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  Archer swung hard and relentlessly in the early rounds. A Robinson punch here, there—lightning-quick—made some believe he would make a fight of it. But when Archer floored him in the eighth, heads shook in wonder, fans asking themselves if this was it, if the great Sugar Ray would get up. The referee count stopped at eight. But it was a telltale sign; Archer bore down in the final two rounds. Then there stood the referee, raising the arm of Joey Archer.

  George draped the silk robe over Sugar Ray’s shoulders. The same way he used to do in the small upstate towns of New York in the Golden Gloves days. Robinson had intimated—in the days leading up to his arrival in Pittsburgh—that if he lost to Archer, he would leave the ring for good. Now, in the dressing room after the fight, Millie was worried about how her husband would take this loss that put another title shot out of reach. The reporters were quiet. Fans lingered outside the dressing room, wanting to chat a bit with the legend. Sugar Ray was not up to it. Inside the dressing room, Miles strolled over to the great prizefighter. “Sugar, it’s time, man,” he whispered into Robinson’s puffed-up face. And so it ended there, with George and Millie and the trumpeter at his side. He would never fight again.

  He showered and dressed. Millie wrapped her arms around him. The small entourage strolled through the dark Pittsburgh cold to a waiting car.

  “I hate to go on too long campaigning for another chance,” he said the next day to the press, with George nodding by his side.

  “I had hopes of fighting for the championship again if I had beaten Archer,” he said, with Millie looking on. Those hopes were over. Sugar Ray had left the ring.

  Back in Manhattan, his boxing life behind him, Sugar Ray and Millie moved into a $365-a-month apartment on Riverside Drive. They liked the way the sun set over the Hudson River in the evenings. But he had to figure out a means to make money. The IRS payment had been spent and there was little to show for the recent bouts. He found himself having to borrow money. Vincent Impellitteri, the former mayor, loaned him a few thousand. Millie found a secretarial job over at NBC; she never complained about having to work, but Sugar Ray wasn’t happy about it. He dropped the names of movie and theatrical figures who he said were eager to work with him. He was, for the most part, exaggerating: He did chat up John Huston in Rome, but there was no offer of movie work. Richard Rodgers talked to him about a planned stage production of Pal Joey, but nothing came of it. There was a role as technical consultant for Sammy Davis Jr.’s kinetic Broadway musical Golden Boy—an adaptation of Clifford Odets’s play about a tormented boxer—which opened in 1964. Robinson enjoyed getting over to the theatre for rehearsals, walking the same Broadway streets he used to romp along as a kid when he thought he might end up beneath stage lights. He announced to the press—trying to revive publicity for a long-dormant project—that he’d like to see a movie biopic of his life. (In the early sixties, Robinson favored the choice of Sam Cooke to portray him. Cooke was shot by a hotel clerk in Los Angeles in 1964.)

  Millie figured he was growing despondent. There were no more fights, and there were no job offers coming in. She surprised him with a piano. He played “The Very Thought of You” over and over.

  Madison Square Garden officials hatched a plan to honor Robinson. When they phoned, he was quite touched. The event was to take place on December 11, a prelude to an Emile Griffith–Manny Gonzalez bout at the Garden. His old foes, onetime champions themselves, were there: Gene Fullmer, Bobo Olson, Paul Pender, Carmen Basilio, Rocky Graziano. The organizers even paid Randy Turpin to come over from London; Robinson personally requested Turpin’s presence. Cassius Clay—now Muhammad Ali—was there. The Garden was jammed. Manhattan businessmen, Harlem hepcats, socialites and their husbands, jazzmen, young amateur fighters in the cheap seats. When the announcer called Sugar Ray Robinson’s name, roars went up. The great prizefighter stepped into the ring and did a little Japanese bow. He was wearing a short terry-cloth robe. Now Millie saw: He had done things that would never be forgotten. Her eyes were lit. He walked to each corner of the ring and waved. They were the very corners between which he had tangled with the best of his time, where he had defended his championship titles. He was handed a huge and gleaming trophy. At the end of his brief comments, he said, “A tout à l’heure”—I’ll see you later. There was a dinner at Mama Leone’s, a renowned Italian restaurant near Broadway. The thick-shouldered fighters sat around a table together. Champagne and heaps of food arrived. Muhammad Ali spoke, and his words had a sweetness about them. “When I was a little kid I watched Sugar Ray Robinson on the TV, and when I started fighting I copied his moves, and I still do. When I go into the ring now he’s on my mind.”

  And yet, someone was missing. Where was the Bull—Jake La-Motta? It wasn’t as if Garden officials would have had a hard time locating him. He lived only ten blocks away. He never got an invitation. The thrown Billy Fox fight, among other things, had stuck to him, sullied his reputation. He was livid: “I was only the first fighter to lick him when he was on top! I was the only guy he defeated for the middleweight title, and I was also the guy he waltzed with in six slambang wars, and—what the hell—I was the only former champ who could have walked to the Garden!”

  Every fighter leaves the game with his own haunting memories of loss.

  Sugar Ray loved the jazz clubs. He now had time to go whenever he wanted to. On July 17, 1967, John Coltrane died out on Long Island. There were all manner of tributes in Manhattan. Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie set up camp at the Village Gate for a whole month, in honor of Trane. The lines were long; many nights sold out. Miles was playing with great touch, melodies—“Milestones,” “Stella by Starlight,” “Autumn Leaves,” “All of You”—with such verve. One night, he spotted the fighters. “Sugar Ray Robinson came by along with Archie Moore, the great old champion from St. Louis,” Miles would recall. “I remember when they came down I asked Dizzy to introduce them from the stage and he told me I was the fight fan, so why didn’t I do it.” But Miles just stared out into the audience, pointing his instrument; it was as if words were caught in his throat. He nodded as Dizzy finally introduced Sugar Ray Robinson and Archie Moore to the gathering.

  In 1966 Sugar Ray had signed a contract with Viking for his autobiography. He got $50,000, money he sorely needed. As cowriter, Robinson suggested David Anderson, who had been a sportswriter for the New York Journal-American and was now writing for The New York Times. Anderson was excited about the project. When David Anderson had been a teenager, his father had taken him to some of Sugar Ray’s fights.

  In preparing to interview Robinson for the book, Anderson bought a heap of blank tapes and a tape recorder. But the sessions at Sugar Ray’s apartment were brief, which annoyed the writer. “He had no endurance with the tape recorder,” recalls Anderson. “He would say he was tired. I’d say, ‘Ray, you went fifteen rounds with Jake LaMotta, you can go another hour with the tape recorder.’” But Robinson would shoo him away. Back again, switching on the tape recorder, Millie busying herself in another room, Anderson asked about Robinson’s Army service, about those stories about desertion. It was a topic that always caused Robinson to tense up. He wished to change the subject, but Anderson bore on, saying he needed to properly record what happened. “His lawyers finally came up with some Army papers saying he was supposed to have fallen down some stairs and woke up in a Staten Island hospital,” says Anderson.

  The publishers were happy with the finished book. A lavish coast-to-coast book tour was planned. An appearance had been scheduled for the Johnny Carson show. “He said, ‘I gotta get paid for that,’” recalls Anderson. It was awkard; authors did not get paid for book tours. “[His publisher] said, ‘Ray, you don’t get paid for that.’ He said, ‘I don’t get paid, I ain’t doing it.’ ” The publicists implored Anderson to talk to Sugar Ray. But the fighter, who had always believed people—fight promoters mainly—were manipulating him when it came to financial dealings, would not budge. “You couldn’t reason with him,” says Anderson. V
iking published Sugar Ray in 1970. The cover art—a painting of Robinson in fighting pose colored in blues and greens—had been done by LeRoy Neiman. The autobiography, with no public appearances on the part of its subject, did only modest business. Soon after the book’s publication, both Gainford and Harry Wiley got word to Robinson that they did not like the book, claiming their roles in Robinson’s success had been greatly minimized. A nuisance lawsuit was quickly dismissed. Neither man ever spoke to Robinson again.

  Sugar Ray may have been apolitical, but the presidential candidacy of Robert F. Kennedy excited him. Kennedy invited him to Hickory Hill, his estate in McLean, Virginia, where they talked about the problems of urban America. Robinson would have liked Kennedy’s independent streak—he had stood up to labor racketeers as U.S. attorney general, and now he was connecting with blacks in an unusually soulful manner. But then came the assassination, and that took the breath out of so many.

  Millie started to miss home. So Sugar Ray convinced himself he could make a living out in Hollywood. In 1967, Sugar Ray Robinson and his wife quietly slipped out of New York City for good, bound for California.

  He’d see them while looking out the living room window. Or while strolling the neighborhood. Some looked lost, some desperate. The great prizefighter would tap Millie on the shoulder, imploring her to look at all the children. She didn’t quite realize he was pointing to himself, gazing back through the looking glass, seeing his own hardscrabble childhood. No, he really never knew his father, just as his two sons never really knew him. If only he could save the children from unforeseen calamities. Just like all those church members had reached out to him. He’d be enlarging that mythical version of fatherhood. He’d be reaching out far, far beyond himself.

  Sometimes he’d stare at them and it seemed as if he were on the verge of tears. Little Walker Smiths. Little Marie Smiths. Look, Millie, he’d say. Just look at them.

  1967–1989

  saving all those Walker Smith Juniors

  MILLIE AND SUGAR RAY MOVED into a house on West Adams Boulevard in Los Angeles. Wright Fillmore, who lived downstairs, owned the property. He knew Millie’s family well. And he was quite happy to help a family friend who happened to be married to a world-champion prizefighter. Located in a leafy, middle-class neighborhood of mostly black families, it was a comfortable, two-bedroom house with a balcony. They would never live anyplace else.

  He saw Walker Smith Juniors in the faces of children everywhere.

  Sugar Ray got busy trying to break into Hollywood. He didn’t have much difficulty getting meetings with directors. Most, however, once beyond the pleasantries of introduction, just wanted to talk about fighting. Conversation over, they’d pat him on the back, tell him they’d be in touch. He expected the phone to start ringing, and it did, but not on any regular basis. The transition was painful. There were some roles offered in TV dramas—Car 54, Where Are You?, Lost in Space, Mission Impossible—but they were minor parts. There seemed to be a bit of a spark between him and Diahann Carroll in her TV show, Julia, in which she played a single nurse raising her son. But the producers did not keep Robinson around; there were other suitors for Julia, among them Fred Williamson, a former professional football player. Nothing if not a positive thinker, Robinson began wondering if his real future lay on the big screen. He played a New York police officer in The Detective, a major motion picture starring Frank Sinatra. He told Millie that Sinatra insisted his role be enlarged. Most of it ended up on the cutting room floor—in the end, he had less than a dozen words of dialogue. He appeared in Candy, the Richard Burton farce. “I play my part just as Ray Robinson would,” he said, in summing up his screen persona—and the folly of his approach.

  His landing in Hollywood was somewhat fortuitous: It was in the late sixties that Hollywood really started to notice black actors and actresses. And there were examples of the black athlete turned actor getting opportunities. At the top of that list was Jim Brown, the former Cleveland Browns running back. In 1967 Brown had appeared in The Dirty Dozen alongside Lee Marvin, then got a starring role in the 1969 Western 100 Rifles. In the latter he played opposite Raquel Welch; their on-screen affair had cracked a big-screen taboo against sexual relationships between black and white. On screen Robinson lacked what Brown had—nuance and depth.

  Sugar Ray would tell friends that he just didn’t understand Hollywood; that they didn’t know how to use him. Then he started bemoaning the violence in movies—as if he were suddenly made queasy by the make-believe of the brutality he had thrived in. The Hollywood producers and casting agents stopped calling. He tried radio. He and Pearl Bailey—it was an age when broadcast producers took risks—did some on-air commentary for the closed-circuit telecast of the 1973 Joe Frazier–George Foreman fight. The broadcasters didn’t call back.

  Boxing, of course, hadn’t forgotten him. The promoters continued to invite him to widely publicized fights, just as they always did former champions. He’d always arrive late on purpose, getting there just as they were about to introduce the other gathered champions—Willie Pep, Bobo Olson, Gene Fullmer, Rocky Graziano, Joe Louis. Then he’d let it be known he was there—but only after everyone else had been introduced and seated. When his name was finally announced, he would emerge, like sunlight around the side of a mountain, and the crowd would roar. Every time he flew over to Las Vegas, he’d look in on his old Army pal Joe. Joe Louis had begun working for Caesars Palace in 1970. The casino got his name—he was a greeter, a public relations figure, a great curiosity—and he got a paycheck. They’d dine over prawns and asparagus and sip wine, all compliments of Caesar’s. They were a sight gliding through the casinos—proud black champions. Champions before the civil rights movement. A deep aura surrounded them as they walked, Sugar Ray grinning and Joe nodding his head.

  In Los Angeles, he and Millie enjoyed quiet dinners. They played cards out on the balcony, blackjack, which had been the game he played while waiting to get over to Yankee Stadium for those big fights. They drove over to Central Avenue on weekends to listen to some good jazz. Sometimes he got invited to schools and talked to the children about education and physical fitness. (He shot a TV pilot for a program about physical fitness, the ex-fighter going through workout routines. But none of the networks picked it up.)

  Since Millie had surprised him with that piano, one day he surprised her with an invitation: They were going to London. He had been personally invited to attend a birthday party for Queen Elizabeth in 1969. Millie was beside herself—London, Buckingham Palace. As they flew away from America, the cities were still on fire, the protests on college campuses raging. There was much talk in London about the unrest on American streets and campuses. Prince Philip, the queen’s husband, pulled Robinson aside and wanted to talk to him about the turmoil in America. Then Prince Philip suggested to Robinson that he get engaged. “Sugar,” he said, “I believe you could help that.” He told Robinson that youngsters looked up to him, that his popularity would make him a role model. Back at their hotel, Sugar Ray couldn’t stop talking to Millie about the conversation he’d had with the prince. Even if he couldn’t quite figure exactly what he was going to do about it.

  And then, it came to him. All those children running by him back in Los Angeles—around his home, over on Central Avenue, over in Watts. Many of them, he knew, were impoverished; many of them had a desperate look in their eyes, wore ill-fitting clothes; so many of them were out late at night. His own country was engulfed in riots; leaders had been assassinated; but the children were still running, and the vulnerable ones were in need of direction and guidance. On so many afternoons at home, when he had gone for walks—he put in five miles a day—those children had begun to remind him of his own childhood, when he ran the streets of Detroit and then the streets of Harlem, when he could have vanished into the world of juvenile delinquency but didn’t because he got pulled down into a church basement. From London he sent telegrams to acquaintances back in California; he was coming home with an idea.
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  Back in Los Angeles, he became determined to start a youth foundation. “My heart cries,” Sugar Ray said, “when I read of the problems we are having with narcotics and dope pushers in our schools.” He went to Wright Fillmore, Millie’s family friend. Fillmore, a natty dresser, partial to sunglasses, was in his seventies, retired, and one of those Los Angeles Negroes who had contacts, who had earned respect as part of the backbone of the community. Sugar Ray told him about his idea; Fillmore loved it. But he quickly reminded Robinson that he was retired. “No,” Robinson told him. “You have just started working.” Fillmore was amused, this relative newcomer to Los Angeles—his city!—laying out this grand plan. But then he found himself getting caught up in the idea. (He would eventually become the foundation president.) He set chairs out in his backyard for meetings and got some others to join in. They sat listening to Sugar Ray’s plan: There’d be ballet, tap dance, drama, soccer, volleyball, a whole range of youth activities; there’d be fashion modeling, lessons in etiquette. There would, however, be no emphasis on boxing. He did not wish to see the children hitting one another under any circumstances. Another day they’d all gather in Millie’s kitchen, and Millie, who would become a member of the organization’s board, coming up with a list of volunteers she knew she could count on, the sun setting against the windows with the chatter still going at a fever-pitch. “If you can get the money, I can get the children,” Fillmore finally said to Sugar Ray.

  They needed seed money, funds to get them going. Fillmore and Robinson found themselves sitting before deacons and ministers of the local Council of Churches. Church leaders had no problem listening to a pitch from a world boxing champion. And after listening, after hearing the exuberance in Sugar Ray’s voice, they were more than happy to sign on, offering funds to begin putting the plan into action. “I honestly believe,” Sugar Ray announced to the media, “a competitive sports program would cut crime in half and also would give youngsters an incentive, as it did for me.”