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Pulp International - Joe+Louis
Sportswire Apr 19 2023
LOUIS SHRUGGED
Hmm... not bad. Of course, the real test of strength is whether someone goes down when I bust them in the mouth.


Two titans of U.S. culture meet in this photo showing boxing champ Joe Louis examining the muscles of strongman Charles Atlas (née Angelo Siciliano) at Madame Bey's, a New Jersey camp for professional boxers. While Louis and Atlas are legends in their fields, Bey was an interesting personality too, though now mostly forgotten. Her camp was used by top rank boxers who needed to train for upcoming fights, and because the rules banned alcohol, swearing, women, etc., it was considered an ideal place to hone skills while shutting out distractions. The photo was made in 1938. 

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Hollywoodland Oct 30 2019
POLICE BEAT
America's oldest tabloid continues its appointed rounds.


Today we have the cover and some interior scans from an October 1971 issue of the National Police Gazette, which dutifully explores its usual realms of sports, crime, and Hollywood. The magazine was founded in 1845, which is always astounding to consider. We bought a pile of these ages ago. In fact, they were the first bulk purchase of tabloids we ever made for the website. These ’70s issues of Gazette tend to be very cheap, but, as late stage editions, don't hold much intrigue, which is why we hadn't scanned one since 2014.
 
But we have to clear some space in our Pulp cave, so we scanned this one and immediately sailed it into the recycling bin. On the cover you have Samantha Marsh, and inside you get Joe Louis and Max Schmeling, Australian model Deanne Soutar, speculations on how old men can be and still have sex, hashish smugglers from India, and a story on the mysterious death of actress Thelma Todd. More from Police Gazette coming soon.

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Sportswire Dec 29 2016
SAY IT AIN'T SO JOE
A legendary boxer faces the winter of his discontent.

The National Police Gazette asks on a cover from this month in 1950 “What Will Happen to Joe Louis?” It's a poignant question. Louis had earned more than $4 million during his boxing career (about $40 million in 2016 money), but thanks to predatory managers and slimy handlers had received only about $800,000 of it. However, his gross earnings left him with a huge tax bill, forcing him to fight past his prime in an attempt to pay off the debt. In September 1950 he met Ezzard Charles and was thrashed. For his pain he earned just over $100,000—not nearly enough to pay off the government. Left with no choice, he decided to shoot for another big payday. First he notched several wins again club level fighters, then booked a bout against another top boxer. That boxer was twenty-seven year old Rocky Marciano, and the meeting ended with Louis being knocked clean out of the ring. So, getting back to the Gazette's question: "What will happen to Joe Louis?" What happened is he retired and became an exhibition fighter, still carrying that heavy debt, and he never paid it off.

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Sportswire Oct 10 2016
HOLY WARRIOR
My father is tougher than your father.

This bit of World War II propaganda, which was created by the Graphics Division of the U.S. government's Office of Facts and Figures in 1942, caught our eye for a couple of reasons. It features champion boxer Joe Louis, which is interesting enough, but it also features a quote he had uttered while taking part in a military charity event: “We’re going to do our part… and we’ll win because we’re on God’s side.”

This is an interesting turn of phrase because of its inversion of "our" and "God." The way Louis formulates the idea suggests God desired the war and the U.S. was just helping out. Usually you hear the sentiment expressed as, “God is on our side,” but Louis's quote has more power loaded into it than the standard iteration. It casts Japan as not just battling an enemy nation that has God's help, but battling the natural order of the cosmos.

Of course, the Japanese also thought they were divinely guided, and over in Europe where Germany was fighting several countries at once, the opportunistic Adolf Hitler, though a skeptic in private, declared himself a Christian in public and busily used religious sentiment in his devoutly Catholic nation to whip up support for his rule. Thus God was presumably rooting for both sides. We have a sizable collection of World War II propaganda inside Pulp Intl., originating from many countries, which we think is worth a look. You can see some of it here, here, here, herehere, and here.

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Sportswire May 11 2016
BLEEDING FOR THE CAUSE
He gave every last drop of his blood—to the IRS.


This National Police Gazette cover from this month in 1951 shows a bloodied Joe Louis in the midst of a title bout loss to Ezzard Charles in September 1950. Louis had retired, but when the U.S. government's Internal Revenue Service came after him for $500,000 in back taxes, he fought again—at age thirty-six—with the agreement that the proceeds would clear his debt. Thus Gazette's sub-head: “Why Joe Louis Can't Quit.” He'd hoped to pay off the entire bill with one fight, but the crowd was small and the purse far less than expected. With debt still outstanding, he did the only thing he could—take more fights.
 
And in the center of the magazine Gazette offers up Hazel Nilsen as its Date of the Month. Gazette featured established personalities on its calendar pages only occasionally, which means the magazine's promo shots today serve as an encyclopedia of aspiring starlets who almost—but never quite—made it. Nilsen was aiming for Broadway because of the excitement of acting before a live audience, but never appeared in a play. Instead she scored small roles in three Hollywood westerns between 1949 and 1952, including as an Indian maiden named White Fawn in Apache Chief, before fading from the scene. Showbiz is a cruel mistress.

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Sportswire Nov 4 2014
BOXER'S DOZEN
Twelve leading causes of headaches and bodily pain.

The National Police Gazette devoted much of its space to boxing. Above you see twelve pages, some originals and some reprints, from its monthly feature the Gallery of Champions. Of course, Jimmy Carter, at top, later went on to become president of the United States. Really a remarkable story. 

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Vintage Pulp Jun 8 2014
TAKE YOUR PIC
All celebrities great and small.


We’ve featured Pic magazine only once before, but not because it was an unimportant publication. Quite the opposite—we’ve seen issues as early as 1936 and as late as 1958, making it both a Depression and World War II survivor, presumably no easy feat and certainly a run indicative of sustained popularity. Early issues seemed focused on sports, but it soon broadened to include celebrities. It was launched by Wagner Publications of New York City, and this issue appeared in June 1952 with a cover featuring actress Suzan Ball placing a crown on the head of Akton Miller, a man Pic had chosen as its Hot Rod King. Inside you get a raft of Hollywood stars, including photos of Yvonne De Carlo in Uruguay, Marilyn Monroe, Janet Leigh, and Joan Vohs, shots of New York Giants manager Leo Durocher and his beautiful actress wife Laraine Day, and some nice boxing pictures. There’s also an interesting feature on the day’s top vocalists (with African-Americans notably excluded), and a profile of crooner Tony Bennett. 

But it’s Suzan Ball’s story we’re interested in today. Her path to show business was so typical of the period as to be almost banal—she was spotted in a Santa Maria, California newspaper after winning a cake baking contest. Universal-International scouts thought she looked a bit like Jane Russell, so they swept her up, shuttled her down Highway 101, signed her to a contract and began selling her as a hot new Tinseltown commodity, proclaiming her the New Cinderella Girl of ’52. Soon the influential columnist Hedda Hopper took up the refrain, naming her one of the most important new stars of 1953, thus ensuring that year would belong to Ball.

It was then that her train to stardom jumped the tracks. She injured her leg performing a dance number in East of Sumatra, and later in the year had a car accident and hurt the leg again. Treatment for those two injuries led to the discovery of a cancerous tumor. Soon afterward she fell and broke the limb, and when doctors decided they couldn’t remove the tumor they instead took the entire the leg. That was in January 1954. Ball soldiered on in her show business career with an artificial leg, starring in Chief Crazy Horse, though she lost fifteen pounds during the production, and later playing nightclub dates and appearing on television shows. In July 1955 she collapsed while rehearsing for the show Climax, whereupon doctors discovered the cancer had metastasized and spread to her lungs. A month later she died at age twenty-one. We have about fifty scans below.

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Vintage Pulp | Sportswire Nov 16 2013
STAMP DISPENSER
How to break a head of the competition.


Last we saw Joe Louis he had been propelled by a Rocky Marciano punch out of the boxing ring (literally) and into an overdue retirement. But old boxers don’t usually fade away—they more often switch careers (e.g. Tyson/acting). Louis switched to wrestling in 1956, but after being diagnosed with a heart ailment, became a wrestling referee. It wasn’t such a surprising transition, as he had first refereed wrestling way back in 1944 when, during a 30-day furlough from military service, he officiated a match between Ernie Dusek and George Becker.

The above National Police Gazette cover from this month in 1960 shows action between Frankie Jarvis and Gino Garibaldi, with Louis seeming almost zen about it, as if offering a gentle reminder that neck stamping is bad for the karma. Hard to tell who’s the stamper and who’s the stampee, but if we had to guess we’d say Jarvis is on top and Garibaldi is the one being taught the tensile limits of his own spine. We checked both those guys out and while Jarvis produced no hits on the web, turns out Garibaldi was a major wrestling figure who fought more than 1,300 bouts over his career (doubtless some Pulp Intl. readers already knew that, but go easy on us—it was well before our time).
 
Louis worked as a ref until 1972, and though we don’t know if he was considered proficient or deficient in the profession, he did remain a prominent celebrity through those years, appearing at promotional events and competing on television quiz shows. As a side note, we should mention that his celebrity was even powerful enough for him to break the Professional Golf Association’s color line back in 1952, so the high profile he maintained throughout his retirement was simply the continuation of an established trend. We have several entries on Joe Louis on the website. If you want to see those, just click his keywords below.

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Sportswire Oct 26 2013
JOE VERSUS THE VOLCANO
Joe Louis fights beyond his prime with predictable results.


It’s been awhile since we shared one of The National Police Gazette’s famed boxing covers, so today we have a smudged and smeared but still compelling one featuring Joe Louis after being knocked down by Rocky Marciano. Louis had taken the fight strictly for the money, which he needed to deal with tax problems. Pretty much everyone (except those sneaky oddsmakers) knew Louis would lose to Marciano, who was a decade younger and the reigning heavyweight champ, and indeed Louis was knocked out in the eighth round. That was today in 1951. We also found the original photo the Gazette used for its cover, which hit newsstands in October 1952. Unfortunately we had to go to a white supremacist website to get it. We’re going to take a long shower, and we’ll continue with our regularly scheduled pulp once we feel clean again. In the meantime, to see more fascinating Gazette boxing covers start here and here, and follow the links in those posts.
 
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Sportswire Jan 27 2012
ABOUT FACE
How it feels depends on whether you win or lose.

Maybe he doesn’t look so impressive getting his face flattened by Joe Louis on this National Police Gazette cover form this month in 1950, but Billy Conn is actually one of boxing’s legendary figures. His final record of 64-12-1 was quite good, but it was his two losses to Louis that were enshrined in boxing lore. The first time they fought, in 1941, Conn stepped up in class from light-heavy to heavy without actually putting on any extra weight. It was an unheard of move, but it paid off. During the fight, his superior mobility helped him get ahead on points, and he sustained the lead the entire bout. But when he got greedy in round thirteen and tried to knock Louis out, a few counterpunches from the Brown Bomber put Conn on the canvas. Following the fight he quipped, “I lost my head and a million bucks.” After both men served a stint in the army during World War II, they met again in 1946. Conn was still the more agile of the two, and before the fight a reporter suggested to Joe Louis that Conn might stay out of reach and try for a victory on points. Louis responded with a line that people repeat to this day, but most likely with no idea where it came from: “He can run, but he can’t hide.” Louis won that bout too. The Gazette cover is from their first battle. We’ve posted the original photo they used just below, along with others. 

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Next Page
History Rewind
The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
March 19
1931—Nevada Approves Gambling
In the U.S., the state of Nevada passes a resolution allowing for legalized gambling. Unregulated gambling had been commonplace in the early Nevada mining towns, but was outlawed in 1909 as part of a nationwide anti-gaming crusade. The leading proponents of re-legalization expected that gambling would be a short term fix until the state's economic base widened to include less cyclical industries. However, gaming proved over time to be one of the least cyclical industries ever conceived.
1941—Tuskegee Airmen Take Flight
During World War II, the 99th Pursuit Squadron, aka the Tuskegee Airmen, is activated. The group is the first all-black unit of the Army Air Corp, and serves with distinction in Africa, Italy, Germany and other areas. In March 2007 the surviving airmen and the widows of those who had died received Congressional Gold Medals for their service.
March 18
1906—First Airplane Flight in Europe
Romanian designer Traian Vuia flies twelve meters outside Paris in a self-propelled airplane, taking off without the aid of tractors or cables, and thus becomes the first person to fly a self-propelled, heavier-than-air aircraft. Because his craft was not a glider, and did not need to be pulled, catapulted or otherwise assisted, it is considered by some historians to be the first true airplane.
1965—Leonov Walks in Space
Soviet cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov leaves his spacecraft the Voskhod 2 for twelve minutes. At the end of that time Leonov's spacesuit had inflated in the vacuum of space to the point where he could not re-enter Voskhod's airlock. He opened a valve to allow some of the suit's pressure to bleed off, was barely able to get back inside the capsule, and in so doing became the first person to complete a spacewalk.
March 17
1966—Missing Nuke Found
Off the coast of Spain in the Mediterranean, the deep submergence vehicle Alvin locates a missing American hydrogen bomb. The 1.45-megaton nuke had been lost by the U.S. Air Force during a midair accident over Palomares, Spain. It was found resting in nearly three-thousand feet of water and was raised intact on 7 April.
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