Special Program: Jewish Boxers
Spotlight On Jewish Boxers: Shtarkers and the Sweet Science*
by Mike Silver
From 1901 to 1939 there were 27 Jewish world-champion boxers. Jewish fighters such as Abe Attell, Ted “Kid” Lewis, Benny Leonard, Lew Tendler, Barney Ross, Joe Choyinski and “Slapsie” Maxie Rosenbloom rank among the greatest fighters of all time. In fact, more Jews have participated in boxing than in any other professional sport. By the late 1920s they accounted for almost one third of all title contenders; from 1914 to 1939 there was not a single year in which there was not at least one Jewish world champion.
Boxing has always been a sport of the underclass. The patterns of ethnic assimilation into the mainstream of American society can be traced in the names of the great Irish, then Jewish, Italian and now Latino and African American fighters who graced the sport.
Boxing is also a sport of great drama and angst. Writers from Homer to Hemingway to Joyce Carol Oates have been drawn to it. And so have some of the greatest movie directors of our time, including Alfred Hitchcock, King Vidor, Stanley Kubrick, John Huston, Robert Wise and Martin Scorsese.
Jews have been so much a part of this sport, in every capacity, that it is almost impossible to make a movie about boxing and not have some reference to their participation. Whether it is Charlie Davis of Body and Soul or Mickey, the diminutive Jewish trainer of Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky, Jewish characters are bound to pop up somewhere. The recent movie Cinderella Man, which depicted the life of Depression-era heavyweight champion James J. Braddock (Irish American), included five fight scenes. Of the five opponents, two were Jewish and one (Max Baer), although only partly Jewish, fought with a Mogen David sewn onto his trunks.
The saga of Jewish boxers is not quite over. Dmitriy Salita, who is the subject of the documentary Orthodox Stance, is our link to the past and a reminder of a time when Jewish boxers were kings of the ring.
*Shtarker is Yiddish for strongman; “the sweet science” is a term for boxing coined by Pierce Egan, who called the sport “the sweet science of bruising.”
Boxing historian Mike Silver was curator of the critically acclaimed exhibit “Sting Like a Maccabee: The Golden Age of the American Jewish Boxer” presented by the National Museum of American Jewish History (a Smithsonian affiliate) in Philadelphia in 2004 and 2005. His articles on boxing have appeared in The New York Times, Ring Magazine, Boxing Monthly, and on ESPN and SecondsOut websites.
So what’s a nice Jewish girl doing programming a sidebar on Jewish boxers? There’s not a one-sentence punchline to this question. One is either enamored of the sweet science or repulsed by it; I have always been drawn to it because of my love of sports, dance and the archetypal narrative and psychological tension inherent in the ring. Boxing and boxing films are also ripe for our own projections of ambition, immortality, failure and vulnerability.
Joyce Carol Oates wrote in her eloquent book On Boxing, “Because a boxing match is a story without words, this doesn’t mean that it has no text or language, that it is somehow ‘brute,’ ‘primitive,’ ‘inarticulate,’ only that the text is improvised in action; the language a dialogue between the boxers of the most refined sort…in a joint response to the mysterious will of the audience which is always that the fight be a worthy one.” This description could apply, as well, to the nature of cinema.
Ask your older relatives about boxing and you may be surprised to find you have a boxer or fight fan in the family; boxing was at one time America’s most popular sport. In the words of the Russian Jewish immigrant father in the 1925 classic His People, “But in this country success can mean even a box fighter!” We invite you to enjoy the spirit of the films, from the tongue-in-cheek Max Baer’s Last Right Hook to the Edgar Ulmer farce My Son, the Hero, which, in all honesty, does not contain much boxing, but is a masterful comedy and features the great Jewish boxer turned actor “Slapsie” Maxie Rosenbloom.
We extend very special thanks to boxing writer and historian Mike Silver for sharing his encyclopedic knowledge of boxing and boxing films.
—Nancy K. Fishman
Click here for "The Barge Fight" article by Don Cogswell
Please join us for a panel on Jewish boxers and boxing films after the screening of Orthodox Stance on Sunday, July 22 at 7:00pm, with noted boxing writer and historian Mike Silver, Orthodox Stance director and subject, Jason Hutt and Dmitriy Salita, and special guests. The panel is included with the price of admission to Orthodox Stance.
Films
Body and Soul
The quintessential boxing classic. A Jewish boxer (John Garfield) fights his way out of poverty but nearly sells his soul on the way to the top.
His People
Join us for a one-time-only musical event: a 1925 silent Jewish boxing classic set in NY's Lower East Side, accompanied live by Paul Shapiro's jazz sextet playing his new film score.
Max Baer's Last Right Hook
It's wartime 1942, and hapless entrepreneur Yaakov Gendelmayer has an idea for a morale-boosting publicity stunt: bring Jewish former heavyweight boxer Max Baer to Palestine to fight a German boxer, in an effort to recreate Baer's legendary bout against Hitler's darling, Max Schmeling. Sixty years later, Gendelmayer's son comes to Israel to interview old-timers and find out the truth about Max Baer's last right hook. In a hilarious send-up--or is it a valentine?--of the clichés of history documentaries, filmmaker Avida Livny uncovers a story so wonderful it ought to be true...and maybe it is!
My Son, The Hero
Ulmer's 1943 slapstick farce showcases boxer "Slapsie" Maxie Rosenbloom and Roscoe Karns as a con man impressing his war hero son. Preceded by Max Baer's Last Right Hook.
Orthodox Stance
A fascinating journey into the two worlds of Dmitriy Salita, a strictly Orthodox young Russian immigrant in Brooklyn who is also an undefeated professional prizefighter.