Boxers: The First Movie Stars
Top boxers were the first rock stars of popular entertainment from the very beginning of the sport in America. The 1890s saw a gilded age in America that was unprecedented. The rise of the leisure class in the wake of America’s industrial expansion, the proliferation of transportation and communication technology, and the nation’s growing swagger and self-awareness as a world power can be seen in the newspaper accounts of the day. Such a nation created a fertile ground for the rise of vice and entertainment. Even the working middle class now had money to spend on things other than essentials, and they were eager to spend it enjoying the theaters and entertainment pavilions that catered to their desires and pocketbooks.
Vaudeville acts toured the country. A sampling of the burlesque can be seen November 1, 1899, when the Baltimore Sun reported on the comedy called Signal Lights staged the previous night at Kernan’s Monumental Theater where Herford held many of his fights. Admiral George Dewey at the time was one of the most eligible bachelors in the government, and the minstrel that evening declared he had seen seven young ladies kissing the grass in Druid Park in Baltimore. When asked why they did that, he responded, “Because they thought it was Dewey!” The audience roared with laughter. Music houses and theaters offered classical opera and theater, along with newer stage plays, comedy, and vaudeville acts. The public also went to the theaters to see prizefighting and boxing exhibitions. While women were excluded from an actual fight, they were permitted to see boxing demonstrations with men disrobing to scant pugilistic attire. The draw for these exhibitions was so great that theater owners vied for top prizefighters, and they, in turn, cashed in on their ring fame both during and after their careers. Newspapers reported that star pugilists could draw $1000 a week or more from stage performances.
After John L. Sullivan successfully defended his heavyweight title by defeating Jake Kilrain in 1889, Sullivan spent the next three years touring on stage in Honest Hearts and Willing Hands. (Kilrain and Sullivan would spend time in their fifties touring together, both overweight, but still giving boxing expositions.) In 1892 Sullivan lost his title to Jim Corbett. Gentleman Jack, a play written for Corbett by Charles T. Vincent, opened at the Temple Opera House, Elizabeth, New Jersey, in 1892.9 The great adventure writer and boxing journalist Jack London first met Bob Fitzsimmons on a theatrical tour in San Francisco in October of 1894. The two became close friends and London wrote a vaudeville piece for Fitzsimmons and his wife in 1910 called The Intruder. The piece also appeared in San Francisco as Her Brother’s Clothes.10 By 1900 New York theaters would draw popular black vaudeville entertainment with such troupes as Williams and Walker in Papa’s Wife or Cole and Johnson in A Trip to Coontown. Fighters were immensely popular on the New York stage when the doors to public fights closed at the turn of the century. Bob Fitzsimmons headlined The Honest Blacksmith, Terry McGovern was featured in the immensely popular Bowery After Dark, and Jim Jeffries in A Man from the West.11 Before Fess Parker, John Wayne, Johnny Cash or Billy Bob Thornton played Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier or hero at the Alamo, heavyweight champion Jim Jeffries played the character on stage in 1905.
Because the theater already had successful box office stars and could draw large numbers from boxing exhibitions, it was not a leap to use those same stars in the new medium of film when it was invented. In the first half of the 20th century, California would become the world center of a new entertainment industry. Boxing events were among the very first to be commemorated by the use of Edison’s new invention, the kinetoscope, the precursor of the motion picture. San Francisco’s golden boys of boxing would be featured, and promoters such as Jim Coffroth could make as much money promoting boxing films as actual fights. He would be among the first to take the new boxing films outside the United States to Europe.
Thomas Edison had launched on the East Coast one of his many inventions, a device that was really just a rapid-fire series of still photos viewed in succession. His kinetoscope was a subject of much fascination, but at first the commercial applications for it were not abundant. “Peep shows” were among the most popular early uses for the machine, along with cock fighting and boxing. The investors of the day were shrewd enough to know the new visual medium needed something illicit and extraordinary to interest the paying public. While peep shows and circus freaks were illicit enough, they would not be approved by enough of the public to create a sustained market. But boxing was a heroic and manly art and also had the necessary appeal of the illicit—and it was already wildly popular.
In the early days of “the flickers,” Edison’s kinetoscope could take 40 pictures per second, and the making of the first boxing films produced miles of footage. The first film produced was shot in May 1891 and was titled Men Boxing, directed by W.K.L. Dickson and William Heise. During the summer of 1894, Boxing Cats, previously a touring vaudeville act of two cats trained to box, became one of the most popular flickers playing in New York’s opera houses.
The first celebrity “movie star” was the heavyweight champion Jim Corbett, the man who beat the first gloved champion, John L. Sullivan. In 1892 Gentleman Jim, of San Francisco, dodged and danced his way to victory by avoiding Sullivan’s clumsy rushes until the latter was exhausted and presented an easy mark for Corbett. (Fighting on the under-card that night in New Orleans was a clever black boxer from Nova Scotia, George Dixon, who would later become one of Joe Gans’ best friends.)
The first feature-length fight film shows Corbett and Bob Fitzsimmons standing flat-footed under the afternoon sun, swatting rather clumsy punches at each other. In one frame Corbett flails with an overhand right at the dome of Fitz’s bald head. Fitz counters with a short jolt under Jim’s rib that would gain fame as the “solar-plexus punch,” the punch that won the heavyweight crown for Fitz. As Fitzsimmons basked in the glory of his championship, he took time out of his busy schedule to chat and even spar with a persistent visitor to his fights and training camp, none other than the future lightweight master Joe Gans.
By far the most profitable film subject of the kinetoscope era was the Corbett-Courtney fight, a six-round fight with one-minute rounds released by the Thomas Edison Company on November 17, 1894. Corbett made over $15,000 from the movie, a small fortune in 1894. Corbett’s manager, Diamond Jim Brady, first suggested the idea of a fight to Edison. Fighting was illegal in New Jersey, where Edison had his base of operation. As Armond Fields writes in his biography on Corbett, “Jim acknowledged that his agreement with the Edison people stipulated he ‘put the guy out in six rounds’ since the machine was so arranged that ‘a longer fight was undesirable.’ The entire trip was conducted in complete secrecy since New Jersey laws prohibited the aiding and abetting of a prizefight.”12 Corbett’s unlucky contender was Peter Courtney, a fighter from Trenton. Because Corbett was famous and Courtney was unknown, inexperienced, and not expected to win, Edison offered a purse of $5,000 to the winner and $250 to the loser. Edison’s Kinetoscope Exhibiting Company was in fact formed for the express purpose of handling boxing “exhibit” films (since only boxing “exhibits” were legal).
The Raff and Martin Company also produced the highly popular comedy The Comic View of Boxing, the Tramp and the Athlete. The viewing public’s obsession with violence and sex had been well established by the end of 1895. In addition to boxing films, the most popular flickers included Cockfight #2 about chickens fighting to the death, Princess Ali Egyptian Dance, Annabelle Serpentine Dance, The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, and Interrupted Lovers.
By 1900, the moving pictures evolved to a point where they featured places of interest and real life dramas. One film to take on a more serious note was Searching Ruins on Broadway for Dead Bodies, about the devastation from the hurricane that destroyed Galveston, Texas, the hometown of future black heavyweight champion Jack Johnson. The first romantic comedies were The Kiss, and The New Kiss, filmed in February 1900. Along with The Great Train Robbery and Uncle Tom’s Cabin, theater audiences saw A S
crap in Black and White, where two young boxers, one black and one white, fought to a finish with a twist at the end in that both were counted out.
Gans fights were popular. And while we have not turned up any Vaudeville play written directly for him, in 1906 a documentary-style attempt was made to capture on film the actual Fight of the Century between Joe Gans and Battling Nelson at Goldfield. It has been a little over one hundred years since that sweltering day in Nevada when Gans and Battling Nelson brawled for the packed crowds at the Goldfield stadium. The moving picture machine produced a ghostly primitive movie of the greatest fight of Gans’ career. Knowing that they were making movie history, thousands of men, and even women, dressed in formal “theater” attire replete with summer straw hats and handlebar mustaches, came to sit in polite awe as Gans threw combination upon combination at the iron man from Denmark. The poor quality of the film and its uneven speed (because the film had to be hand-cranked before the lens) cannot obscure the mastery of his footwork or the relentless rat-a-tat rhythm of his punches in what remains the longest title fight ever to be filmed. Gans is listed today in the international movie database (IMDB) as the “star” of the 1906 silent movie The Goldfield Fight with Joe Gans and Battling Nelson.
After the silent era, Gans is portrayed in the 1929 film The Seven Faces starring Paul Muni, based on the short story “A Friend of Napoleon” by Robert Connell. Paul Muni earned an Oscar nomination for The Valiant in 1929 and played the original Scarface in 1932. That Joe Gans, one of the faces Muni portrayed, was given movie significance among the likes of Franz Schubert, Don Juan, and Napoleon suggests that at least in the popular imagination Gans’ historical significance on the stage of sport put him in good company and had been well established two decades after his death. Connell’s story, the basis for Muni’s film, won the O. Henry Prize for short fiction, and dealt with the subject of respect for tradition and old masters such as Joe Gans. Connell also wrote The Most Dangerous Game, which was a forerunner of such movies as Fantasy Island and the James Bond movies.
The drama of the boxing ring and its stars also influenced the literature that was eventually brought to stage and screen. One of the earliest and perhaps most famous of American fairy tales influenced by boxing’s popularity at the turn of the century was the story of the Wizard of Oz created by L. Frank Baum and immortalized in the 1939 Victor Fleming film. The first book by the Chicago author, Wonderful Wizard of Oz, was an instant success when it began rolling off the press in September of 1900, and the book and its subsequent series remained such for the next decade.
The book’s illustrator, William Wallace Denslow, was an editorial cartoonist, and from this background biographers and scholars have theorized that the images in the story are drawn from politicians of the day. They say that the metaphors point to the economics of the 1890s, when silver replaced the gold standard (in the book Dorothy’s shoes were silver instead of ruby as seen in the later film version). However, the fourteen books in the series reveal as much about the popular culture at the turn of the century as they do about political events. Both writer and illustrator, and later stage and film directors, were certainly aware of the high-profile figures involved in the phenomenon of boxing, as well as the culture of boxing with the same stereotypes of black fighters as of black actors in the early years of the entertainment industry. As a Chicagoan, Baum was aware of the imbroglio that occurred there in 1900 when Gans was said to have faked the fight and quit. When Gans attempted to fight in a private exhibition there in 1902, public opinion was so against him his match was cancelled. Black fighters could not escape being objects of debasing cartoon stereotypes from the white press. Gans and Walcott, and later Johnson, were seen as fakers, quitters, guilty of the yellowstreak, and they were consistently labeled as such to make them seem inferior to white fighters. Cartoons of various black fighters were similarly illustrated to show a shiftless, spineless, half-wit, watermelon-eating character.
Denslow’s representation of the ragtag scarecrow in the Wizard series is reminiscent of the language used and the racist cartoon figures drawn in the newspapers during the Jim Crow era. “Jim Crow,” or more simply, “crow,” became a term of mockery of American blacks. And while there is no vaudevillian-like black-faced paint on Denslow’s cartoon crow face, readers of the Oz books clearly recognized the implications in the caricature. The scarecrow, low on Darwin’s evolutionary ladder, needed a brain. The scarecrow is certainly more frightened than frightening. And while he is found initially hanging from a pole, he is also deathly afraid of fire, reminding the reader from that era (with a perverse sense of comedy) of those who had the most to fear from lynchings, either by hanging from a pole or from burning at the stake. Dorothy, a concerned white woman, must extricate or liberate the helpless scarecrow.
Boxing was the richest and most popular sport at the turn of the century. In 1900, Chicagoan L. Frank Baum published The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, a children’s story, brought to life with images from the boxing ring (and symbols of the racial tensions of the time) that resonated with his adult readers. Here Dorothy must rescue a helpless, witless scarecrow from a pole. The scarecrow is deathly afraid of the flame. In 1925, the first full-length silent film of the story would paint the comic scarecrow black. The artist for the Oz book, William Denslow, was a newspaper cartoonist, and his lithographs seen here are similar in style to newspaper depictions of boxing in the prize ring.
The Oz characters meet for the first time. The “cowardly” lion on the “yellow-brick” road, actually a boxer who shows the “yellowstreak,” has punched the hapless scarecrow off the page and threatened Dorothy’s beloved dog.
Modern readers are unfamiliar with these original characters because they did not appear in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. The hammerheads were head-butters, like famed Battling Nelson. Head-butting was an acceptable tactic for bare-knuckle brawls, but considered a foul under the gloved rules of the Marquis of Queensberry. The blow from the long-necked head-butter knocks the cane and top-hat from the gentlemanly dressed scarecrow and turns the straw-stuffed character into a punching bag. The hammerheads are garbed for the spotlight as ring seconds, in suspenders and colorful sweaters, typically worn by the boxers.
The cowardly lion is also a figure drawn from the times. He is a fighter, a pugilist who throws blows with his paws, strikes at the woodman, and knocks the helpless scarecrow off the page. He bounds out of a forest thicket where trees shadow box. The problem with this brash talking, rough and bruising character is that he is a coward. This is the same accusation of the “yellowstreak” made against the black boxers at the time. News stories of Gans’ first title fight with Erne in March of 1900, accused Gans of cowardice. And while the McGovern fiasco in Chicago was in December of 1900 and the book was already rolling off the press, the theme of cowardice resonated with author Baum and his Chicago readers. The “yellowstreak” had become a part of a racist mythology that would plague pugilism for years to come. Gans’ life story was a total repudiation of that mythology. The values of courage, heart and home seen in the Wizard of Oz stories are those same values embodied in the best fighters of Gans’ age, and are epitomized during Gans’ courageous trip home to be with his family at the end of his life.
Baum adapted the Wizard of Oz for the stage in a musical that opened in Chicago in 1902 and played in New York with a successful run on Broadway beginning in 1903. It was the longest running Broadway musical of the first decade. Actress Indiola Arnold, whom Baum directed in the original play, became none other than the boxer’s wife, Mrs. Kid McCoy, in January of 1904.13 (It is said that the Kid was married ten times, four to the same woman, and he would have re-married her had he not shot her when she left him.)
The first Oz film was produced by Baum in 1908. Radio versions of the stories aired during that same year. The first full-length silent movie Wizard of Oz was made for Vitagraph in 1925 by director Larry Semon, a contemporary of Charlie Chaplin.14 Semon made as much money on this film as Chaplin
made on The Little Tramp. This silent movie included the actor Oliver Hardy who, along with his comic partner Laurel, appeared in other Semon directed films. Recognizing the ethnic implication in the original cowardly lion, Semon takes the character in this film to the most racist extreme. African-American actor Spencer Bell is given the screen pseudonym “G. Howe Black,” and his character is a brainless, watermelon eating, lazy bum in coveralls, extremely superstitious, named Rastus. Director Semon, like so many others of this era, ended up in a sanitarium and died from TB at the early age of 39.
Unlike the slapstick, vaudevillian comedy of the earlier racist version, the 1939 film version of Oz minimizes this caricature. The modern viewer sees, certainly through a different cultural filter, a story of humorous characters set upon a more virtuous quest. Nevertheless, vestiges still exist of the Jim Crow age and the popular culture of the ring from which the characters are drawn. The lion is a fighter who issues a comical challenge, but a formal challenge by a contender nevertheless, in a growling bravado: “I’ll fight ’em till....” The dialogue comes straight from the pugilistic challenges printed in the newspapers of the day by editors entrusted to hold match forfeiture deposits. To the sporting editor of the Baltimore Sun, for example, George McFadden insists that he be allowed to fight Gans: “I am willing to make all the concessions.... I’ll box Gans at his own style.... I will box Gans in his own town.”15 The language of these challenges by up-and-coming contenders was familiar copy to newspaper readers of the day, as they looked to the sports reports to see which matches had been secured. Those same readers certainly recognized in the language of Baum’s lion the boastful talk of the boxers.
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