Page:The New Yorker 0004, 1925-03-14.pdf/17

A Symbol in Pugilism

When the world was still in the process of being made safe for the democracy of Messrs. Calvin Coolidge, Stanley Baldwin and Benito Mussolini, Jack Dempsey posed for his photograph one morning in the overalls of a shipyard worker. That week the slogan was, "Overalls will win the war."

Jack Dempsey

Prints were despatched nationwide to newspaper offices by a government publicity worker, for the emergency was urgent. Germany was tramping to the Marne a second time. Our best minds were per forming cerebral acrobatics trying to devise a slogan that would stem the tide of field gray and our Administration went so far as to throw some troops into the fighting.

In the midst of these excursions and alarums, Mr. Hugh Fullerton, then a Chicago newspaper man, received a proof of the shipyard photographer's work. His keen eye espied the brilliance of patent leather footgear below the patriotic overalls. The great machinery of journalism creaked into action almost instantly. Hack artists pointed barbed arrows at the hoots and drew about them circles of Chinese white which damned beyond Richelieu's resonant curse.

Overnight Jack Dempsey became a symbol, a tragic experience shared with him by Woodrow Wilson. One martyred for an ideal. The other pilloried for a pair of patent leather boots. It is a nice question which is the more ephemeral.

It may not be wise to dwell at length on the present heavyweight champion's earlier years. One may devote a paragraph to hints of out-of-the-way streets in Salt Lake City. One may smirk and say something about youth's lustiness; or one may frown and indulge in hypocritical denunciation. What difference?

The interesting fact is that out of Salt Lake's brawls came a conqueror who had learned his strength. He went the inevitable way of the beginner in the prize ring, gaining minor triumphs and the acclaim of a local reputation. Then he married and suffered a professional setback.

His first manager regarded the defeat as a victory for guile rather than for skill. He contended that Jim Flynn, an outworn trial horse, was incapable of a one-round knockout of Jack Dempsey, After questioning the first Mrs. Dempsey about her sudden acquisition of an expensive diamond ring, he showed her husband the door. A highly moral manager.

Subsequent events bore out the manager in large part, for Mr. Dempsey never again was defeated. Since coming to pugilism's highest estate, he has refunded privately to his earlier guide the loss incurred by promoting that one suspicious fight.

Jack Dempsey has made a long stride in the ten years since he first became a figure in Salt Lake City's sporting circles, allowing time out for his quaffing of the diluted hemlock brewed by the American Legion, There is a wide gulf—geographically—between Sadie Thompson and the daughter of an earl. It has been traversed in a decade.

The defiant outlaw of nineteen has been weaned away at twenty-eight from the viewpoint of times when lounging policemen were inspected covertly and when travel was inexpensive if the freight crew wasn't looking.

Mr. Dempsey has learned that the camaraderie of poverty cannot survive the blight of wealth. Splitting the last dollar with a friend is not so much, but sharing the first million is a large contract. So he lines his pockets with carefully folded single banknotes, to be fished out one at a time, wherewith he may meet quick touches from those who "knew him when."

A queer mixture, this Jack Dempsey. One hundred ninety pounds of perfect physical manhood, he has a high, piping voice, such as one expects to issue from an adolescent boy. He is nervous as a girl, never in repose, always anxious to be elsewhere. He has left a New York apartment for a stroll and on a whim taken the first train to the Pacific Coast.

Strangely, he honestly detests drunks; real drunks, that is. Their maudlin compliments sicken him. He has to put up with them, smile and gladhand the crowds of fans, sycophants and sport writers, but he hates this side of his life. As he can do it diplomatically, he deserts any party whose members are drinking in the latter-day fashion, not wisely, but too well. How different from the first of his line—the old Roman, John L.

His business sense is acute. In an important law suit his pencilled notes on a witness' testimony were of almost vital assistance to his counsel. It was Mr. Dempsey who proposed investment of some of his own and his manager's immense earnings in a coal mine