The Man Who Built the National Football League: Joe F. Carr

by Chris Willis

  Marshall always said, "I wasn't much of an actor." But he liked the limelight and the ability to meet famous and powerful people, a lifestyle he would lead for the rest of his life. But in 1918, when Marshall was twenty-two, his world was interrupted when his father suddenly died and left the laundry business to him and his mother. Marshall took over his father's business, and like the showman in him he built the most successful laundry kingdom on the East Coast. Located in the Washington area would be over fifty Palace Laundry stores, and these places would show off his flair for promotion. "It was the first time people started living in apartments and that sort of thing. It was the first time that there was a real huge need for this [type of business]," says Wright.'

  He dressed his employees in blue-and-gold uniforms and disguised his stores with such simple decor that they barely resembled laundries. A showcase for instance, would have nothing except a blue vase containing white flowers. "My grandfather felt very strongly that the business should be a very attractive place. So the only thing that you would see is a beautiful window. He would display a big spray of flowers; he then would change them based on the season. The customer would go into this elegant store and drop off their bag of laundry. It was elegant and it was attractive and people liked it," says Wright.'

  Marshall also had a certain way of advertising. He would take out a full-page ad and the only thing on the white page would be a line of type at the bottom saying, "This space was cleaned by the Palace Laundry and Dry Cleaning Company." The laundry business made him wealthy and very popular around the nation's capital. Marshall eventually married Elizabeth Mortensen, and they had two children-George Preston Marshall Jr. and Catherine Marshall. In time Marshall's thirst for the nightlife got the best of him, and he eventually divorced Elizabeth. He then moved on to dating starlets and movie actresses, including Louise Brooks, the former Ziegfeld Follies girl who was famous for her "bobbed haircut" and appeared in silent hit films such as Pandora's Box and Diary of a Lost Girl.

  Brooks nicknamed Marshall "the Wet Wash King." Because of his wealth and success, Marshall became a man about town. "He was quite the man to be seen with and go around with," says Wright. "He liked to go out all the time. He liked to have fun all the time. He was a party guy and yes he did have a huge booming voice. He was brash in that respect but I think he got away with it because he had a certain charm. And he was successful."10

  As Marshall's success blossomed he branched out into other interests, and one of his projects led him to meet two sports pioneers who offered him an opportunity to join their club. In 1925 Joe F. Carr had been asked by a few owners to be president of the American Basketball League (ABL), a new professional league that would start play in the fall. Carr encouraged George Halas to invest in a team and then heard about a potential investor in Washington. Carr and Halas convinced George Preston Marshall to put up some money for a team, and the three started a professional relationship that would come full circle in the spring of 1932, when Carr approached Marshall about investing in an NFL franchise.

  Carr told Marshall that his league was going places and that in a few years the sport would be bigger than baseball. Now was the time to get in. "Carr and I worried about the shrinking League. We needed new clubs. We proposed that George Preston Marshall start a club in Boston, a good baseball town. George Preston Marshall knew little about football but he was a promoter. He had good connections and a source of money. His father had died and left [his] son the Palace Laundry, a small but growing enterprise in Washington. He made it grow and grow," said George Halas in his autobiography. Marshall said yes to Carr and Halas.11

  Carr sold the franchise rights of the defunct Newark Tornadoes to Marshall for the fee of $2,500. Carr then mandated that Marshall locate his team in Boston, as he thought that Washington was a little too south for his league. Marshall then recruited a syndicate of three investors to help finance the team-Jay O'Brien, a New York investment banker; Vincent Bendix, an automobile and aircraft components inventor and manufacturer from South Bend, Indiana; and Larry Doyle, a New York stockbroker.

  Marshall then signed a lease to use Braves Field-the ballpark used by the Major League Baseball team-and named his squad after the ball club, the Boston Braves. Carr then suggested to Marshall that he hire Roy Andrews, who led the Giants to back-to-back second place finishes in 1929-1930, as his new head coach. Marshall and his partner Jay O'Brien wanted Lou Little, the famous head coach at Columbia University, who wasn't interested. But Little suggested someone else.

  Little played college football at the University of Pennsylvania and was a teammate of Lud Wray, who was replaced as head coach at their alma mater in 1931 after just one season in which he finished 5-4. Little (who also played two years in the NFL with the 1920-1921 Buffalo AllAmericans) wanted Wray to get the job with the Boston Braves and set up a meeting with the Braves' officials to discuss the situation. In a letter typed on April 4, 1932, Little tells another Penn teammate, Bert Bell, how the meeting went.

  Dear Bert:

  Yesterday I was due to have lunch with George Marshall and Jay O'Brien in order to help them select a coach for the coming fall. They have been after me for quite some time so finally on Saturday when they called me I suggested Lud Wray only to find out that you had done the same thing. When I arrived Sunday for lunch I was dumbfounded when Marshall told me that Wray was in New York. They informed me that they were going to decide on [Roy] Andrews, former coach of the New York Giants. It seems Joe Carr recommended him. I immediately went to work and talked Marshall out of that idea and also Jay O'Brien when he arrived with Lud. I told Lud to wait outside and after talking with both of them, they decided to take Lud. Lud was uncertain whether he should take it as he wanted this Amherst job. I told him that $5,000 jobs with the possibility of a bonus were not hanging around just now and also that it was always easy to break back into the college ranks and that he should accept the Boston job. Finally he decided to accept but the funny part of it all is that after making Marshall and O'Brien change their mind and take Wray, he does not know whether he wanted to take the job or not. The same old Lud. Keep this confidential as they want to break the story from Boston and having it found out here [in New York] would ruin their publicity.

  I hope that everything is going along nicely and with best wishes, I am,

  Sincerely yours,

  Louis Little12

  Wray got the job, and Little stayed at Columbia as head coach until 1956. As for their fellow Penn teammate Bert Bell, he would get to know Carr and the other NFL owners soon enough.

  On July 9-10 at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Atlantic City the league met for their only meeting in 1932. Carr began the session at 4:00 p.m. on the first day with eight teams represented-including Providence, which didn't field a team in 1932. The first piece of business was to admit the Boston franchise as George Preston Marshall attended his first league meeting.13

  Marshall then quickly made his presence felt. After the league accepted the current rules made by the Intercollegiate Rules Committee, he seconded a motion brought by Dr. Harry March that the NFL go on record as favoring placing the goal post on the goal line. The collegiate rule at this time had the goal post at the back of the end zone. Marshall and March thought the move would increase scoring by encouraging field goals. After considerable discussion the motion went to a vote, with the owners voting no. Although he lost this motion, Marshall would eventually get his fellow owners to see his way of thinking-the game had to be more entertaining for paying fans. By the end of the 1932 season they would agree.14

  After the rules discussion the owners awarded the 1931 title to the Green Bay Packers and then decided that players would be allowed two dollars maximum per day for traveling expenses. The rest of the meeting saw the teams put their deposits in the league's bank account; the election of officers (Carr and Storck reelected); the player roster limit set at twenty players; approval to use the Spalding J-5 football in games; and the official schedule drafted.15


  But the biggest news coming out of the summer get-together was the approval of a motion brought up by George Halas that the president be instructed to appoint a league publicity director with headquarters in New York City. The motion was carried, unanimously, as well as a fiftydollar expense for the publicity department. Carr would eventually hire Ned Irish to be publicity director for the NFL.

  But the off-season fireworks weren't over yet for George Halas, as he faced a big deadline on July 31. According to the agreement he signed the previous year to buy out Dutch Sternaman, Halas had one last payment of $7,000 that was due. On that day, Halas was short $5,000. Under the agreement if Halas didn't make the payment, Dutch would assume control of his stock and the team. Dutch's lawyer sent Papa Bear a letter stating that Dutch's stock would go up for public auction on August 9. Desperation set in for Halas as he had till noon on the ninth to gain full control of the Bears.

  "I tried everywhere to raise the $5,000. I called everyone I knew. No one could help me. Many banks were closed and those open would make no loan. I was desperate. At noon I would lose my Bears, " Halas remembered in his autobiography.

  About 11 o'clock Mr. C. K. Anderson, the president of the First National Bank in Antioch, phoned. He said he understood I needed $5,000 urgently. "How true! I must have the money by noon or I will lose my Bears!" He said he would lend me the money. I raced from my office at 111 W. Washington to his Chicago office at Randolph and LaSalle Streets and collected his check. With grateful but quick thanks, and then ran to the lawyer's office and handed in a check. It was 10 minutes to noon ... I had firm control of the Bears. Again, adversity had bestowed its benefits upon me.16

  Halas had avoided disaster and was now the sole owner of the Chicago Bears. It was hard for Carr to think about what would have happened if the Bears went up for public auction.

  What Carr was thinking about was what the publicity department in New York would be doing. The money spent for the department would change the landscape of the NFL. In 1932 the NFL would keep "official statistics" for the first time ever. With the help of Ned Irish and the newly developed publicity department in New York, the stats and league scores/ standings would reach newspapers nationally each Monday.

  A month before the season was to start, the Portsmouth Spartans held another rally with over four hundred fans showing up to hear Harry Snyder talk about the state of the team, the upcoming schedule, and ticket prices. The Spartans set tickets at seventy-five cents for a general admission, $1.50 for bleachers seats and $2.00 for stadium seats. They also announced they would have a special $1.00 coupon for a stadium seat (in sections A-B, F-G) that would be in the Portsmouth Times for the October 2 game against the Chicago Cardinals.'

  Several teams felt the crunch of the Great Depression. The Packers reduced their ticket prices going into the season by cutting season tickets (six games) from fifteen dollars to twelve dollars and box seats from twenty-five dollars to twenty dollars. They hoped the lowering of ticket prices would bring out fans to NFL games to watch the action, even though the 1932 season would go down as one of the truly remarkable seasons, despite the sometimes "boring" play on the field (which made absolutely no sense since Carr's loop featured a bevy of current and new stars). Returning All-Pros and future Hall of Famers included Bronko Nagurski (Bears), Red Grange (Bears), Mel Hein (Giants), Red Badgro (Giants), Dutch Clark (Spartans), Ken Strong (Stapletons), Benny Friedman (who had just joined Brooklyn), Cal Hubbard (Packers), and Johnny Blood (Packers)."

  The new crop of rookies was equally impressive. With no NFL draft, graduating college players were free to sign with the highest bidder. In 1932 four future Hall of Famers inked NFL contracts. Fullback Clarke Hinkle (Bucknell) signed with Lambeau's Packers; end Bill Hewitt (Michigan) with the Bears; halfback Cliff Battles (West Virginia Wesleyan); and tackle Turk Edwards (Washington State) with Marshall's new Boston Braves.

  Although the NFL had more stars than they could possibly dream of and the league played under virtually the same rules as college football, the perception of the two games by the fans was very different: college football, awash in ancient rivalries and hoopla, was exciting; pro football, with its low scores and ties, was not. The only major change in the rules for 1932, a substitution change allowing a replaced player to return in a subsequent quarter, had no effect on the lack of scoring. In 1932, NFL games averaged only 16.4 points per game for both teams, the lowest pergame average since 1926. At the end of the season, the NFL owners would see a light at the end of the tunnel.

  But Carr did have to put out one fire concerning a new player. The Boston Braves filed a complaint against the New York Giants over the signing of former University of Southern California star halfback Ernie Pinckert. It seems that Pinckert signed contracts with both teams, so on his way east from California, he stopped in Columbus to visit with Carr. The president declared him the property of the Braves since he signed with them first. As the off-season fireworks ended, the eight NFL teams were now ready to hit the field.

  On September 18 the Packers kicked off the NFL's thirteenth season by raising the championship banner for the third consecutive year. Then in front of a disappointing crowd of just 3,500 fans, the Pack defeated the Chicago Cardinals 15-7. The following week, Carr allowed his precious daughter to take a trip to Portsmouth to visit a friend. He was so well-known in that area that the news made the local paper there: "Miss Mary Vallee Harold of Ninth and Gay streets will have as guest this week, Miss Mary Carr of Columbus, who was a classmate of Miss Harold at St. Mary's of the Springs College, is the daughter of Joe Carr, president of the National Football League. Mr. Carr will come to Portsmouth Sunday [September 25] to attend the Spartans-New York Giants football game and his daughter will return home with him.""

  Carr did attend the Giants-Spartans game. After chatting with Tim Mara and Dr. Harry March before the game on the Giants sideline, he sat in his customary fifty-yard-line box seat and watched the Spartans pull out a 7-0 victory behind a Dutch Clark touchdown. Following the game, he told the press it was "one of the greatest games he has ever seen" and he "praised both teams .1120 1 guess only Carr could appreciate a game that featured just one touchdown and call it one of the greatest games. Something needed to be done to increase the thrills on the field.

  The following week Carr traveled east, leaving Mary at home this time, to Boston to see the first ever NFL game for the newly minted Boston Braves. Leading up to the game ads were taken out in Boston papers, proclaiming the Braves to be part of "Big League Football," and listing ticket prices at $1.50 for box seats, $1.00 for grandstand, and fifty cents for a bleacher seat. At 2:30 p.m. on October 2 Carr, Marshall, and over 6,000 fans (New York Times reported 8,000 fans) from Beantown gathered at Braves Field to watch the Braves tackle the Brooklyn Dodgers-led by new quarterback Benny Friedman. What they saw was a clinic by the best passer in the league. Freidman fired two touchdown passes to Jack Grossman to help the Dodgers to a 14-0 victory21

  Despite the shutout, the reviews were positive, but not spectacular for Carr's newest team. The crowd in the big city was somewhat disappointing too. Small-town Portsmouth was capable of getting 6,000 fans-so for a city that had a population base of over 780,000, it wasn't quite what Carr was expecting. In writing to the directors of the Portsmouth Spartans (who were to play the Braves on November 20), Carr said the Braves' debut "was a big success. Two bands furnished the music and the crowd exceeded the 10,000 mark and Boston looks like a real city for the National league."22 This time Carr's positive outlook got the best of him. The crowd was nowhere near 10,000, and Boston would struggle in its first year in the NFL.

  Carr's comments on the Braves were written by Will P. Minego and appeared in the October 7 edition of the Portsmouth Times. In that same column Minego also wrote about the eligibility of Joe Lillard, a black halfback just signed by the Chicago Cardinals. Lillard was the only black player in the NFL in 1932 and had played just one year of college ball at Oregon before it was revealed that
he had played professional baseball. Declared ineligible, Lillard claimed that he only got paid for driving the bus and only played when an emergency arose. The Times wrote, "The Spartan owners have asked Joe Carr to look into the eligibility of Joe Lillard, Negro flash with the Chicago Cardinals. Carr says he has already started the investigation. He says the eligibility rules were amended at the annual meeting in Atlantic City last July and Lillard may be eligible."23

  Lillard shouldn't have been allowed to play since his class had not yet graduated, so it's very odd that Carr and the other owners would allow Lillard to play. Maybe Carr thought in the midst of a depression-where the number of unemployed Americans had climbed from 2 million in 1929 to 8 million in 1932-that it would have been difficult to see a young man who was forced to give up his college eligibility under distressful circumstances not be given a chance to make a living. Nobody really knows why Lillard was able to play, but he made the best of his opportunity.24

  Lillard became the Cardinals' biggest attraction on a team that finished with just two wins, as he helped attract big crowds in Boston (15,000) and Brooklyn (17,000). Lillard also saw the potential of the pro game, as was clear when he spoke to the press about comparing the pro game to the college game:

  The crowd goes to a football game for the thrills, and the pros are giving the customers as many sensational plays as the college gridders. In a college game, you see stars in two or three positions on the team, while in a professional contest every man needs to be a star to retain his place on the team.