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William Harrison "Jack" Dempsey was born on June 24, 1895. Many people don't know this about me, but I am a huge boxing fan. In truth, I love wrestling, boxing, hockey (both ice and field), basketball, baseball, soccer, European football ... anything except American football.
I have always been a bit interested in the relationship that Rudolph Valentino and Jack Dempsey had; not only for their mutual love of boxing. Dempsey and Rudy met at one of the Mineralava Tour shows when Dempsey recommended that Rudy judge Dempsey's choice for the most beautiful at that show the winner. She won.
Rudy did not seem to judge by true standards, he judged via his emotions at the time. Just as when he hired Jack Curley to organize the Mineralava Tour possibly based on his awe of Curley's prior boxing promotion experience,.All common sense flew out the window when he chose the winner of the Mineralava Contest that Jack Dempsey was at when Jack suggested who the winner should be.
If we are to believe George Ullman's account from his 1975 memoir, it was insinuated that woman was Estelle Taylor. I tend to question that story ... not that Rudy and Jack met there, but the insinuations from Ullman is that the 'girl' was Estelle Taylor, and I feel this way because Estelle Taylor was already a well-established star in Hollywood and certainly would have had no reason to enter some beauty contest where she had to 'win' over other women. She already was a winner. Although she was technically still married to her first husband, her engagement to Jack had been announced in the press. When the divorce was obtained (Taylor was charged with desertion by her first husband) Dempsey and Taylor were married in February of 1925.
Dempsey would go on to help Rudy prepare for the exhibition match when the 'Pink Powder Puff' incident took place in the summer of 1926.
Rudy & Jack ... boxing practice
Estelle Taylor would be hired to play the lead in the Cellini film Rudy had planned to do (and most certainly would have had he not died) with Fred Niblo directing and Mm. Fred de Gresae preparing it for the screen.
Jack Dempsey, Estelle Taylor & Rudy, 1926
It's been debated, often and sincerely enough, whether the times make the man or vice versa. Jack Dempsey, the modern fight game's first real superstar, certainly was a product of his era, but no sports figure better epitomized what we recall in history books today as the Roaring '20s.
Forget pugs in general. There were some great ones in the 1920s -- Harry Greb, Mickey Walker, Benny Leonard and Jimmy Wilde, to name a few. Dempsey was on another level. His fame was such that he could mix with the fight game's various and sundry criminals and lowlifes as well as he could with Charlie Chaplin, Rudolph Valentino and Charles Lindbergh.
More people in America knew the name "Dempsey" than followed the exploits of infamous gangster John Dillinger in the daily papers. He was -- to apply a term that's overused in our modern, celebrity-based culture -- an icon.
When he wasn't fighting, Dempsey was rubbing elbows with Hollywood actors and other notable figures ... like Babe Ruth ... who was no slouch in his own chosen sports field.
Only Babe Ruth, left, rivaled Jack Dempsey as the most popular athlete of the 1920s.
You could argue that Dempsey was just one of many iconic figures enthralling the rabble in what sports historians consider the golden age. Indeed, Babe Ruth was a beloved figure, as were Bobby Jones and Red Grange, Lou Gehrig, Dizzy Dean and others. Commercially, though, none approached Dempsey. At the height of his career, Ruth made about $70,000 a year. Dempsey made a staggering $300,000 for his 1921 title defense against Frenchman and light heavyweight champion Georges Carpentier at Boyle's Thirty Acres in Jersey City, N.J.
When the receipts of roughly 91,000 spectators were totaled after Dempsey's four-round knockout, they equaled $1,789,238 -- boxing's first million-dollar gate.
It's true that much of the success of that event was attributable to the promotion of brilliant Tex Rickard, who enflamed the passions of the fans and the press in the buildup by touting Carpentier's successes during World War I. Why was that important?
In 1917, Dempsey had registered for the draft and was granted, as the sole support of family, a deferment. In the wake of World War I, he was indicted for draft evasion based on the claims of his ex-wife, Maxine Cates, 15 years his senior, who swore under oath that she had made her own money.
At the trial in San Francisco in June 1920, Dempsey produced a letter from the Secretary of the Navy that supported his claim, and the jury acquitted him. But the damage had been done -- the country saw him as a "slacker," especially after a wartime publicity photo was circulated that showed him supposedly working in a Philadelphia shipyard but wearing patent leather shoes.
Thus was the first "good" versus "evil" match born in boxing. Carpentier was the former, scowling, menacing Dempsey the latter.
As a result, even the New Jersey crowd rooted for Carpentier, but that didn't help him in the ring, where he was no match for the "Manassa Mauler."
It wasn't until Dempsey's decision loss five years later to Gene Tunney that he fully became a national hero and fan favorite. Enjoying the spoils of being the world heavyweight champion, he hadn't fought in three years when he and Gene Tunney met in Philadelphia's Sesquicentennial Stadium.
No fewer than 120,000 fans endured a steady rain to watch Dempsey, who -- soft from inactivity and easy living -- chased Tunney ineffectually for 10 rounds.
That was all it took for the world to love him: the loss of the heavyweight title -- especially to Tunney, an erudite, well-spoken college boy. Dempsey took this loss hard and went back into some serious training with plans to regain his title.
The rematch, which Dempsey earned with a knockout of former champion Jack Sharkey, drew another hundred thousand fans, this time 104,493 at Soldier Field in Chicago.
"The Battle of the Long Count" was to be the last of Dempsey's career, and the paydays of the participants demonstrated its importance, though Dempsey came out on the short end for the first time; he made $450,000 to Tunney's $990,000.
It was another first for Dempsey, boxing's first $2 million gate, and the controversy over how long Tunney was down and whether he could have gotten up not only added enormously to Dempsey's legend but became a permanent fixture in fight game lore.
By that time, Dempsey's fights were exercises in melodrama, as was the case in his highly dramatic second-round knockout of Luis Angel Firpo in 1922, a fight that drew a whopping 80,000 to the Polo Grounds in New York.
The story of how the ringside media -- specifically, the New York Tribune's Jack Lawrence and telegraph operator Perry Grogan -- helped shove Dempsey back into the ring after Firpo knocked him through the ropes is known to virtually every self-respecting fight fan the world over. I have watched the video of this, and I do agree that Dempsey was pushed back into the ring from the spectators, but it was done in under the 20 second limit ... in about 14 seconds, so it was OK. Nonetheless, there were demonstrations when Firpo was declared the loser of the fight.
Jack Dempsey, standing, overcame an early knockdown to flatten Luis 'Angel' Firpo in two rounds
How exciting was it? A full 30 years later, a respected group of veteran sportswriters voted it the most dramatic sports moment of the century.
Dempsey's title-winning knockout of Jess Willard in 1919 was no less memorable and even today is recalled as one of the most brutal beatings ever administered by a challenger in a heavyweight title bout.
In all, Dempsey made better than $4 million over his 13-year career, and even though he lost most of it in the 1929 stock market crash, he did all right for himself after retirement, boxing countless exhibitions and opening a popular restaurant and nightclub in New York.
Many deride him still for the lethargic rate at which he defended what then really was the most coveted prize in all of sport -- he made just five defenses in a seven-year reign -- and also for avoiding Harry Wills, his top contender for much of that time.
Dempsey insisted until his death that it wasn't because he was afraid to fight Wills. Jack insisted that no one would promote it properly.
On September 23 of 1926, Dempsey lost his heavyweight title to Gene Tunney. His close friend, Rudolph Valentino, had died exactly one month before, and it is now thought that Jack's mind was not in the right place for this fight, but a scheduled fight will go on as scheduled.
Rudy & Jack
Rudy & Jack
Following his loss of the heavyweight title, Dempsey contemplated retiring but decided to try a comeback. It was during this time period that tragedy struck his family when his brother, John Dempsey, shot his estranged wife Edna (aged 21) and then killed himself in a murder-suicide, leaving behind a two-year-old son, Bruce. Dempsey was called upon to identify the bodies and was emotionally affected by the incident.
L to R ... Robert Florey, Rudy, Bruce (Jack's nephew) & Jack Dempsey. I believe this was taken in 1926, obviously at a beach back East, and when Dempsey's brother and sister-in-law were separated. After his brother's death, Jack took his nephew in and raised him as part of his own family.
When there was a rematch with Tunney on September 22, 1927 (one day less than a year from the first match) Dempsey lost again and did not regain his title. He retired from boxing.
It sounds wholly contrived now, absurd even, but in the 1920s, just a few years removed from the reign of Jack Johnson, it seems perfectly plausible.
Even if Dempsey did duck Wills, and even if he was a lazy champion, his merit solely as a prizefighter has withstood the effects of the decades that wear down the accomplishments of lesser legends.
Jack Dempsey went on to do many, many things in his lifetime. he was a wrestler, a wrestling referee, an actor, a writer, a sports critic, etc. He enlisted in the Coast Guard (finally proving to the country he was no 'slacker,' and a multitude of other things. Even a cursory glance at any bio of him online will make your brain swim. He was kind of amazing. One of the more wonderful things he did was spearheading a fundraiser for the boxer Joe Louis when Louis fell on hard times. He also mentioned he was glad he never had to meet Louis in the ring.
Just a few lesser-known facts I ran across doing my research on Jack Dempsey:
Dempsey's father Hyrum was a nephew of Devil Anse Hatfield of the infamous Hatfields who feuded with the McCoys in Logan County, West Virginia, in the middle of the 19th century.
Dempsey's parents converted to Mormonism. Perhaps this is where Jack acquired some of his ingrained morals.
Dempsey's standard approach in his early itinerant days was to walk into a bar in a Colorado town and announce that he could beat anyone in the room.
In the mid-1910s, after turning pro, Dempsey fought opponents with such colorful names as One-Punch Hancock, Battling Johnson, Two-Round Gilliam and the Boston Bearcat.
Damon Runyan nicknamed Dempsey the Manassa Mauler during the fighter's first, unsuccessful trip to New York, in 1916.
Famed lawmen Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp took it upon themselves to collect spectators' guns and knives before the bout in which Dempsey beat Jess Willard for the heavyweight crown in 1919.
Dempsey's first title defense was on Sept. 6, 1920, against Billy Miske, an old warhorse suffering from kidney disease who needed the payday. Dempsey knocked him out in the third round and then he helped the challenger to his corner.
Three months later, against Bill Brennan in the original Madison Square Garden, fans largely ignored Dempsey's Manhattan training site until Al Jolson started dropping by to help build enthusiasm for the bout. Dempsey won the bout on a 12th-round knockout.
Dempsey's third defense, against Georges Carpentier, was the first fight broadcast in its entirety on the radio; coverage began in the eighth round of a preliminary bout.
His Shelby, Mont., bout on July 4, 1923, against Tommy Gibbons resulted in the demise of two local banks after civic leaders couldn't make good on their financial commitments to Doc Kearns, Dempsey's manager who promoted the fight.
While training to meet Luis Firpo in 1923, Dempsey agreed to spar with New York Daily News writer Paul Gallico and knocked him cold in less than two minutes.
Dempsey also sparred with Harry Houdini and J. Paul Getty on separate occasions.
Before fighting Jack Sharkey on the comeback trail in 1927, Dempsey trained in the hills outside Ojai, Calif. He chopped trees, carried rocks, and did calisthenics to drop more than 20 pounds.
Dempsey traveled in the highest circles of Hollywood and Broadway, he was in many ways the quintessential figure of the 1920s.
At one time he shared an apartment with Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks Sr.
After Jack Dempsey's Restaurant was forced to shut down in 1974, no one ever found out the identity of the landlord who evicted the boxer-turned-restaurateur in favor of a fast-food place. However, persuasive rumors persisted that the building was owned by Great Britain's royal family.
On his 75th birthday, in 1970, Dempsey was invited to Madison Square Garden, where 19,000 people sang "Happy Birthday" to him.
Dempsey published his memoirs in 1977 and died of heart failure in New York on May 31, 1983.
At various times in the past decade, The Ring magazine has named him the seventh-hardest puncher of all time, the 16th-best fighter of the past 80 years, the fifth-best heavyweight ever and the sixth-greatest fighter of the 20th century. I don't think all of that is anything to sneeze at ...
However ... I suppose that can be forever debated.
This cannot:
Dempsey would have been great in any era. The Roaring '20s made him a legend.
Darkmum
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