey in a similar situation.” Unless a showman like Billy Rose were soon added to Louis’s bloated entourage of lawyers, doctors, schoolteachers, and etiquette instructors, Lane warned, people wouldn’t know “whether he is Joe Louis or Rufus Rastus Johnson Brown.” Louis would soon replenish his pizzazz a bit; in October he would head for Hollywood to star in a semi-autobiographical film called Spirit of Youth. But it would feature an all-black cast and have only limited distribution. And it wouldn’t improve his fighting.

  The day after the Farr bout, the Anti-Nazi League announced a boycott of all future Schmeling fights. But it all looked moot, at least for a while. Doctors diagnosed some badly bruised muscles and tendons around Louis’s knuckles, and prescribed two to six months of rest. To some, it was the same old dodge as Braddock’s arthritic pinkie. “Champions often come up with broken bones which require months to heal when they are confronted with professional and economic problems,” noted Pegler, who pointed to the tax advantages of delaying the fight until 1938. Besides, he asked, why would “such a mediocre fighter” be in a hurry to get back in the ring? The 12 Uhr-Blatt called it “bad stage management” and “disgraceful theater.” Mike Jacobs said he’d given up on a Louis-Schmeling rematch anyway, and would hold an elimination tournament to decide Louis’s next opponent. That angered Parker. Schmeling was an unsympathetic ingrate, he wrote, but basic American fair play demanded no more runarounds. In the end, though, both Jacobs and Schmeling had too much to gain from a Louis-Schmeling rematch to put it off much longer. On September 3, as hordes of reporters awaited word at the Hippodrome, the players finally struck a deal. The fight would be in June 1938. Schmeling would get 20 percent of the gate, Louis 40 percent. It would probably be held in New York, but if a boycott pushed it elsewhere, Jacobs could live with it, given all the alternatives. “They’ll be in a line, from here to San Francisco,” he predicted. Throughout the negotiations between Uncle Mike and Schmeling, Joe Jacobs was literally left outside. “You could see them breaking Joe’s heart,” another fight manager later recalled.

  Louis was pleased at the news. “That’s the best thing I’ve ever heard you say yet!” he told Mike Jacobs. Schmeling, who left immediately for Germany, also expressed satisfaction. “I do not think I will get what you call the run-around any more,” he said. The deal had been closed, Box-Sport maintained, thanks to Schmeling’s magnanimity; by accepting the lower percentage, he’d “placed the sport above the money.” Only Hellmis expressed bitterness. Unscrupulous American promoters, he complained, had made Schmeling endure nine Atlantic crossings to get what he deserved. Even now, he warned, one should have no illusions about what had just been signed; the Americans would break this contract, too, if “any other opponent for the glorious ‘world champion’” could be found.

  Having stalled Schmeling for so long, Mike Jacobs and his people might now think him too old to win, Hellmis went on. “In this regard, the gentlemen are fooling themselves. When the bell rings next year in New York, I wouldn’t want to be stuck in the skin of Joe Louis from Detroit, not even for a million.”

  * “At every fight where Negroes flood in, there are hundreds
who can’t get lodging and have to walk the streets,” the paper warned. Others stayed in clip joints and got “completely robbed.” It promised to take care of everyone who signed up.

  * Box-Sport’s foreign stringers were predictably unimpressed with footage of it, which Germans once again could not see for themselves. “One leaves the theater a little ashamed that something like that is called ‘sport,’” its man in Basel reported. In Katowitz, only Louis’s glass chin was deemed newsworthy. In Argentina, only blacks went to watch. Schmeling himself had to go to Switzerland to study the films. “I see no improvement in Louis,” he said afterward.

  * Grayson’s use of “darky” brought a complaint from Walter White. “We note that you at no time have referred to Bob Pastor as ‘Kike’ or ‘Sheeny’; to Jim Braddock as a ‘Mick’; to Lou Ambers as a ‘wop,’ ” he wrote the paper.

  The Rematch Becomes Reality

  THE INTRIGUE AND THE POLITICKING were finally over. For both men, there was little to do now but wait, stay in shape, offend no one. For Louis, this was relatively straightforward; there would be a period to heal, a few safe fights, and some harmless activities to keep him in the public eye. He toured with his softball team, for instance, though even this could be hazardous, and not just while playing first base; in Philadelphia that September, frenzied fans practically overran him.

  Politically, Europe was inching toward war. Civil war was already raging in Spain, where Hitler and Mussolini were helping the fascists of Francisco Franco overthrow the Spanish Republic. The noose was tightening around Germany’s Jews, as the Nazis, bent at this point on merely driving them out of the country, progressively deprived them of their rights and livelihoods. Of all this, Louis could remain blithely ignorant. His very success was enough of a political statement, and he rarely strayed beyond that. He campaigned briefly for Franklin Roosevelt once, but neglected to mention his name and forgot the place where he was delighted to be.

  For Schmeling, the situation was much more complicated. Even routine tune-ups in New York would bring out protesters. Placating Hitler, Goebbels, Mike Jacobs, and the American public simultaneously was not easy. His every move—including his visit on September 12 to the annual Nazi Party congress in Nuremberg—would be noted in the American press. Two weeks later, in top hat and morning coat, he was present when Hitler greeted Mussolini in Munich. Knowing of Il Duce’s appreciation for beautiful women, Leni Riefenstahl arranged to have four hundred German actresses on hand for him. But Schmeling threw off her calculations; a “bevy of the comeliest stars” gathered around him instead. Not long afterward, the capo of German boxing, Franz Metzner, urged the authorities to reward Schmeling’s loyalty by granting his request for a tax break. “Schmeling has suffered extraordinary financial losses,” he noted, pointing to his repeated trips to the United States, because he had “always stood up for his Germanness and the Third Reich, and has never made even the slightest negative remark about Germany”; had he done so, “he would no doubt have come into countless fights and [a great deal of] money in America.” Whether or not he got that break, Schmeling was able to buy a large estate—“as big as Central Park,” Machon said—in the Pomeranian town of Ponickel, ninety miles northeast of Berlin. It was adjacent to a nature preserve, where he could hunt eleven months of the year. Schmeling later said that he’d have left Germany had the Nazis not effectively held Anny Ondra hostage, refusing to let her travel with him. Whether or not that was true, investing in so substantial a property suggests he was only digging in.

  In October, he began casting about for someone to box. “To find an opponent for Schmeling is not especially easy,” the Angriff said. “In the entire world there is hardly a man who would have a chance.” Unlike lighter fighters, Hellmis wrote reassuringly, heavyweights seemed to improve with age; Schmeling would most likely win back the title in 1938, at the age of thirty-three. Schmeling elected to fight the South African Ben Foord in Germany in January; Mike Jacobs spread before him and Joe Jacobs a smorgasbord of five American possibilities to take on in New York before that. Yussel’s choice was a young Minnesotan named Harry Thomas, whom the Nazi press instantly attempted to elevate beyond cannon fodder. News of the fight appeared on front pages throughout Germany. The Nazis were less happy when Ring placed Louis atop Schmeling in its annual ratings. The 12 Uhr-Blatt suggested that Germany produce rankings of its own.

  In early November, Schmeling again left Berlin for Bremerhaven and New York, this time for a genuine, guaranteed fight. Eighteen months had passed since he’d last been in a ring, and he needed work badly. With this in mind, he insisted that the Thomas fight, set for December 13, be fifteen rounds rather than ten or twelve. Box-Sport described how he was received “with open arms and with joy” in New York, speculating that it reflected renewed affection for Schmeling and disillusionment with Louis. Mike Jacobs, it said, knew that Schmeling was his greatest draw. As for Joe Jacobs, who needed him? “Has Schmeling not proven through his business negotiations here that he, himself, is the best manager he’s ever had?” Box-Sport asked.

  Of course, the reception wasn’t quite so rosy. Four days after Schmeling arrived, the Anti-Nazi League announced that picketers would march outside the Hippodrome and Madison Square Garden for the next four weeks, urging fans to steer clear of the Thomas fight. One of their signs contained a grotesque caricature of Hitler, whose arms and legs jerked wildly when you yanked a string. The boycott, which Jacobs had so handily turned to his own advantage earlier in the year, was now a real problem for him, and in a letter to Samuel Untermyer he pleaded for fairness. The Thomas bout, he explained, was really only training for the Louis fight—Schmeling would earn just $30,000 from it—and by matching Louis with Schmeling, he was merely meeting public demand. Besides, Schmeling had led a clean and exemplary life, and it would be unsporting to deny him a title shot because of his nationality. Untermyer wasn’t persuaded. “The League is not willing to feed the treasury of the German Government—even to a minor extent,” he replied.

  His patience worn thin by picketers on the sidewalk beneath his window, Jacobs threatened to move the Louis-Schmeling fight to Philadelphia or Chicago, or sell it to the Germans for $750,000. Meantime, tickets for the Thomas fight, at least in the better seats, were selling slowly. As Schmeling contended with hostility in New York, he also faced a civil war in his own camp. Joe Jacobs and Max Machon had always been an odd couple, and their rivalry had only intensified as Schmeling marginalized Jacobs and Machon’s influence grew. Now, some German Americans whispered to Machon that Thomas was not quite the pushover Jacobs said he was. With Schmeling paying Jacobs a pittance and Thomas managed by one of Joe’s friends, Jacobs’s loyalties were suddenly questionable. Here, then, was another Jewish conspiracy, and Schmeling believed it. “They do not want me to have easy fights,” he told Jimmy Cannon. “Joe Jacobs and Mike Jacobs do not want me to get ready. They do not want me to knock out Joe Louis again. This is what I think.” Machon insisted that Joe Jacobs had been relieved of all of his duties, even at the training camp.

  Cannon later caught up with Jacobs, while he was getting a midnight shave from a Broadway barber. Sure, he admitted, he and Machon had been “wrangling endlessly” for control of Schmeling, but this talk of a plot was a joke. “Why should I be angling to have a meal ticket punched?” he asked. “Tell that Machon he’s daffy. Listen, I’m the boss of that camp. I’m running it. I always ran it. I’m still Schmeling’s manager. Machon is just the trainer. He does what I tell him. Joe Jacobs is the boss.” The rift was serious enough for Mike Jacobs to pay a visit to Schmeling’s camp. In fact, were Thomas all that good, more people would have heard of him. Drew Middleton of the Associated Press called him “the willing whetstone for Max Schmeling’s dulled ring weapons.” Still, whatever Schmeling was doing to Joe Jacobs, Joe Jacobs stood by Schmeling. “I haven’t the slightest doubt that, even if Schmeling had him chucked in a concentration camp in the morning, he would continue to talk of him in the awed tones of a scho
olboy discussing Babe Ruth,” Parker wrote.

  On December 12, Louis arrived from Chicago to take in the fight. Had he ventured over to the Hippodrome, he’d have seen the picketers with their placards, accusing Schmeling of helping to bankroll Hitler’s wars. Hellmis saw them, and was amused; they were peddling the same old smears. “The passersby smile, if they look at all,” he wrote.* Hellmis enthused about Schmeling’s high standing with the New York boxing writers, even those of a “particular racial character” for whom “the word ‘German’ works like a red flag in front of a Spanish bull.” He speculated, foolishly, that Mike Jacobs actually hoped Thomas would win, even though it would ruin his million-dollar rematch. Uncharacteristically, he gave Jacobs a chance to defend himself. “We’re all fighting for [Schmeling] and his rights,” Jacobs declared. “Write that back home, too, after you spent all last summer writing that we’re all gangsters.”

  On the night of December 13, three men and a woman marched in the frigid air along Eighth Avenue as boxing fans filed into the Garden. SCHMELING IS A GERMAN COMMODITY—DO NOT BUY! read their placards, which the woman supplemented with chants: “Don’t send money to the mad dog of Europe!” “Schmeling is an agent of Hitler!” Passersby made fun of her, while a policeman nearby smiled indulgently. When Mike Jacobs alighted from a taxi, the protesters immediately surrounded him and shouted, “Jacobs would sell out his own mother!” Inside, by one estimate, German Americans composed 60 percent of the turnout of eighteen thousand. Mike Jacobs looked over the crowd contentedly. “Well, I hope them boycotters don’t feel hurt,” he said. When Schmeling entered the ring, the crowd greeted him tumultuously. When Braddock was introduced, they jeered. And when Louis was announced—“the champion who fears no man,” Harry Balogh called him—“the crowd almost tore his ear off with a torrent of boos,” Joe Williams wrote, though Louis swayed some of his detractors when he shook Schmeling’s hand. Schmeling himself got “one of those old Dempsey ovations” when introduced.