Interesting 1961 article on Jim Jacobs' films & views on old heavyweights

Sports Comment by Bob Broeg, Post-Dispatch Sports Editor, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 16, 1961

Camera Exposure

Jim Corbett couldn’t compare with Gene Tunney, Rocky Marciano was better than Jim Jeffries, and Tommy Loughran would have danced all night around his more illustrious Philadelphia light-heavyweight predecessor, Jack O’Brien.

Who says so?

A 30-year-old Los Angeles man, Jimmy Jacobs, a former St. Louisian with perhaps the finest collection of fight films in the world. Good enough that Jack Solomons, the British boxing promoter, has invited Jacobs to bring a selection of his priceless celluloid library to London.

Jacobs, five times national handball champion and a pretty good amateur heavyweight, insists that storied prize-fighters of yore were over-rated. And he’s got the tell-tale evidence of 1300 boxing bouts, perpetuated by the magic of the movie camera to support his controversial contention.

Tracked down by Al (Pidge) Burack, west coast scout of the Hawks, Jacobs gave a revealing and most interesting private sowing recently at Los Angeles’ Olympian motel, operated by another former St. Louisian, Jerry Steinbaum.

And if the Knights of the Cauliflower Ear are looking for eye—opening entertainment they’ll invite Jimmy to be the featured attraction at one of their irregular conclaves—Jacobs and his films, which speak even better than the kid who isn’t’ at all bashful about expressing his views.

“The golden era of boxing,” Jacobs said flatly, “was not back in the days of Corbett, Jeffries, Terry McGovern, Stanley Ketchel and others who fought just before and after the turn of the century, but between the two great wars, between 1919 and 1940.

“And recently Willie Pep, Ray Robinson, Rocky Marciano and Archie Moore have to rank among the all-time greats.”

Proving that he’s not entirely a whippersnapper who doesn’t respect his elders, the young boxing buff with the $20,000 film collection believes that old-timers Jack Johnson, Joe Gans and Sam Langford, for instance, rate with the best any time. By contrast, he thinks little for the current crop, notably top heavyweight Floyd Patterson and Ingemar Johansson.

“Patterson,” he said positive, “is only average, but he could get better. Johansson belongs on the same low level with Primo Carnera.”

Before taking the hide off this brash young athlete, please remember that we sat with him and saw, unhappily, how primitive, pugilistically, some of the most famous names of the prize ring appeared. And even though the quality of the oldest films isn’t good—Jacobs has one made by Thomas A. Edison at Orange, N.J., as far bac as 1894—the movies show enough to be as disillusioning as the realization that George Armstrong Custer was a conceited ham, not a tragic hero.

Inviting Target

The old-timers squared off with hands held hip high, not at the chest, and frequently they backed off, arms at the side in a resting position. Footwork was limited and we winced when even a Corbett, so often described as a graceful boxer, leaned back at the waist against Bob Fitzsimmons, exposing his jaw, rather than using his feet to move out of range.

Roundhouse, stiff-elbowed lefts and rights, the way a couple of kids would go at it in a school yard, were throwing much more than the sharpshooting left jab in combination with the right cross, accepted as standard tactics now.

Almost diabolically, Jacobs has put together an hour-long reel showing the old and the new or, more accurately, the fistic ancient and modern. Displaying high-ranked old-timers supposedly at their best, Jimmy has interposed action (with sound effects) of recent fights not rated nearly so high by the bible of boxing, Ring Magazine.

So you see Fitzsimmons rip one to Corbett’s solar plexus in 1897 at Carson City, Nev., paralyzing Gentleman Jim’s side as timekeeper Bat Masterson tolls off the seconds…Rocky Marciano, his nose sliced and bleeding, taking out Ezzard Charles with one swipe in 1955…Jeffriess hugging and holding before kayoing Gus Ruhlin in a round in 1901…Joe Louis surviving a rally by Max Baer, flattening the former champion with a tremendous right in 1935…O’Brien fleeing so fast from heavyweight champion Tommy Burns that he literally turned his back and ran away in a so-called 1906 classic referred by Jeffries impassively in hat, high collar and sleeve garters.

King of the Ring

On the same reel, Bill Conn in 1941 buckles Louis’s knees in the twelfth, the round before his luck ran out. …Archie Moore, surviving three crushing first-round knockdowns, comes on against to stop Yvon Durelle I 1959. …Ketchel suddenly buckling hulking Johnson in 1909, only to have the angered heavyweight king jump up, flatten him and, stumbling over Stanley, brush Ketchel’s teeth out of his glove as the middleweight champion was counted out. …. And Tony Zale bouncing Rocky Graziano off the canvas savagely in 1947 in the third round of their third Pier Six brawl.

Jacobs began collecting fight films in 1947 when he read conflicting reports on whether Joe Walcott had been deprived of the decision in his first fight with Louis. Jimmy wanted to see for himself—and he has been getting an eye full ever since.

“I’m convinced,” he said, “that boxing writers have been more misinformed by their predecessors than any segment of sports in which the past has been over-romanticized.”

Through hours at the projector, Jacobs has come to his own conclusions. Among them Jack Dempsey and Louis were the top two heavyweights, with Johnson, Tunney and Marciano close by.

“Corbett was a freak,” he said sharply. “Fitzsimmons and Jeffries a laugh.”

In other divisions, the fight-film fan ranks as No. 1 Loughran and Conn, light heavies; Harry Greb and Robinson, middleweights; Robinson, welterweights; Benny Leonard, lightweights; Pep, featherweights; Manuel Ortiz, bantamweights, and Jimmy Wilde, flyweights.

Want to fight?

 

Saw another story on Jacobs' film collection that seemed to state that before Jacobs shared the fight in the 60s, very few people in America had actually ever seen Johnson v. Willard. Until the footage showed up, people only had written accounts and the picture of Johnson appearing to shield his eyes on the canvas to judge the fight by. Johnson apparently claimed that the picture was proof that he had thrown the fight.

Interesting to think that people talked about the fight for almost a half-century before they could actually watch any of it.

(Pardon me if all this is common knowledge...)

 

I just came across an old newspaper article with some interesting tidbits. The article stating that US customs agents had destroyed what had been thought to have been the only existing film of the fight, until another copy was found in Australia in 1959 (that's the copy Jacobs acquired). Willard eventually sued Jacobs for $1 million for airing the film, claiming that Jacobs had violated an oral agreement to not commercialize the footage.