Читать книгу Jacobs Beach. The Mob, the Garden and the Golden Age of Boxing онлайн

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There was a curious symmetry to Baer's career, which he wound up in 1941: Max fought a total of 110 professional rounds and scored 110 knockdowns. The Ring magazine rated him at 22 among the 100 greatest punchers of all time.

Once he stopped taking advantage of being Jewish (Goebbels banned his first movie in Nazi Germany “not because I was Jewish, but because I beat Schmeling”), he made the most of his looks to earn a good living as an actor. Max was a bright-eyed, smiling presence in a succession of forgettable movies and TV shows, all the way up to 1959. His son, Max Jr., found screen fame as Jethro in the sixties’ TV hit The Beverly Hillbillies, and he was livid when Cinderella Man portrayed his father as a mean, unfeeling fighter. He was anything but. As far as his family and friends were concerned, Max was a rush of mountain air in a sewer.

For Braddock, life took a different turn. While the boxing fraternity and the general public were buzzing with the enormity of his achievement against the fearsome Baer, the game's machinery was grinding away to ensure this well-placed champion and his manager did not go short once he faced the inevitable: a big-money showdown with the unbeaten Louis and the loss of his title.