The King of Bail

Here comes Giuseppe Roselli, silk shirt unbuttoned halfway to his navel, a miniature gold boxing glove dangling from a chain around his neck, trim and self-assured, lookin’ good.

He stands in the ornate lobby of the Hollywood Roosevelt, scans the room through oversized, tinted glasses, makes contact and saunters over, graying ponytail bobbing slightly.

His walk is slow and deliberate, but even so there’s a kind of rhythm to it, as though at any moment he can be up on the balls of his feet, jabbing and feinting, shoulders hunched, eyes fixed.

He was a boxer once, a lightweight contender in fact, but at 78 he’s past all that. He gave up boxing 35 years ago and became a manager. But he got into the ring one more time to teach one of his boxers a lesson the kid, knocked out cold, never forgot.

L.A. knows Giuseppe Roselli as Joey Barnum, the name he fought under back then and the name he’ll take into the World Boxing Hall of Fame next month.

He’s a bail bondsman now, “Mr. Bail” on the license of his black Caddie, as much a fixture in Southern California as Wolfgang Puck or Heidi Fleiss, though on a decidedly different level.

A friend of the famous and the infamous, the kid from Chicago’s Little Italy is famous in his own way too and soon to become more so. Not only as an inductee into boxing’s Hall of Fame but as a star of “America’s Dumbest Criminals” on television in early November.

You haven’t lived until you see this onetime contender in a push-up bra, a bouffant wig and a sleek red dress.

*

It is one of his most celebrated stories, a 15-year-old tale told to me over dinner at the venerable old Roosevelt. Joey only picks at his food, a reason why, at 150 pounds, he is only five pounds heavier than his fighting weight.

“I’m at the office,” he says, “when I get a call from a guy who says a bail jumper is at a nearby bar, but I’d better be careful because he’s packing a gun. I’m thinking what’ll I do to nail this guy?”

Then Joey, who is never without ideas, gets a brainstorm. At Halloween a few weeks earlier he had dressed in drag, so he hauls out the outfit, complete with a red wig, dresses up as a woman he calls Eloise and heads for the door.

“Where you going?” his wife, Esther, says. Joey gives his behind a little wiggle and says, “Out.”

At the bar, the bail-jumper doesn’t recognize Joey, which is the whole point of the dress. The guy only sees Eloise. So he buys her a drink and gives her leg a little rub. Then suddenly Esther, who is checking on Joey, comes in and Joey decides he’d better act fast. He dumps his drink on the bail-jumper’s lap and as the guy is distracted, Joey hits him with a left hook. The jumper goes down like a punctured balloon.

As Joey cuffs the man and is dragging him out the door, the bartender, who has been observing all this, says with awe and respect, “Man, can that broad hit!”

What you won’t see on “America’s Dumbest Criminals” when it airs is a moment that occurs outside the bar in Whittier where a re-creation of the incident is about to be filmed.

Joey is standing in full drag waiting to be called when two cops see him and, figuring maybe he’s a hooker or a nut, want to know what’s going on. Only when they check with the TV crew do they believe what Joey is telling them.

“They should’ve known,” he says later. “I’m too ugly to be a hooker.”

*

By entering the World Boxing Hall of Fame, Joey will join a company of champions that includes Sugar Ray Robinson, Joe Louis and Muhammad Ali. “It’s a special place,” says Hall of Fame coordinator Alex Campanovo. “You had to have status.”

Over the 20 years of its existence, only 120 nominees have made it into the Hall. Among those who recommended Joey is a onetime amateur boxer he beat in Burbank’s old Jeffries Barn a long time ago. The guy was so distressed, he gave up boxing forever. His name is Kirk Kerkorian. He owns MGM.

All of this sudden attention leaves Joey a little hyper, but there’s a steadying quality to his life too, a sadness that keeps him in touch with himself. His beloved Esther, the woman he’s adored for 53 years, came down with Alzheimer’s disease 20 years ago and has been in a nursing home since 1992. Joey misses her every day of his life.

“She doesn’t recognize me anymore,” he says, his voice choking. “She can’t communicate or take care of herself. But when I talk to her and massage her shoulders, sometimes a tear runs down her cheek. Sometimes I think she knows.”

He pauses, shakes his head and moves on.

I see him heading toward the door, this Giuseppe Roselli, tipping the maitre d’, telling stories, laughing at himself, soon to be more famous than linguine and clams, stepping out into a misty L.A. night, feeling right, looking good.

*

Al Martinez’s column appears Sundays and Wednesdays. He can be reached online at al.martinez@latimes.com