“Mr. Shaw doesn’t usually respond by cable,” cautioned Langner. “He feels they cost too much.” But Langner said he was in regular contact by mail and would add his endorsement to Gene’s proposal. Gene didn’t expect to actually meet Shaw but felt that the mere possibility of acting in a film or play with Shaw’s blessing would be validation that he had within him talents beyond the boxing arena. Not only that, but the story of Cashel Byron was one he felt destined to play; indeed, it was a story he was actually living.
One of his closest friends, the multimillionaire department store scion Bernard Gimbel, had given him a prized copy of Shaw’s novel. “Since our first meeting in 1919,” wrote Gimbel, “I’ve always described you as Shaw’s Cashel Byron.” Willie Green, the boxing thespian in the Village who by smashing him to smithereens taught him to defend himself, told Gene he was so handsome he had to be a movie star. And hadn’t Jim Corbett, his childhood hero, played Cashel on stage a generation earlier?
Gene, the confirmed bachelor, also had someone he wanted to impress, someone who didn’t know anything about boxing and didn’t seem to like boxing. But the girl in question, Mary Josephine Lauder, known to her friends and family as Polly, greatly enjoyed going to the theatre and the cinema. She liked moving pictures so much that she had bought her own projector and rigged up a home theatre to show Charlie Chaplin films and other movies to her family. Gene had written Sam about her from the Hollywood Athletic Club in May while he was working on his film. He had met Polly just before he traveled to Los Angeles.
“Had a most splendid evening with Kay and Ed Dewing and Kay’s sister Polly, who is a perfect peach,” Gene wrote. “A very interesting girl,” he added. “She seems to possess plenty of intellect and character, and is one of the most beautiful girls I have ever seen. She has an odd personality, being terribly shy, but very attractive, sweet and amiable.” Sam knew the young woman well, liked her immensely and, knowing she was the daughter of one of the leading families in his hometown of Greenwich, Connecticut, had arranged for Gene to meet her sister, Cot, at various parties given at his father’s home, The Pryory.
Gene’s warm reception at the Theatre Guild and his eagerness for a possible deal with Shaw had not faded when, a week later, he and Dempsey were to make their first post-fight appearance at Madison Square Garden, the heart and soul of the boxing crowd, and one of the most famous sporting arenas in the world. The Garden was the hometown venue where Gene, the big-city boy, had hoped to fight Dempsey.
As a 16-year-old, Gene had gone to the Garden with his brother John to see their first championship fight. They sat crammed into the cheapest seats, coughing and inhaling the heavy haze of tobacco soot. But he remembered his thrill in watching the swells in suits and hats crowded at ringside, listening to the ear-splitting waves of screams and yells of fans cheering fighters in the ring, and he caught onto the idea that boxing was more than Village smokers for boys. It was an entrée into a high-stakes world of money and uptown society, a ticket away from the docks. Gene wanted nothing more than to be part of this tumultuous new world. As preposterous as it might have been naïve, the brothers made a vow: to make Gene, the older brother, a champion.
In the long, sad, autumn after his return from the Great War, after repeated visits alone to his brother’s grave, Gene sat on a bench in Madison Square Park, in the shadow of the Garden. He read books and imagined that the brothers’ dream of a Tunney capturing the game’s biggest prize could come true. Now his heart swelled with pride at the thought that he would stand in center stage at the Garden as world champion.
As Gene entered the big amphitheatre, he was relaxed, smiling and waving to friends, eagerly anticipating the triumphal moment when he would receive the symbolic wreath of laurels. As honored guests, the former champion and the new champion were both to be introduced and presented with championship belts by the Metropolitan Boxing Writers’ Association.
Dempsey was introduced first and climbed into the ring, drawing a thundering ovation with some 2000 spectators cheering lustily, programs and newspapers flying through the air, feet stamping heavily on the floor, fans standing on the bleachers, waving their hats and shouting, “Dempsey! Dempsey!”
Then Gene was introduced. As the new champion began his climb between the ropes, the mood in the big arena suddenly shifted and soured. From the bowels of the Garden, there were boos, hisses and then hooting, a guttural rage that smoldered then swelled in volume so great that it took the announcer long moments to quiet the crowd. Gene realized as he stood to wave that the boos were aimed at him, and he felt sickened.
Silent and uncomplaining, he kept the festering humiliation bottled up inside. He smiled, accepted the prize and left the ring. Though he was an avid student of boxing history, he had neglected to appreciate or understand that to become number one is not necessarily to become an idol to the masses. Even Dempsey called the outburst an outrage. Gene said nothing.
“Practically overnight, I became the most unpopular of all the heavyweight champions,” he recalled. After he’d won, he had criticized newspapermen for their doubts about his abilities. Too late, after his words were in print, he realized it had been yet another public relations mistake. “I could have been a more gracious winner. I goaded and goaded. I richly deserved what I got.” The humiliation at the Garden did, however, lead to a business decision that helped make Gene wealthy: he never entered a ring again unless he was given 50 percent of the gate receipts. Hecklers, he said, would pay for the privilege: “There would be no free boos.”
Increasingly, Gene erected walls around his family and friends, becoming one of the first major celebrities to aggressively try to protect his right to privacy. “I had reached the top. Acclaim, publicity, spotlight, trouble, annoyance — all the fame and fortune the prize ring bestows.” He began to realize that his name was bracketed by books and haughtiness. The more he tried to revise his image, the more cynical the press became. Proud of his achievements and certain that the public’s understanding of him would come with his preeminence, he tried to ignore that some thought he had become a caricature and that sports reporters felt they knew everything about him they needed to know.
Gene also had private reasons for shielding himself from the press. He was aware that Polly Lauder and her friends in Greenwich were not the kind of people who wanted publicity. Polly’s mother was a prominent member of the Social Register, which held headlines and hype in contempt. One’s name in the newspaper should appear, if at all, at one’s birth and death. The wealthy, white Anglo-Saxon Protestant families constituted the old-money elite who primarily represented descendants of early English or Dutch settlers, the merchant class that had built Manhattan. Polly was related to 17th-century immigrants, including Richard Varick, an aide to General George Washington and one of the first mayors of New York City.
In this world of privilege, persons were shunned as outsiders for their scandals or peccadilloes, even for simply pursuing “undesirable careers.” Gene had been reminded of this when the Sunday after he’d won the championship in Philadelphia, he and Pryor were invited to the sprawling Lauder estate for lunch and great effort had been made to keep the visit out of the newspapers. The Lauders did not want to be associated publicly with a boxer — or an Irish Catholic.
And then there was Gene’s mother. Nana was so terrified of seeing her name or picture in the newspaper that she refused to speak to reporters and well-wishers who called to congratulate her on her son’s achievement. She left instructions to tell them all she had gone to bed. When Gene went to visit his mother’s home, he had to plead with reporters to stay away.
Whatever the future held, Gene knew that to get ahead, he had to continue boxing until he decided it was time to quit, and he wanted to do it on his own terms, earning as much money as he could, while leaving his honor and reputation intact. As champion, he decided he could handle the public by himself, the way he did most things: by being cordial and by bulldogging through it, like a good Marine. He would simply say what was on his mind, regardless of the consequences.
Shortly