Boxer Packed a Punch in Show Biz Too

He was a not-so-nice Jewish boy, a reform school graduate who nonetheless scored knockouts not only in the ring, but also on the stage and screen.

Famed as a fighter for his wild footwork and flurries of open-handed blows, “Slapsie” Maxie Rosenbloom parlayed his reign as light-heavyweight champion of the world in the early 1930s into a successful comedy act and, later, a nightclub that became one of the era’s Los Angeles landmarks.

Rosenbloom, who fought 289 professional bouts with 210 wins--only 18 by knockout--began his 15-year boxing career in 1923, when no less a figure than the legendary sportswriter Damon Runyon dubbed him “Slapsie” Maxie.

Born in New York in 1904, Rosenbloom started boxing his way out of Jewish Harlem at age 12, about 13 months after hitting a teacher and knocking out two of her teeth. After serving his time at a Jewish reform school, he was released into the custody of a neighborhood pal, George Raft. The future Hollywood leading man steered his ward away from the ballet school his mother had enrolled him in and toward the ring, where Raft felt Rosenbloom’s skills might be more profitably applied.

From the beginning, Rosenbloom was a pugnacious youth who punched anyone who called him a ballerina. He was an eccentric fighter who got into shape by “dancing and prancing” in the gym. He was a defensive boxer--hard to hit. Offensively, his open-handed cuffs were delivered in startling bunches with playful footwork that confused his opponents and wore them down.

He also soon discovered he could make people laugh with his parody of a punch-drunk fighter.

On June 25, 1930, at 25, he won an American version of the light-heavyweight title from Jimmy Slattery in 15 bloody rounds and, in 1932, gained international recognition as world champion when he won a 15-round decision over Lou Scozza. Rosenbloom lost the title to Bob Olin in Madison Square Garden in 1934. Slapsie’s share of the gate that night was $3,874.

Not long afterward, actress Carole Lombard asked him to teach her how to box, so she could clip her future husband Clark Gable when she felt he deserved it.

In exchange, she put him in her movie “Nothing Sacred.” He was terrific, and signed a contract with Jack Warner. Warner quickly sent him to Max Reinhardt’s acting school to study diction, where he met Marlon Brando.

“He talked exactly like me,” Rosenbloom quipped.

“I learned to talk real good and went back to Warner . . . who three weeks later fired me because he said it wasn’t the real me.”

Washed up as a fighter, but marked for life by the game with a flattened nose and cauliflower ears, Rosenbloom hung up his gloves for good in 1939 and returned to acting.

In the early 1940s, when his first and only marriage ended, he moved into the Hollywood Plaza Hotel on Vine Street, where he became a kind of living landmark for the next 30 years. His friends would pick him up there and chauffeur him around from racetrack to racetrack.

A true New Yorker to the end, he never learned to drive.

Horses and the track were his great love--and ultimate downfall. Over three decades he made more than 100 movies, always playing a boxer or a comic tough guy, usually a B-movie-variety gangster, saying “dese,” “dem” and “dose.” All the money from those roles, however, went to cover gambling debts or simply was given away.

But losing didn’t bother him because he had his best friend, Gladys Parker, the L.A. Examiner’s cartoonist and creator of the comic strip “Mopsy,” to bail him out.

And his gambler’s instincts sometimes paid off, as in 1946, when he lent his name to a pal--an even bigger gambler--the dapper mobster Mickey Cohen.

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Smack in the middle of a Jewish neighborhood, only blocks away from another of his investments--the Band Box nightclub--Cohen threw open the doors to Slapsie Maxie’s at 7165 Beverly Blvd. Cohen’s name never appeared on the deed, but it was managed by two of his buddies, Charlie and Sy Devore, who owned a chain of expensive men’s clothing stores. Rosenbloom’s name--as flashy as the managers’ apparel--attracted the sporting crowd and soon-to-be-celebrities.

Cohen put up more money to bring two struggling unknown performers, Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin, from Atlantic City to headline at the club.

It didn’t take long for Lewis and Martin to pack the club and become the hottest comedy team in America. When they weren’t hassling and heckling young female patrons, Martin crooned ballads.

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The club also featured a svelte and youthful Jackie Gleason, along with other showmen, including Danny Thomas, Joe E. Lewis, Phil Silvers and Peter Lind Hayes. Drinks were 40 cents and there was never a cover charge.

Of course, the main attraction was always Rosenbloom and his impersonation of Little Lord Fauntleroy, one of his many acts. But within a year, when payroll checks began to bounce and the Spike Jones Band walked out, even Rosenbloom took his act to other clubs, including Hollywood’s old Florentine Gardens, where he and fighter-turned-actor Max Baer left the crowd in stitches.

Under new management with comedian Ben Blue and promoter Sammy Lewis, Slapsie Maxie’s reconnected with its namesake and moved to a new location on Wilshire Boulevard. The club, now called Slapsy Maxie’s, still offered the same glitz and glamour, as well as the back-room amenities of full-service racketeering, and Rosenbloom still drew the crowds.

But the Wilshire nightspot didn’t fare much better than its predecessor, and closed in 1950. Blue’s reckless spending and gambling were the cause.

Rosenbloom’s career continued in films, and his Broadway debut became his signature role--the gambler Big Julie--in the stage version of “Guys and Dolls.” In the TV series “Joe Palooka,” Rosenbloom played Clyde, Palooka’s assistant, in 1956.

But the spotlight dimmed on his show business career during the late 1950s. He tried to stage a comeback in 1961 by setting up a phony holdup. Wanting to get his name back in the papers, he said a guy tried to kill him by firing a shotgun through his door and then disappeared. But it didn’t work, and the studios stopped calling him.

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The champ’s final bell came in 1976, at age 71, four years after he was inducted into the Boxing Hall of Fame. It isn’t clear, though, whether Slapsie Maxie took note of either event. His final years were dominated by another souvenir of his years in the ring--pugilistic dementia, a particularly sad end for a man who had earned so many laughs portraying a punch-drunk fighter.