Jacobs’ Collection Complete With Greb Film

One evening in 1986, Jim Jacobs was talking about his collection of boxing films, the most extensive in the world.

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

Jacobs, who died at 58 in 1988, never gave up hope that one day film of Greb, a brawling middleweight and light-heavyweight champion, would turn up.

It has.

To Jacobs, the frustrating aspect of his 30-year quest was that he knew at least three Greb fights had been filmed.

“I have three frames of the first Greb-Gene Tunney fight that I found stapled to a copyright application for the film,” he said in 1986.

“I’ve tried everything. . . . It’s frustrating. Greb’s the only great fighter I don’t have.

“The guy who filmed the 1922 Greb-Tunney 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.”

Film of Greb has been found, 64 years after his death. It’s not a fight film, but it’s the next best thing.

Bill Herr, a retired truck driver from Shelby, Ohio, found a Harry Greb entry on a computer list of boxing film material from the University of South Carolina library. Herr also is a fight film collector and also has been on Greb’s trail since 1964.

“I learned that the Fox Movietone Newsreels, along with out-takes, were donated to the University of South Carolina. So I wrote a letter and asked if there was any boxing footage in the collection.

“They sent me a computer list, and I saw a 400-foot item described as, ‘Harry Greb working out.’ So I bought it.”

Herr looked at the film and sent it to Steve Lott, who works for Jacobs’ former business partner, Bill Cayton, in New York. Jacobs and Cayton were partners in their fight film business, and also in the early management of former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson.

On the 4 1/2-minute newsreel, Greb is shown sparring with turn-of-the-century light-heavyweight champion Philadelphia Jack O’Brien, jumping rope, punching a speed bag, doing sit-ups, mugging for the camera and playing handball.

To boxing historians, Greb is best known as the only man to defeat Gene Tunney. Tunney later became heavyweight champion by beating Jack Dempsey.

In their May 23, 1922 fight, Greb, weighing 162 1/2 pounds, broke Tunney’s nose in the first 20 seconds and gave Tunney, at 174 1/2, a 15-round beating for the light heavyweight title. Tunney avenged the loss twice, beating Greb in 1923 and ’24.

Greb was a puncher-brawler called “the Human Windmill” in an era when nicknames were mandatory. He fought 294 times, knocking out 47, winning 64 decisions and receiving 170 non-decisions from 1913 to 1926. States frequently refused to recognize anything other than a knockout to decide a fight then because of gambling concerns.

Greb won fights with his thumbs, his forehead, his laces, holding and hitting, tripping, hitting on the break and hitting low.

Greb was 32 when he died in 1926 during surgery to remove bone chips from his nose.