Sweet Thunder Page 14
Armstrong, the onetime triple crown boxing champion, had an establishment—the Henry Armstrong Melody Room—located on St. Nicholas Avenue. The Doles Dickens quartet held forth as the establishment opened in the winter of 1946. But Armstrong didn’t really seem to go with the backdrop: He was too quiet a man. With his boxing heyday over, his club seemed an idea hatched by others and his passions seemed elsewhere. Joe Louis’s place was at 11 West 125th. It seemed, more than anything, a place that wished to make its reputation on the heaping portions of food served. “And the prices, considering [the] high price of food these days, are not out of line either,” one account noted. Louis, never an animated conversationalist and hardly a bon vivant, grinned at his guests and shook their hands. The operation of any type of business establishment—looking over account books, weekly grosses—seemed to tax him in ways he did not wish to be taxed. He was happy to bolt back to Detroit at every opportunity.
But as with all great and romantic men, Sugar Ray Robinson’s own dreams outpaced the desires others had for him with a blinding speed. He had an almost messianic drive, and wherever others saw limitation, he saw opportunity. Where others saw the confinement of the athlete, he saw the athlete in transcendence, using his drive and skill for other creations, especially those of an artistic nature. He had proven to newspaper reporters that he would go around them—appealing directly to the New York State Athletic Commission—when they would not back his quest for fair treatment in getting a title shot. (He had begun hoarding legal books and documents to prove his case.) He had told church elders who thought he might be behaving too aggressively—given his youth—that he was sure of his goal. He was simply bending Harlem to his will. A nightclub, then, seemed merely an extension of the man he happened to be. Jazz was the music just beyond his left jab and his right uppercut. The brighter the lights of his imagination, the better his mood. He considered himself more in tune with music and its trappings than either Armstrong or Louis, whose movements about Harlem he had watched intently. Armstrong had made his reputation in the featherweight and lightweight divisions; they were not marquee divisions. He walked Harlem hardly recognizable, a near relic. Louis was an anthem indeed, the glory and rhythm of American patriotism, his fists having bloodied the Nazi regime along with Schmeling himself. But Louis now seemed a figure frozen in time, his slow delivery in any conversation too much the echo of his rural upbringing, and hardly the kind of personality a nightclub might spin out of. Sugar—“Suguh Ray” as they yelled at him when he was seen around the great metropolis—was different. He was a New Yorker. He was improvisation; he was independence. His vibe was new: He was the soloist—jazz in the background—at work in a hostile world.
He forked over $100,000 to buy the property where his club would be, on 124th and Seventh Avenue. (Commercial banks were loath to loan blacks large sums of money, so Robinson set up his own realty company and used his earnings to acquire three other properties on the same block. He had a barbershop—which quickly evolved into a kind of hepcat hair salon for men—an office for George Gainford and himself, and a lingerie shop for his wife Edna Mae. Robinson and Gainford positioned themselves as businessmen who appreciated style and decorum, imagining a mini-empire that would sprout from these beginnings by virtue of Sugar Ray’s fists and Gainford’s devotion.)
Robinson told Tandy, his architect, to make the club beautiful—as beautiful as he could imagine.
Vertner Tandy had the right credentials for what Robinson envisioned. Tandy was a denizen of Strivers’ Row, that stretch of Harlem that served as home to the highest achievers of the community. He had become the first licensed black architect in New York. He had attended, first, Tuskegee Institute, then Cornell, graduating from its architecture school. He wore lovely suits (he became another Esquire reader) and had an office on Broadway. He achieved acclaim in 1917 when he designed Villa Lewaro, the much-ballyhooed mansion of the Negro hair magnate, Madam C. J. Walker. Both blacks and whites were astonished at the majesty of the structure—located in Irvington-on-Hudson—and the accomplishments of the once impoverished little girl who grew up to become a business titan. Just before the mansion was finally completed, a New York Times reporter came out to visit. “The structure is a three-story and basement affair with roof of red tile, in the Italian Renaissance style of architecture, and was designed by V. W. Tandy, a negro [sic] architect,” the Times noted. “It is 113 feet long and 30 feet wide and stands in the centre of a four-and-a-half-acre plot. It is fireproof, of structural tile, with an outer covering of cream-colored stucco, and has 34 rooms. In the basement are a gymnasium, bath and shower, kitchen and pantry, servants’ dining room, power room for an organ, and storage vaults for valuables.” The account went on: “Plans for finishing the house call for a degree of elegance and extravagance that a princess might envy. There are to be bronze and silver statuary, sparkling cut-glass candelabra, paintings, rich tapestries, and countless other things which will make the place a wonder house.”
Sugar Ray’s establishment would be considerably smaller, of course, but Tandy realized he had been summoned to the task because of his architectural stylishness and inventiveness.
As the weeks rolled into months in 1946, Sugar Ray took on an impressive number of foes. His constant pressure against the New York State Athletic Commission had opened doors—though he and Gainford still seesawed between optimism and pessimism about his shot at a title. He averaged more than a fight a month, and by the time the cold winds began whipping around Manhattan in November, Robinson had already fought fifteen times. Sammy Angott (a former lightweight titleholder) and Izzy Jannazzo had taken him to ten rounds, as had Norman Rubio, Ossie Harris, and the dangerous puncher Artie Levine. He told boxing authorities he’d take on welterweights or lightweights. Then the stalling came again. His suspicions about fight promoters and boxing managers only deepened. He complained yet again to the New York State Athletic Commission about the shenanigans he saw all around him: titleholder Red Cochrane seemed to be avoiding him, even agreeing to fight Marty Servo, who, it just so happened, Robinson had already beaten—twice! The New York State Athletic Commission, feeling heat from Robinson and his camp, agreed to the Cochrane-Servo bout, but with a caveat: The winner had to meet Robinson in his next bout. Servo knocked out Cochrane and was awarded the belt. But as his destiny with Robinson approached, Servo’s camp announced the new titleholder had “nose trouble.” It was yet another twist in the dodging of Sugar Ray. So many fallen foes, and yet he was still without a crown. The logic of the athletic commission made no sense to him: Robinson was told the title was vacant for so long because of the war; that the sport was just getting back to its prewar momentum; that his time would come. The postponements and excuses left Robinson, as Newsweek magazine noted that year, “just where he has been for the last four years—holding the highly unofficial title of Uncrowned Champion.”
Robinson or Gainford may not have given it any currency, but being without a crown did add to his mystique: The sportswriters and sportsmen had already anointed him. They talked of him in tones of reverence, the way those who had yet to see Charlie Parker in the flesh were talking. They were both—Robinson and Parker—figures cloaked in the whisper of the sensational; in the marvel of heightened expectation.
Robinson had fought so many bruising and scintillating bouts that viewers of the sport, writer and fan alike, had to wonder if the inevitable bout where he would grab his crown—thus ensuring larger purses, of course—would measure up against his already celebrated victories. Arthur Daley of The New York Times imagined why Robinson’s march to a title shot—he had seventy-five pro bouts behind him—had been so long in coming: “He plays too rough. The welterweights have been disinterestedly looking in the other direction whenever he appeared on the scene.”
Then, at long last, following behind-the-scenes negotiations between both camps and boxing officials—and with the welterweight crown the prize—a bout had been announced for December 20 between Robinson and Tommy
Bell. It would take place in Manhattan, against the backdrop of Christmas cheer. Bell, the Youngstown, Ohio, fighter whom Robinson had beaten in ten rounds back in January 1945, was not to be underestimated: He was quick, his right was harsh, and he had more than enough arrogance to give Robinson and Gainford worries. “Nobody wanted to fight Bell,” remembers trainer Angelo Dundee, whose brother Chris Dundee managed Bell. “He was a very tough fighter.”
Robinson turned his attention from nightclub concerns and left for his Greenwood Lake training camp. The wind there sliced across the hills and through the naked tree branches. As camp went on, Robinson seemed a bit unfocused. His attention was divided between Gainford and Tandy, his nightclub architect. Robinson would disrupt camp by bolting into Manhattan to look at the progress of the club and confer with his architect and decorators. Given that a championship bout was looming, it was a strange pattern of behavior. At such times, Gainford’s lack of control over Robinson was all too apparent. “I was taking Tommy Bell lightly,” Robinson himself would later confess. Many conceded Robinson was the favorite going into the contest, but there were those who had concerns and critical observations, the sportswriter Joe Bostic among them.
Bostic wondered why Robinson’s hands were always plunged into a bucket of ice following bouts. He imagined them vulnerable, prone to injury and more than the average amount of swelling. “Will they stand up?” he asked. “That’s the big question mark. He’ll need ’em both—and in good shape—if he’s to lick a stiff punching capable adversary. Which is what Tommy of Youngstown definitely is.”
Promoter Mike Jacobs had cast a wary eye upon Negro-Negro matchups. Jacobs—his mind whirring back over Joe Louis–Max Schmeling, Joe Louis–Jim Braddock, Joe Louis–Max Baer, then further back to Jack Johnson and any one of his white opponents—had peered deep into the American economic psyche. Interracial matchups, he knew, carried potential for higher earnings. Bell, a Negro, squaring off against Robinson, meant a contest absent the social and psychological underpinnings that sometimes drew the crowds. But with white fighters dodging Robinson—and Bell eager as Robinson himself for a title shot—the athletic commission felt they were at least fielding an estimable confrontation, and one they could certainly market.
Sugar Ray Robinson fretted when a title shot was coming up. He would read about his prey in boxing publications and glean tidbits from Gainford, prying loose any news he might have picked up from boxing camps and other managers around the New York City gyms. When solid information was hard to come by, he cursed, stalking his prey in his mind like some silent jaguar with moonlit eyes scanning a landscape. He had speculated to sportswriters that perhaps he’d end up in a nursing home before winning a title. He complained and wondered how much was being denied him because he was unwilling to conform to deals brokered by the likes of Frankie Carbo, also known as Paul John Carbo, also referred to by his threatening moniker—Mr. Fury.
Frankie Carbo was a menace and a thug, roving around professional boxing like a dancing bear, his paws touching nearly everything.
In the aftermath of World War II, it was Frankie Carbo who supplied much of the criminality that infected a sport already known for its shaky allegiance to honor and ethics. Carbo—so conscious of his short stature that he wore elevator shoes—was a gangster and former convict. (Many in law enforcement would come to believe Carbo was the triggerman in the slaying of the wild dreamer and casino builder Bugsy Siegel in Los Angeles in 1947.) Carbo had wheedled an alliance with James Norris, who was heir to a family fortune and who also happened to head the International Boxing Club. Like more than a few men who had come by wealth honestly or by inheritance, Norris seemed bizarrely stimulated by the prospect of having a crook like Carbo by his side in the hunt for even more money. Using violence and threats, Carbo bullied Norris into acquiescence as he sidled up to fight managers, taking behind-the-scenes control of fighters, their purse strings, and their futures. George Gainford tried to limit the damage done to himself or his fighter through the association, but the more he dodged, the more difficult it appeared for Robinson to find challengers.
Robinson hated the business of the fight game, and as he watched Carbo and IBC officials, his distrust grew. He sniffed graft and imagined conspiracies. He saw sportswriters gallivanting with Carbo and his men; he saw promoters being handed gifts. Low-pitched conversations and overheard whispers fueled more skepticism. Often he’d look upon his Cabin-in-the-Sky (Lena’s influence) training camp—the wind and the trees, the hills and the floating clouds—as a cleansing escape from it all. There was one more reason for caution that had lodged in the mind of Sugar Ray, and it was the ballad of Charley Burley.
Burley, a Negro who made his home in Pittsburgh, had turned professional in 1936. He quickly established himself as a dazzling and dangerous fighter in the ring. He was also quite proficient at dodging blows. The more his victories mounted, the more difficulty he seemed to have getting a title shot. Burley began to fight across weight divisions—welterweight, middleweight, heavyweight—believing it would increase his marketability. He sometimes fought men who outweighed him by more than forty pounds. With no title shot offered, he concluded it was because of his race and nothing more. Burley believed that the sinister shadow that hung over boxing—and the melodramatic villains who stalked in and out of the sport—would not limit him; that his accomplishments would thwart them because the public demanded it. But he was naïve. His own managers often made deals behind his back and kept Burley from the fights he wanted most. It was the breath of Frankie Carbo at work. Burley would also tell writers and fight camps that he would not be involved in any type of shenanigan where a fight was expected to be thrown. (Late in his career Burley unspooled a story about having once been approached about a three-fight matchup with Robinson—provided he take a dive in the first encounter. Burley never fought Robinson, and Robinson never commented on Burley’s tale.) Robinson avoided the fate of Burley because he took an obsessive interest in his own career from the outset, hammering George Gainford with questions and inquiries. Burley was also prone to switch managers, never forming an impenetrable allegiance. Gainford did not busy himself with other fighters, concentrating on Robinson. If Negro fight managers were stymied by the psychological—and real—weight of the racism that permeated the sports world, George Gainford unleashed another sensibility: He was a black man born in the South whose family had West Indian roots; he brought an aggressiveness to his dealings with those who pulled the purse strings of fights. “Gainford was brilliant. He knew how to deal with white folks,” says Robert Royal.
The Bell fight fell into place for Robinson, but only after he had beaten everyone in his path and dismissed the overtures of the Carbo gang. It was his romantic vision of the world—that through sheer willpower he could right things, that there existed writers who respected, privately if not always in print, his honorable devotion to the craft. He sensed a generational shift from the fans of Joe Louis to his own: His were coming around to his artistry; his expected a combination of vengeance, grace, and beauty. Sugar Ray knew the world was cold, but it was not in his interests to succumb to that coldness.
The double-dealing and wickedness—the corruption and racial dynamics that had long haunted his sport—were things he believed he could overcome. And unlike his hero Joe Louis, he felt he would step beyond them. Every move he made was wrapped around his belief in the athlete as necessary Renaissance man.
Christmas week of 1946 found poet-lyricist-dramatist Langston Hughes in Philadelphia, part of a troika of writers working on Street Scene, Elmer Rice’s celebrated play about life jammed inside the tenements of New York. Rice, Kurt Weill, and Hughes were working feverishly to prune the play, now being adapted into an opera, for a Broadway opening. (The 1931 film version, directed by King Vidor, had featured Sylvia Sidney and Estelle Taylor; it received fine reviews.) Hughes had long admired both the play and Vidor’s film treatment. He was especially moved that Rice had recruited him, a Negro, to aid in the w
riting of a play about whites. Hughes, by 1946, may have been a cosmopolitan figure (Gingrich’s Esquire magazine had already published some of his poems, which had been illustrated by none other than E. Simms Campbell), but he knew the hardness of street life. “That I, an American Negro, should be chosen to write the lyrics of Street Scene did not seem odd or strange to Kurt Weill and Elmer Rice,” Hughes would muse years later. “They wanted someone who understood the problems of the common people … I did not need to ask them why they thought of me for the task. I knew.”
Lena Horne had emerged from World War II as a full-fledged black sex symbol. The sheer reality of it bewitched Hollywood, which had hardly any roles for her. The war had given blacks a pronounced civil rights posture: Sugar Ray and Joe scuffling with white soldiers; protests in munitions plants over equality on the job; the rise into the public consciousness of New York congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr. and activist A. Phillip Randolph. Horne did appear in Ziegfeld Follies in 1946. She had also fallen in love with Lennie Hayton, a highly respected Hollywood movie director whom she had met while filming Stormy Weather. (Hayton happened to be white, which is why the affair was kept hush-hush.) But she was really excited about appearing in the 1946 Radio City Music Hall Christmas show. Her presence in the extravaganza—it also featured, among others, Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Angela Lansbury, and June Allyson—sent prideful sparks through Harlem and black America. She was the only black featured in the show, which was titled Till the Clouds Roll By.