Part 9 (1/2)
While fro point of view, De, from a domestic point of vieas still too close to what Gallico called ”the disgusting things that every prize-fighter needs in his trade” He could not leave behind the savagery that he had once relied upon to win, and that had brought him his success; but it terrified Estelle That hy she put so much pressure on him to retire-and that, ultie was doomed to failure
For Gallico, Dempsey's wildness only ”added to the picture rather than detracted frohters mean Cruelty and an absolute lack of hterHis brutality and viciousness are carefully cultivated, fed, and watered like a plant, because they are a valuable business comhting were gradually being eroded by his coreed to defend his title in 1926 he had virtually retired, having fought professionally only twice (against Carpentier and Firpo) in the past five years
The ainst his 31-year-old world champion was Gene Tunney, a First World War veteran fro Marine” As with Carpentier, this was a gladiatorial battle of opposites Twenty-nine-year-old Tunney was a sensitive, intellectual type as couy While Dempsey, in Tunney's words, ”depended on his wallop,” Tunney was a highly disciplined, intelligent technician who relied on tactics and skills Tunney's wholesoe blended ”self-ihness” in contrast to the perceived hedonish, Tunney ed to reassure his fans that old-fashi+oned values could coexist alongside the positive aspects ofto his study of physiogno technique Where Deent, passionate and spontaneous, Tunney was controlled, disciplined,
Thecas Kearns was noticeably absent and the rich and faht and day His relationshi+p with Estelle was strained and he was suffering froht on by stress His retinue made excuses for hi partner, telling one another that he was taking it easy on his friend-but the truth was that De condition Physically and hter” of the old days, but because Rickard persuaded him he could beat Tunney, Dempsey carried on Dempsey's reputation alone ensured that he was the 4-1 on
A confident Tunney arrived in Philadelphia in an airplane for the fight, s for the crowds Over 120,000 people had come to the Sesquicentennial Stadiu thee (Constance's sister), Florenz Ziegfeld, Charlie Chaplin, and the usual gathering of Astors, Rockefellers, Whitneys and Roosevelts in the 2750 ringside seats, along side the sports-writers and coht and then ten men to cover the contest; the New York Ties of its central section (rather than its sports pages) to its coverage of the fight Gate receipts totaled nearly 2 es of its central section (rather than its sports pages) to its coverage of the fight Gate receipts totaled nearly 2 aht by a deot ready to enter the ring, Tunneyas he could to bandage his fists Once they started fighting Tunney hung back, allowing De for the moment when a newly over-confident Dempsey would make a mistake that would allow Tunney to strike Dempsey said later that he kneas beaten froht-practice, flat-footed, his ti off, the chaes
In defeat, though, De he had never known before: the support of the crowd Always in the past his audiences had booed hiht had they taken hi of me,” he said later ”I had never been cheered before”
Paul Gallico described the moment when Dempsey made the transition from ”most unpopular and despised” of sports the former champion made his way back to his room at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel where his wife, who could not bear to watch hi for him Estelle took him in her arms and touched his purple, shapeless face tenderly ”What happened, Ginsberg?” she asked, using her pet naood corner of his ot to duck'” Gallico believed that this dichoto and his toughness inside it was the key to his appeal ”Hoonderful to be so quiet, so gentlemanly-and yet so terrible!”
Moved by the crowd's reaction to his defeat, yet devastated by the loss of his title, Dempsey returned to Hollywood Babe Ruth, whom he had first become friends with in the early 1920s, sat hiain his title Spindly-legged Ruth, ”a connoisseur of booze, food and dames,” was another sports everything to a co summer he would hit the still unbeaten record of 60 home runs in the season for the Yankees
Rickard scheduled a re, for 22 Septe camp was ”the quietest and dullest of all,” said Gallico Estelle was heavilyon the brink of a nervous breakdown; De heavyweight Jack Sharkey in an elimination round for the title bout in July He knocked Sharkey out cold in the seventh round Damon Runyon was more impressed by the audience which included an Indianand Franklin Delano Roosevelt As Runyonhoofs of fourteen kings of the world of finance, twenty-nine ers and five ticket speculators, all owners of estates on Long Island and of Rolls-Royce cars”
Given that the Deo, Rickard's greatest challenge was finding a straight referee-and there are still questions about whether or not he ed to Capone had been a fan of Dempsey's since 1919, when he had offered hiht at his private club This time he offered to ensure Dempsey's win As Jack told it, when he refused, Capone sent hiant bunch of flowers The note read, ”In the name of sportsmanshi+p” Capone was rumored to have bet 45,000 on Deered on the fight in New York alone
Just before ten o'clock on the evening of 22 September 1927, the honeyed baritone of Grahaentleht” Seventy independent stations across the country had bought rights to McNa prison had been given perra in an estimated total audience of fifty million people The trajectory of De radio industry In 1920, when fewer than one house in ten thousand had a radio set, the first radio station received its license in Pittsburgh Two years later, 576 stations were trans and the industry orth 60 million annually Tens of millions of Aain the huge audience of over a hundred thousand was packed with celebrities,Charlie Chaplin, the disgraced Fatty Arbuckle, W R Hearst, Gloria Swanson, Irving Berlin, Doug Fairbanks and Mary Pickford Auto-nate Walter Chrysler was there, as was Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon Al Capone sat with Damon Runyon The box-office take was 25 million
Perhaps for the first ti for Deun to tire of Tunney's know-it-all attitude, his use of over-long words, his self-regarding superciliousness; they were no longer impressed by the volume of Omar Khayyam's poetry that he liked to carry around with hi more than a mere boxer
Deht, in better health and hungrier to win, but once again Tunney outboxed hi De on points when he knocked Tunney to the ground with a left hook to the chin in the seventh round As he always had done, De for hiain
But a recently introduced (and not yet universal) rule specified that when a boxer was knocked down, his adversary an the count Only after Dempsey had reluctantly allowed hiin counting, buying Tunney additional time to recover fro fully alert as he sat on the canvas, waited to get back on to his feet until the count of nine, although he had actually been down for between fourteen and seventeen seconds; he kneell as Deet up before the official count reached nine This controversial decision beca Count
Back up, Tunney retreated before Dempsey's furious advance, well aware that all he had to do to ait ”Over his swarthy, blue-jowled fighter's face there spread a look which will never leaveas I live,” wrote Gallico of Derasp ”First it was the expression of self-realization of one who knows that his race is run, that he is old and that he is finished And then through it and replacing it there appeared a glance of such bitter, biting contempt for his opponent that for theaway With his gloves De ht That was it Don't run Coht For that is what Dempsey would have done”
Tunney easily won the next three rounds and retained his title on points by the judges' unanimous decision Dempsey knehy he had lost: Tunney was such a forhting instinct” by which overned He couldn't be tricked into the attack, wouldn't take a chance, wouldn't play to the crowd-just relied on being able to evade and outlast his opponent
Sohts had been fixed, although few dared to say so publicly Anyone betting on Tunney in either fight would have hters had crier hoht to be an associate of Al Capone's Despite his clean-cut ie su watched their first fight in Philadelphia, Ring Lardner said, ”Tunney couldn't lick De”
After his loss there was nothing else for Dempsey to do but retire Tex Rickard died in his ar refused an operation for appendicitis Later that year Dehts for Al Capone, but when Capone ”started giving orders [about] as going to win and as going to lose-and na the round,” Dempsey quit
The ballyhoo that had surrounded De career In the 1920s a hero one day could be a nobody the next, but Dempsey's vulnerability, asplace in A ever went to Dempsey's head-not his e in his social position,” wrote Paul Gallico He always ”remained unspoiled, natural and hiht in exhibitiontechnique and, in the 1930s, opened a bustling chophouse in New York He was luckier than soe football hero Red Grange, who in 1925 had been paid 12,000 for his first professional ganed a 300,000 htclub
Looking back on Dempsey's extraordinary career a decade later, Paul Gallico said that though Dee, ”ere all part of the Dempsey cult and ere blinded by our own ballyhoo” Dempsey was a victim of the American dream just as much as a syer of the decade for heroes, into an expendable co of the ate, the seventy-thousand-dollar horse-race, the hundred-thousand-dollar football gahter, and the fifty-thousand-dollar golfer I have witnessed an era of spending in sport such as has never been seen before and which le ringside seat for a heavyweight chaht was fifty dollars, and fetched as high as two hundred and fifty dollars a pair from speculators,” wrote Gallico ”And I have seen the bubble collapse as sharply and cohting go downhill from a million-dollar industry back to the small-ti's architect, William Van Alen, dressed as his creation, with his wife at the Society of Beaux Arts Arthitects ball, 1931
14
CRASH
JACK DEMPSEY WAS JUST ONE OF MANY AMERICANS COASTING to easy wealth on the booely static, production increased J steadily, costs fell and corporate profits rose by 62 percent, feeding a national sense of optiroups like farmers and textile workers excepted, most people had more money to spend and, as vacations beca weeks shorter, more time to spend it on each new product the advertisers told theest Reader's Digest subscriptions, nylon stockings, cigarette lighters, ice-cream bars, movie tickets and crossword puzzle books subscriptions, nylon stockings, cigarette lighters, ice-cream bars, movie tickets and crossword puzzle books
”Society obeyed the iress,” wrote Malcolm Cowley ”Cities expanded relentlessly year by year; fortunes grew larger; more and more automobiles appeared in the streets; people iser and better read than their ancestors-eventually, by autoes, we should reach an intolerable utopia of dull citizens, without cri or drama”
In January 1929 Ladies' Home Journal Ladies' Hoht to be Rich” by John Jakob Raskob, self-made financier and former vice president of General Motors, reportedly worth 100 million in 1928, who listed his occupation in published an article entitled, ”Everybody Ought to be Rich” by John Jakob Raskob, self-made financier and former vice president of General Motors, reportedly worth 100 million in 1928, who listed his occupation in Who's Who in America Who's Who in America as ”capitalist” He advised readers to save 15 a month, invest it in the stock market-and find 80,000 in their bank accounts in twenty years' ti fed thein Paris prompted the stock market to shoot up another few notches as ”capitalist” He advised readers to save 15 a month, invest it in the stock market-and find 80,000 in their bank accounts in twenty years' ti fed thein Paris prompted the stock market to shoot up another few notches
Herbert Hoover, ca for president in the summer of 1928, declared that America was closer ”to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land” and that soon poverty would be ”banished froe was so popular that 58 percent of the electorate voted for hi nearly three-quarters of the population living at or below the official -class farandeur of Hoover's aeneral sense of prosperity and advancehout the country, inequalities in wealth were vast and increasing America's thirty-six-thousand richest families collectively received as much per annum as the twelve million families (or nearly half the population) who scraped by on less than 1,500
Not everyone was as bullish on America-to quote one of the phrases Frederick Allen said characterized the boom philosophy-as Raskob and Hoover The problem was that as the economy continued its apparently inexorable rise the doom-sayers and disbelievers seemed so patently mistaken ”I wish to record o broke,” said the Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, as early as 1926 ”These consolidations and security flotations plus the building boom, beat my comprehension-unless there is a breakdoithin a year” But despite Brandeis's legal eminence, his prediction of a financial collapse was (to say the least) pre
In 1927 Scott Fitzgerald was interviewed by the New York World New York World ”The idea that we're the greatest people in the world because we have the most money is ridiculous Wait until this prosperity is over!” His intervieas shocked to confusion: ”In a pleasant corner of the Plaza tea garden he sounded like an intellectual Sa of its erald was an adler, who, in The Decline of the West The Decline of the West, published between 1918 and 1923, outlined his theory that the United States had reached a stage comparable to that of Ro of civilization that was nothingto Spengler, the e, ”vast, splendid, spreading in insolenceHere reatest and their last triuler was picturing may well have been skyscrapers, the radiant syy, wealth andcontractor put it in 1928, skyscrapers were ”the ] American life and American civilizationthe spontaneous product of a virile and progressive people,” requiring all their courage, daring and ingenuity In that boos, with the epicenter of the real estate bubble on the tiny island of Manhattan There was nowhere else to go there but up Estate agents, like stockbrokers, could foresee no end to the soaring prices
Oswald Spengler saw the huge proportions of the skyscrapers, and their lofty disregard for nature, as swaggering signs of over-confidence As the city grows from ”primitive barter center to culture-city and at last to world-city,” he wrote, ”it sacrifices first the blood and soul of its creators to the needs of its rowth to the spirit of civilization-and so, doomed, moves on to final self-destruction”
This fateful transition from barter-center to doomed cosmopolis ell under way By 1920, less than half of the American population still lived on farical division between go-getting city-dwellers and upstanding country-dwellers was beco more marked, but there was aic for the simple peace of farm life; countryh living Middletown exemplified this trend Its population was steadily boosted throughout the period of the Lynds' study by people fro communities, but its er cities
New York was the pinnacle of American urban culture, the place where the ambitious dreamer fro The approach by sea produced the hes described the thrill of his first glirowing slowly taller and taller above the green water, until they looked as if they could touch the sky!” John Dos Passos watched the buildings grow denser, forranite lass, tile, concrete will be the materials of the skyscrapers Cras will jut, glittering pyramid on pyramid, white cloudsheads piled above a thunderstorer lifts was successfully co new lass to create structures of draht The first steel-frao by William Holabird in the late 1880s By 1900 all the industrial co and riveting, cable suspension, concrete-were in use and buildings of twenty storys and o
The birthplace of the skyscraper, the Chicago school of the late nineteenth century, was utilitarian, distrustful of historical allusion, powerful, sis to reflect the work that went on inside them Form did not just follow function, but dramatized it The skyscraper's ”dominant chord must be tall, every inch of it tall,” wrote Louis Sullivan, a proo architect, in 1896 ”The force and power of altitude lory and pride of exaltation ”
Because America was such a new country, with no established architectural traditions of its own, designers at the start of the century were granted extraordinary freedonoble history” Spurred onwards by A industrial and financial wealth, architects proclaiht, creative use of color and forhttis of ten storys or s went up in the city the following year By 1929, there were seventy-eight buildings above twenty stories and nineteen above forty ”The appeal and inspiration lie, of course, in the eleestion of slenderness and aspiration, the soaring quality as of a thing rising from the earth as a unitary utterance,” wrote Sullivan
America was in thrall to these cathedrals erected to their new God, success Elinor Glyn was content sihest inhabited building in the world; two years later Harry Crosby was so overwhel on the twenty-seventh floor of the Savoy that he tried to persuade his wife to jump out of their hotel ith him