DOWN AND OUT

Honey! Oh no! There goes your undefeated record! And in your very first fight!

This 1959 Berkley Books edition of the 1958 W.C. Heinz boxing novel The Professional has excellent Robert Maguire cover art of a boxer on the deck and a distressed woman looking on in horror. You’ll also notice Ernest Hemingway’s endorsement. Papa’s fame led to his stamp of approval being highly coveted. We’d guess we’ve seen his name used this way on ten covers, but we bet there are more.

If you go by the reviews on this book, Heinz deserved all the praise he received for his tale of a middle-weight boxer trying to climb to the top. As an award winning sports writer he knew his stuff, and he collected other accolades to go with his anointment by Hemingway, winning the E. P. Dutton Award for best magazine story of the year five times, and earning the A. J. Liebling Award for boxing writing.

Over the decades Heinz had his work reprinted in dozens of anthologies and textbooks, so if you’re into sports journalism he’s one of the main dudes. We have a fair number of boxing covers in our website, and they tend to be amusing if you look at them just the right way. We won’t link to them all, but if you want to see some good examples try here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Berkley Books, W.C. Heinz, Ernest Hemingway, Robert Maguire, cover art, literature, boxing

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

February 8

1969—Allende Meteorite Falls in Mexico

The Allende Meteorite, the largest object of its type ever found, falls in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. The original stone, traveling at more than ten miles per second and leaving a brilliant streak across the sky, is believed to have been approximately the size of an automobile. But by the time it hit the Earth it had broken into hundreds of fragments.

February 7

1985—Matt Munro Dies

English singer Matt Munro, who was one of the most popular entertainers on the international music scene during the 1960s and sang numerous hits, including the James Bond theme “From Russia with Love,” dies from liver cancer at Cromwell Hospital, Kensington, London.

February 6

1958—Plane Crash Kills 8 Man U Players

British European Airways Flight 609 crashes attempting to take off from a slush-covered runway at Munich-Riem Airport in Munich, West Germany. On board the plane is the Manchester United football team, along with a number of supporters and journalists. 20 of the 44 people on board die in the crash.

February 5

1919—United Artists Is Launched

Actors Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, along with director D.W. Griffith, launch United Artists. Each holds a twenty percent stake, with the remaining percentage held by lawyer William Gibbs McAdoo. The company struggles for years, with Griffith soon dropping out, but eventually more partners are brought in and UA becomes a Hollywood powerhouse.

February 5

1958—U.S. Loses H-Bomb

A 7,600 pound nuclear weapon that comes to be known as the Tybee Bomb is lost by the U.S. Air Force off the coast of Savannah, Georgia, near Tybee Island. The bomb was jettisoned to save the aircrew during a practice exercise after the B-47 bomber carrying it collided in midair with an F-86 fighter plane. Following several unsuccessful searches, the bomb was presumed lost, and remains so today.