Fearless Freddie Mills.

Discussion in 'Classic Boxing Forum' started by choklab, Oct 15, 2017.



  1. crixus85

    crixus85 Active Member Full Member

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    Death in Soho is the name of the documentary. It’s on You Tube.
     
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  2. crixus85

    crixus85 Active Member Full Member

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    I read it a few months ago. He had a very brave manager with that scandalous series of beatings in rapid succession. No wonder Mills, had severe headaches and depression!
     
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  3. choklab

    choklab cocoon of horror Full Member

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    This is what fascinates me!

    Freddie had became very showbiz. He was perhaps prone to being in what today would be regarded as bi polar. but his children and family life appears to have been sheltered from any of this...

    I read his book looking for clues... and there was a part where he wrote about this lost weekend, a two week period during the war where Freddie went absent without leave, and experienced what would definitely at the very least be called a depression today.

    I just don’t know.

    I would like to think his family knew him best. Surely they did.
     
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  4. LoadedGlove

    LoadedGlove Boxing Addict Full Member

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    Ted Broadribb. He actually savaged Freddie in the Press when he quit on his stool against the, in those days, huge Joe Baksi.
     
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  5. LoadedGlove

    LoadedGlove Boxing Addict Full Member

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    When my family first came to the UK from Ireland, Freddie was the most famous sportsman in the country. My Uncle Joe has scrapbooks full of Mills, Woodcock, D.ck Turpin et al.
    In a country flattened by war, existing on rationed food, Mills was a massive source of national pride. Absurdly courageous in the Ring, he was genuinely funny and warm outside it. He was a massive star. Today, he would make absolute fortunes on the after dinner circuit.
    There are so many rumours about Freddie, it's almost impossible for them all to be completely untrue but you can forget the towpath murders.
    The evidence on which the Coroner pronounced his death as suicide was flimsy at best.
    It seems a shame that he is almost totally forgotten now other than when someone wants to mire his name in scandal.
     
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  6. choklab

    choklab cocoon of horror Full Member

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    Yes, he really became a cross over star didn’t he. He came across so well as a personality in the film I have seen of him. This is your life, ready steady go, all that lot. I can’t believe there was ever anything personally sinister going on. But was he murdered? His death is mysterious...
     
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  7. choklab

    choklab cocoon of horror Full Member

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    I think the connection, came about when earlier details of the murderer was said to have been strong, perhaps a former left handed boxer, since the victims were knocked out or something. Then the murders stopped around the same time so people put two and two together...especially people who were within the seedy nightclub world where a lot of rumours circulated about show business people anyway. Nightclubs were different then. Soho was a very strange circuit where a clique of glamorous people lived out alternative lives in secret.
     
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  8. fists of fury

    fists of fury Obsessed with Boxing Full Member

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    Interesting stuff, thanks.
     
  9. thistle

    thistle Boxing Addict Full Member

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    the short response is, none of Mills' family and many others, except the Suicide verdict.

    Mills dealt with a lot of Bad people (trust me, my own family know the circle of this world), did he upset some of them, probably, even if it was just to tell them to 'Blow, get Stuffed'...

    did he have health and/or psychological problems, Boxing is a hard sport, especially back then, dozens and hundreds of fights, in an era where the aim was to alway seek the heavier divisions

    did he kill those woman... I say doubtfull

    was it suicide, might have been, Ill side with those who knew him.

    was he, as was suggested, about to blow the whistle on some dangerous people - very possible, he was sinking financially, and they undougtedly would be part of the problem.

    was it the Andy Woo and the Chinese connection as others have suggested???

    Who knows, but I don't think Mills killed himself.
     
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  10. choklab

    choklab cocoon of horror Full Member

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    Yes this is where I am with all of this stuff. Do you think Freddie was gay?

    His wife’s first husband went on the honeymoon.

    could he have been blackmailed over his sexuality? That would explain his business failings if he were.
     
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  11. thistle

    thistle Boxing Addict Full Member

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    he lived at a time when you could say it was the begining of a homosexual explosion, which came to it's height in the mid 70s, though it was also still frowned upon & guarded, denied by many in the 60s...

    I don't give it much thought, in his circle their certainly were a lot of "pleasure bent" males, but hey thats the celebrity world isn't it. I think he may have dabbled, but was still Heterosexual, everybody was cheating and shagging in the new wave of sexual freedom, so I'm sure Mills, being in the spotlight was no different!
     
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  12. choklab

    choklab cocoon of horror Full Member

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    Good answer. Yes. “Dabbled” makes sense.
     
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  13. LoadedGlove

    LoadedGlove Boxing Addict Full Member

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    Have you read James Morton's "Fighters" ? Coventry Light Heavy tells an interesting story.
     
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  14. choklab

    choklab cocoon of horror Full Member

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    I am not sure that I have. I did read a library book about Mills when I was a kid, I read another book about Mills and Turpin which was by Morton that was very good. and I bought Mills own autobiography and watched the documentary’s.
     
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  15. thistle

    thistle Boxing Addict Full Member

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    might that have anything to do with some of Solomons gangsters coming to remind Turpin he had a debt to pay?
     
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