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

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As the great adventure was getting underway in 1935, then, Jacobs was the man in control of Joe and the title. He did as he wanted with both, and he was not without friends, naturally. He had been co-opted on to what was to become the Twentieth Century Sporting Club and it had as its prime movers the preeminent media dictator of his day, William Randolph Hearst, plus Ed Frayne, the sports editor of the American, Bill Farnsworth, sports editor of the Journal, and the legend himself, Runyon, Hearst's favorite and most eloquent mouthpiece. It was a powerful team, and they had their eyes on the Garden. Johnston and his bosses didn't stand a chance. Joe was on his way. Just about.

After Jacobs got Roxborough to sign Louis up to the Twentieth Century Sporting Club, to promise white America that black America would not visit another Jack Johnson upon their precious heads, everything fell into place. It seemed so easy now for the scuffling Joe Gould to make lots of money. He did not let his boy Braddock down. Once Jim had the championship, Gould came into his own. He engineered a quick autobiography, Braddock: Relief to Royalty, and a flimsy legend was born. That was just the start of it.