Anything Goes_ A Biography of the Roaring Twenties - Lucy Moore [116]
The Manassa Mauler’s success in the ring was marred by allegations outside it of his having dodged the draft during the First World War. Harold Ross, who had known Dempsey as a kid in Colorado, led a campaign against “Slacker” Dempsey in the U.S. Army magazine, Stars and Stripes, of which he was then editor. Dempsey’s estranged wife, Maxine, whom he had married at twenty-one when she was well into her thirties, had accused him of beating her and of falsifying his draft papers; she was hoping for a large payout.
In court in June 1920 Dempsey testified that he had tried to enlist but been turned down by the army; his appeal had not come through by the time peace was declared. He said he had spent the war years supporting his wife and parents, and helped the war effort by working in a shipyard and recruiting other workers. Although he won his case against Maxine, the photograph he supplied the court of himself working in the shipyard was rendered suspect by the fact that patent leather boots and pinstriped trousers were visible underneath his overalls. It would take Dempsey many years to shake off his slacker reputation.
Tex Rickard capitalized on Dempsey’s unfavorable publicity to promote his fights. After Dempsey had twice defended his title, Rickard set up a bout with the French light heavyweight Georges Carpentier in July 1921. No image could have been in greater contrast to Dempsey’s than Carpentier’s: he was a former flying ace, a decorated war-hero whose nickname was Gorgeous Georges, graceful, clean-cut, sophisticated, well-dressed, a good dancer. Ring Lardner said he was “one of the most likeable guys you’d want to meet—even if he did have a Greek profile and long eyelashes.” Rickard had no scruples about presenting Dempsey in a negative light as compared to this paragon. As he said, “hatin’ is as good for box office as lovin’.”
Rickard’s marketing genius was to draw in his audience by making each fight he promoted into a narrative, pitting a hero against a villain, turning a boxing match into an elemental struggle between glory and humiliation, triumph and disaster, good and evil. He expanded boxing’s appeal far beyond its traditional audience of working-class men, the kind of people who would have crowded the sawdust floors of Colorado bars to watch the young Dempsey take on all-comers. Having never watched boxing before, respectable and respected public figures—even women—attended the spectacles Rickard staged.
Dempsey’s fights generated extraordinary popular interest, even at a time when sportsmen were acknowledged heroes. Sports-entertainers like Dempsey, Babe Ruth, the golfer Bobby Jones and the tennis player Bill Tilden were idolized for their courage, heroism and strength. Sport provided a vicarious release for the new generation of white-collar workers who spent their days sitting behind desks, as well as an outlet for the surplus money they were earning and their newly acquired leisure time. Managers used sport as a business model, encouraging teamwork and a sense of competition among their workers. Like movies, radio and advertising (to all of which sport was closely linked), great sporting events helped create a sense of national identity and unity over and above differences in ethnicity, class and religion.
The tickets to the Dempsey-Carpentier fight were beautifully made, oversized, engraved and gold-embossed. They brought in the first ever million-dollar box-office take (of which Dempsey and Kearns were to receive a third each), and the audience of 80,000 was as starry as Rickard could have hoped, including tycoons like Henry Ford, John Rockefeller, various Vanderbilts and Astors, diplomats, politicians, musicians, movie stars and three of former President Roosevelt’s children. Alice Roosevelt Longworth recalled