Connecticut Jewish Ledger

Homegrown author inspired to write book on Louis-Schmeling fight

David Margolick has worked for the past nine years as a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, where he mainly covers politics, media and culture. Prior to that, Margolick was the national legal affairs editor at the New York Times. For seven years, he wrote the weekly “At the Bar” column and covered the trials of O.J. Simpson, Lorena Bobbitt and William Kennedy Smith.

Born and raised in Putnam, Connecticut, a town of 7,000 people in Northeast Connecticut, Margolick is a graduate of the University of Michigan and Stanford Law School. He is the author of such books as “Undue Influence: The Epic Battle for the Johnson and Johnson Fortune” (1993), “At the Bar: The Passions and Peccadillos of American Lawyers” (1995) and “Strange Fruit: The Biography of a Song,” a book about singer Billie Holiday (2001).

Margolick’s most recent book, “Beyond Glory: Joe Louis vs. Max Schmeling and a World on the Brink” (Alfred Knopf, 2005) chronicles two famous boxing matches - one in 1936, the second in 1938, between African-American boxer, Joe Louis, and German fighter, Max Schmeling. While Schmeling won the 1936 fight in 12 rounds, Louis knocked out Schmeling (in two minutes!) in the June 22, 1938 championship fight. The historical context of these matches is significant - much of the boxing world was dominated by Jews in the 1930s, Nazism and Hitler were on the rise in Germany, and the world was on the brink of World War II.

The Ledger caught up with Margolick by phone upon his return from a national book tour. Margolick lives in New York City.

Q: How did this story first come to your attention and what inspired you to write more than 400 pages on the subject?

A: I’ve cared about this story since I was a kid, growing up in the 1950s. My father had a record, an Edward R. Murrow recording called “I Can Hear it Now” which had excerpts from the fight. I was familiar with this story since I was 9 or 10, and I was fascinated by what the story represented. I was amazed that no one had written about this epic event.

Q: What did the story represent?

A: It represented Black against White, American against German on the eve of World War II. The fight had tremendous significance with the entire Black world. Since Joe Louis was fighting a man with a swastika on his forehead, he was, fairly or unfairly, a proxy for Jews who wanted to stand up to Hitler. Jews around the world followed the fight.

Q: You have been credited for your extensive research on the fight. How did you conduct your research and what are some of the things you discovered?

A: The Louis-Schmeling fights occurred during what was really the heyday of sports journalism. Many of the most famous names in the history of sports writing, like Paul Galico, Grandland Rice, Damon Runyon and Frank Graham were all active then. They and their fellow reporters all did their work under extremely tight deadlines and under primitive conditions - on short deadlines and on manual typewriters at ringside. And there were also the Black reporters of the day whose work was also stellar and inspiring.

Learning about and reading all of these people was a privilege. At the same time, it was a necessity, because with so few people still around who witnessed these epic events, they are the best sources we have. Thank God for microfilm.

Given my Jewish background, I was curious and wanted to hear the Jewish reaction. For example, I came across Jewish papers in Poland which commented on the fight. There was even a Polish language Jewish daily which had a moving poem in the paper the day after a Louis/Schmeling fight. A young Yiddishist in Manhattan, Eddie Portnoy, read American and Polish Yiddish papers for me and was a big help.

Q: What is the connection between Jews and boxing?

A: No major sport was ever so dominated by a single ethnic group as boxing was by Jews in the 1930s and 40s. One section in my book describes this.

Jews dominated boxing from top to bottom-managers, promoters, fans, writers, equipment managers, trainers.

Q: Isn’t it true that Schmeling had a Jewish manager and promoter? Why did he choose a Jew and how was this received in Germany?

A: Yes. Schmeling’s manager was “Yusel the Muscle” Jacobs. When Schmeling came from Germany in the late 1920s, he thought that having a Jewish manager was vital to his career-so he hired Joe Jacobs and dropped his (then) manager. Schmeling thought that a Jew would guide him through the boxing world since he would know the ropes. The fact that he had a Jewish manager became a complicating factor since all Jews were kicked out of boxing in Germany-including promoters. No boxer could be represented by a Jew, no boxer could use a Jewish doctor or lawyer, and Jewish boxers were stripped of their titles.

Boxing was extremely popular in Germany - it had been imported by GIs and Brits in World War I. Hitler was a big boxing fan, and he wrote about boxing in “Mein Kampf.” Boxing was made Judenrein early. Theoretically, this law in Germany put Schmeling in a bind - he claimed it did, but he misrepresented the situation and got away with it. The Nazis recognized that New York was the boxing capital, and that to do business in New York, having a Jew represent you was necessary. The Nazis wanted Schmeling to keep on a Jew as his manager.

Q: What was Joe Louis’ legacy?

A: Joe Louis is really one of the most important athletes in all of American history. He had an astonishing impact on Black America, and he was a hero of unimaginable dimensions at a time when there were no heroes. Also, Louis had an impact not just on Black America, but also on White America. He was the first Black athlete for whom Whites cheered - he was the first crossover athlete, and he helped educate an entire generation of Americans-Blacks and Whites-in racial tolerance.

Q: Tell us about your Connecticut connections.

A: I grew up in Putnam, which is near Storrs, in the northeast part of the state. My father was a doctor there for 50 years. I attended a prep school outside of Hartford; at the time it was known as the Loomis (now the Loomis-Chaffee School. My grandmother is from New London.

Q: What was it like growing up Jewish in Putnam?

A: The fact that I grew up in a small town with a small Jewish population had a huge impact on me. My brother and I were the only two bar mitzvahs in Putnam in 40 years. We drove 100 miles round trip for bar mitzvah lessons in New London. I know this sounds biblical but in 1955, our shul was literally destroyed in a flood and it needed to be torn town. My bar mitzvah was in the local Masonic Temple, which our shul used.

We stood out, and that solidified my Jewish identity - the book is one manifestation of that. It is really infused with Jewish consciousness and is written from the standpoint of a Jew and someone who is aware and conscious of Jewish history. Everything I write is informed by my Jewish consciousness. I’m not writing about anything in the Jewish world (per se) right now, but the Jewish dimension of what I write will always find itself into print.