Fight-Film Collector Can Roll With Nearly Every Punch

Jimmy Jacobs was talking the other day about old films of major boxing matches, a subject he knows more than a little about, since he owns all the films.

Well, almost all of them.

Jacobs, co-manager of 20-year-old heavyweight sensation Mike Tyson, began seriously collecting boxing films in 1952 and has amassed a collection so huge that he lost count a decade or so ago. If you wanted to watch all of Jacobs’ boxing films, you’d be finishing up just about the time Mike Tyson was starting to lose his hair.

Jacobs made a hopeless gesture when a reporter asked him how many films he owns. He pointed at the carpet in his Las Vegas Hilton suite and said: “That would be like asking me how many carpet patterns like this exist in the world. You could say many thousands. I keep them in humidity-controlled vaults in a New Jersey warehouse.”

Dempsey-Tunney, Willard-Johnson, Johnson-everybody, Robinson-LaMotta, Louis-Schmeling, Louis-everybody, Pep-Saddler, Marciano-Moore, Marciano-everybody, Corbett-Fitzsimmons . . . you name it, Jacobs has it.

Well, OK, so there’s one missing.

“Edison invented the motion picture camera in 1894, and from 1894 to the present, only one great fighter is missing from my collection--Harry Greb,” Jacobs said.

Jacobs, 56, has spent much of the last 30 years searching for a film of Greb, the 1920s middleweight champion from Pittsburgh, known primarily to sports trivia buffs as the only man ever to beat Gene Tunney. A brawler-slugger--his nicknames were the Pittsburgh Windmill and the Iron City Express--who fought more than 100 bouts after losing the sight of one eye, Greb remains one of boxing’s elusive, mysterious figures. No film of any of his 294 fights in a career from 1913 to 1926 has ever been found, Jacobs said.

But somewhere, Jacobs is convinced, Greb lives on celluloid, in someone’s attic, perhaps in an old musty trunk. Some day, Jacobs hopes, Greb will be seen again.

A film of Greb could be the crown jewel of Jacobs’ collection. In his 1946 biography of Greb, “Give Him to the Angels,” author James R. Fair presented numerous tales, the sum of which is the legend of Harry Greb:

--He enjoyed beating up policemen for fun.

--In 1922, Greb, at 162 1/2 pounds, broke Tunney’s nose in the first 20 seconds. When it was over, Tunney, who had weighed in at 174 1/2, had to be carried to his dressing room, “his face a pulpy mess,” according to Fair.

--Greb was once involved in a Pittsburgh auto accident and was hospitalized with major internal injuries and compound fractures. Sportswriters were dispatched to man a death watch. Obituaries were prepared.

The next morning, Greb escaped from the hospital and was on his way to Michigan to box a heavyweight, Chuck Wiggins, who outweighed him by 30 pounds. Greb went the distance to no decision. (In boxing’s early years, many states, trying to discourage gambling, recognized only knockout wins.)

--When Greb was once suggested as a sparring partner for Jack Dempsey, the heavyweight champion responded: “No thanks. I want no traffic with that seven-year itch.”

--Greb once broke his left forearm in a first-round accident during a bout with Ted (Kid) Graves. “His arm was so bent, his left jab really was a left hook,” a handler told Fair years later. Greb was winning Round 2 when his corner men, horrified at the sight of Greb’s arm, begged the referee to stop the bout.

Plainly, this is a guy you would want in your film collection. Greb died in 1926, at 32, during surgery to remove bone chips from his nose.

“I’m fairly certain films were made of at least three of his fights and I know for certain one was made of his 1922 Tunney fight in New York,” Jacobs said.

That was the fight in which Greb beat Tunney badly in a 15-round decision. In subsequent bouts with Tunney, Greb lost two decisions and two fights went to no decisions.

“I have three frames of the first Greb-Tunney fight that I found attached to the copyright of the film in Washington, D.C.,” Jacobs said.

“I’ve tried everything. I’ve run ads over the years in Australian and European newspapers, and checked with museums and archives in Australia and Europe. It’s frustrating. Greb’s the only great fighter I don’t have.

“I’ve researched the thing completely. The guy who filmed the 1922 fight was George Dawson. I even know what hotel he stayed at the night before the fight. I’ve interviewed his heirs. None of them know anything about the film.

“The frustrating thing is that every other great fighter of Greb’s era--Tommy Loughran, Benny Leonard, Paul Berlenbach--I not only have but I have extensively in my collection. But no Greb.

“You always have hope that a film will turn up. I’ll keep looking.”

Who knows, Harry Greb may walk in off the street some day.

“A couple of months ago, a truck driver carrying a brown paper bag walked into my office in New York and asked to see me,” Jacobs said.

“He had a 35-millimeter reel of old nitrate movie film, an original print of the 1931 Tony Canzoneri-Kid Chocolate fight in New York. I paid him $200 for it.”

Once, engaging in Jacobs’ occupation was a federal offense. Trafficking in fight films was like dealing in heroin. Because of race riots in the United States after film showings of black heavyweight champion Jack Johnson’s 1910 victory over white opponent Jim Jeffries in Reno, Congress banned the interstate transportation of boxing films. That law wasn’t repealed until 1940.

“It’s always been incredible to me that the first U.S. film showings of the Dempsey-Tunney fights (1926, ‘27) was 1941,” Jacobs said. “The crazy thing about it was that while it was a federal crime to carry a boxing film across a state line, it was OK to send it out of the country.

“Well, that’s where the movies of all the old greats wound up--in museums, archives and private collections in Europe and Australia. I found the Johnson-Willard (Havana, 1910) film in 1961 in a private collection in Sydney, Australia, owned by a man named Art Llewellyn. I bought it for $5,000.

“I had a safety print made immediately. I can’t describe my feelings, how I felt when I put that new print on the projector and looked at it. It was gorgeous quality.”

Since he began collecting films overseas in 1952, Jacobs has become a familiar figure in the museums of Europe.

“I started out offering to make a duplicate, safety film print of each nitrate film a museum had that I wanted,” Jacobs said. “All pre-1940s films were nitrate, which is both flammable and has a tendency to disintegrate if not stored properly. Modern safety film came in around the mid-1940s. I’d give museums back their original print plus a safety print.

“Amazingly, many of the old ones that were nitrate film were in excellent condition. The nitrate films that were cared for were in excellent shape. The (Joe) Gans-(Battling) Nelson 1906 nitrate film--all 42 rounds of it--is in excellent shape. In fact, it’s sharper and more clear than 35-millimeter film shot today.

“On the other hand, I’ve come across improperly stored nitrate that crumbled apart in my hands when I took it off the reel.

“I found a nitrate film of the famous 1912 Joe Rivers-Ad Wolgast double-knockout fight at Vernon Stadium in Los Angeles in a London museum in 1961. I’d had two minutes of that fight on film, but here was the whole thing. It was a beautiful print, just in wonderful shape.

“It became progressively easier to obtain museum films. I used letters of introduction from museums I’d done business with.”

In 1954, Jacobs went into partnership with a former New York advertising executive, Bill Cayton. Today, under the name of “Big Fights, Inc.,” they produce a television show called “Knockout!” which is shown in 74 countries, but not in the United States.

“There just isn’t the interest level in old-time boxing necessary to show it in the U.S.,” Jacobs said. “Boxing gets generally good TV ratings, but it just doesn’t work here for old-time fighters. If you walked up to 10,000 people on the street and threw the names Gans, Carpentier or Wolgast at them, you might find one guy who knew who you were talking about.

“We’re talking to the ESPN people about working something out, but it’s just at the talking stage now.

“Bill (Cayton) started the old ‘Greatest Fights of the Century’ series, sponsored by Vaseline hair tonic, in 1948. It had a good run, to 1954.”

Jacobs said that pioneering turn-of-the-century boxing film makers became rich in their time.

“There were enormous sums of money involved in the films of turn-of-the-century fights. The guy who filmed Corbett-Fitzsimmons at Carson City, Nev., in 1897 was a man named Enoch J. Richter. He built three 35-millimeter cameras and put one round on each can of film. His crew would be unloading one camera, loading another and filming with another throughout a major fight. For showings of Corbett-Fitzsimmons, he netted $187,000. That’s like $15 million today.”

Jacobs pointed out that there is a difference between owning a film and owning rights to it.

“I own almost everything,” he said, referring to major fights. “I own commercial rights to the films that I think will have a commercial value in the future. Usually I’ll wait years after a major fight to purchase rights from a promoter, when the price will be lower. For example, I recently purchased rights to several Larry Holmes fights.”

He was asked if he’s ever worried about being beaten to the punch on a major fight film.

“No, because I’m the only guy in this business,” he said.

Jacobs’ obsession with boxing films began in the 1940s, when he was growing up three blocks from Los Angeles High School.

“In those days, Joe Louis was my idol,” he said. “I’d go into camera stores and buy eight-millimeter films of his fights. I remember they were distributed by Castle Films. I bought films of Louis’ fights with Billy Conn, Arturo Godoy, Max Baer and Tony Galento.”

Having watched boxing films for roughly 40 years, Jacobs says that the legendary turn-of-the-century pugilists would barely make it out of the prelims today. That may be painful to hear for old-timers who can remember fathers and grandfathers raving about the old champions like Jack Johnson, but according to Jacobs, fighters of the Corbett-Ketchel-Johnson-Fitzsimmons-Willard-Jeffries-Gans era would fare poorly against the best of today.

“It’s unfair to the turn-of-the-century greats to compare them to the fighters of today,” Jacobs said. “If you were to have time machine capability and fix it so Muhammad Ali were born at the same time Jack Johnson was, he would have fought in that old, hands-up style, too, like John L. Sullivan. By the same token, Jack Johnson probably would have been an outstanding athlete today.”

The late Cus D’Amato, Floyd Patterson’s manager and the man who discovered Mike Tyson, once looked at all of Jacobs’ footage of Jack Johnson and pronounced Johnson “a six-round club fighter.”

Said Jacobs: “Boxing techniques changed radically, beginning early in the 1920s. After that, you saw some real boxing technique, some real styles. Before that, there was a lot of grappling, pushing, tripping, posturing and very little technique and punching.

“Nat Fleischer (longtime editor-publisher of Ring magazine) put out the propaganda for years that Johnson was the greatest heavyweight of them all, and he kept saying that into the Ali era. I have every Johnson title defense on film, studied them, and I just don’t think that’s true.”

Jacobs made his largest single acquisition in 1975, in England.

“A man named Goodman died in 1975 who’d filmed British fights for about 25 years,” Jacobs said. “He had about 100 films in his collection--mostly of European fighters--and I bought the whole thing from his estate for $10,000.

“There was one I really wanted, Mickey Walker and Tommy Milligan, who fought in London in 1927. The significance of that one is that it was the first bout ever filmed with sound.”

Besides collecting boxing films for much of his life, Jacobs played a lot of handball. Between 1955 and 1969, he won 12 national handball championships. Representing first the Hollywood YMCA and later the Los Angeles Athletic Club, he dominated the sport.

But when he couldn’t compete at the championship level anymore, he walked away from the sport, at 40, and never looked back. He’s still trim at 56, though, and you would guess he still plays.

“I’m the kind of guy . . . if I can’t perform at a level I’m accustomed to, I’ll find something else to do,” he said. “I don’t even play for recreation anymore. I developed good nutrition habits when I competed, so I haven’t put on any weight.”

Today, Jacobs and Cayton are guiding the career of the hottest young heavyweight to come along since George Foreman. Mike Tyson, who will fight Trevor Berbick here Nov. 22 for the WBC championship, turned pro shortly after failing to make the 1984 U.S. Olympic team and took off like a rocket. He’s 27-0, with 25 knockouts. He’s also only 20. If he beats Berbick, he’ll be the youngest heavyweight champion ever.

For all of Tyson’s ferocity as a puncher, however, Jacobs believes that Tyson’s defense is on a par with his offense.

“He’s an extraordinary talent,” Jacobs said. “And when you consider he turned 20 two months ago . . . well, he has some future. He trained 4 1/2 years under a master, Cus D’Amato, who taught him the most important thing in professional boxing is to avoid getting hit in the face. Look at Mike after one of his fights. There’s not a mark on him.”

You may not believe this, but Tyson studies boxing films.

“Mike’s become a real student of boxing styles,” Jacobs said. “I’ve given him about 500 films for his own collection. His favorites are Tony Canzoneri, Sam Langford and Joe Gans.”