Promoter Remembered for Her Iron Fist, Warm Heart

Aileen Eaton did not build it or buy it, but in every other way, the Olympic Auditorium was her unchallenged fiefdom.

She made the Olympic what it was, and it made her who she was.

“Aileen Eaton was a visionary,” says publicist Luis Magana, who worked with her during her 38 years at the Olympic. “She was a wonderful woman and she was loved by many and hated by many.”

Eaton, who died in 1987, was promoter Cal Eaton’s secretary when she noticed how poorly the auditorium was being managed and told Eaton that she could do better.

He shocked the local boxing community by hiring her as the building’s business manager in 1942. Six years later, she had married him, become the Olympic’s promoter and had boxing and wrestling booming there.

Aileen Eaton ruled the Olympic with an iron fist and, her longtime employees say, a warm heart.

“She loved boxing and she loved the people in it,” says her last matchmaker, Don Chargin. “Oh yeah, she was tough. But her toughness was exaggerated a lot. She was an easy tough. The amount of fighters and managers she helped was amazing.” After she retired, she often said launching and developing the career of former welterweight champion Carlos Palomino was one of her greatest achievements.

When the Los Angeles Athletic Club put the Olympic up for sale in the 1970s, Eaton tried to buy it. But in 1980, the auditorium was sold to developer Jack Needleman for $3 million, a price Eaton later said she could have matched if the club had allowed her to.

Even in her 70s, shortly before her retirement and seven or so years before her death, Eaton commanded a certain majesty.

Jack Needleman’s son, Steve, now the building’s chief executive officer, remembers sitting next to her at ringside during a particularly brutal fight.

“This one kid laid this right cross, and this mouthpiece--blood, spit, everything--came flying and landed right in her lap,” Needleman says. “And I’m cringing. I’m having a rough time here.

“And this woman did not flinch. She picked that thing up and just threw it right back into the ring with a big smile on her face.”

As an example of Eaton’s influence, the athletic club included a codicil in the building sale that forbade Needleman to fire her as promoter without her approval.

Eaton retired in 1980 because of declining health. The Olympic was never the same.