Reuters
June 13 2005
1936 book on ‘Cinderella Man’ Braddock scores hit
Mon Jun 13, 2005 11:56 AM ET
By Philip Barbara
CLIFFSIDE PARK, N.J. (Reuters) – Sportswriter Lud Shabazian, who
covered the “Cinderella Man” James J. Braddock’s boxing career from
his first fight in 1923 to his crowning victory over Max Baer in 1935,
told this story years later:
In the steaming, cluttered attic of his New Jersey home, he struggled
to write Braddock’s biography, the words giving him fits. Energy
drained from his body and sweat dripped from his chin, soaking his
clothes until, he said, perspiration puddled to his knees.
A storyteller’s poetic license, for sure. But Shabazian identified
with Braddock’s hard-knock rise to the world heavyweight title. The
stifling attic became Shabazian’s ring, an empty page the blank stare
of an opponent, as he slugged it out toe-to-toe with a typewriter.
When Shabazian’s book “Relief to Royalty” was published in 1936 by
his newspaper, the Hudson Dispatch, it wasn’t formally distributed for
retail sale. Instead, the author and the champ gave it to family and
friends. Often they sat together at charity events co-signing copies,
not asking for the $1.25 cover price in those can’t-spare-a-dime days.
With a forward by famed writer Damon Runyon, the book has been
rediscovered as the foremost original source for anyone wanting
an insider’s glimpse into Braddock’s career and the glory days of
prizefighting. It is also legendary among collectors of rare boxing
books — hard to find and harder to afford at $1,500 a copy.
“I can’t overstate the value of ‘Relief to Royalty.’ I don’t know how
I would have written ‘Cinderella Man’ without it,” Jeremy Schaap,
author of a riveting new biography of that name, told Reuters. “By
reading Lud, I got an excellent sense of the most important moments
in Braddock’s life and career.”
Schaap’s biography and the new eponymous Russell Crowe movie
“Cinderella Man” are part of a burst of interest in the Depression-era
saga, which includes at least three other books and several articles.
PROMISING PRIZEFIGHTER
In 1929, Braddock was a promising New Jersey prizefighter with $20,000
in the bank. But his fortunes spiraled downward when the bank failed
and he suffered a demoralizing loss to light-heavyweight world champ
Tommy Loughran.
With boxing his only trade, Braddock kept fighting despite a
chronically broken right hand, and his defeats mounted.
Married, with three young children to feed, and seen by fight
matchmakers as a has-been, he was forced by 1933 to hustle a living
as a laborer, often walking 16 km a day searching for work along the
New Jersey docks.
When the gas and electricity to his basement apartment were shut off in
the terrible winter of 1934, he turned to the county relief. “I didn’t
mind being hungry, but the kids needed to eat,” he would later say.
Using his left hand to unload cargo allowed his right to heal, and he
was hardened by suffering. After manager Joe Gould got him a fight
with just two days’ notice, in June 1934, he flattened the touted
“Corn” Griffin.
Subsequent victories lifted him into contention for the heavyweight
title, and on June 13, 1935, he took the crown from the enigmatic Baer,
for heavyweight boxing’s greatest upset.
Braddock became an overnight sensation. He was, as Runyon said,
the Cinderella Man.
FOLLOWING HIS CAREER
Shabazian, who at age 20 had become sports editor of the Dispatch,
in Union City, New Jersey, had been following Braddock since his
first amateur fight in 1923.
He saw Braddock soar to amateur boxing heights and smash his way to
contention. When Braddock began slipping, he urged the fighter on
in his columns. When everyone said Baer would annihilate Braddock,
Shabazian, who signed his columns and cartoons simply “Lud,” for
Ludwig, clung to the New Jerseyan.
They became friends, making him a natural choice to write Braddock’s
“authorized” biography.
During the two years Braddock held the title — taken away by Joe
Louis in June 1937 — and in the decades that followed, Lud and
Braddock appeared at countless sports nights and charity events.
They were a contrasting pair: Braddock, the pale, rugged, 6-foot-3
(1.9-metre) Irish-American would bow but say few words as he was
introduced by Lud, a connoisseur at the microphone and 5-foot-6
(1.6-metre) Armenian-American, with dark hair that bristled like an
old brush.
“My granddad and Lud were very tight,” said Jay Braddock, the champ’s
grandson. “We considered Lud part of the family.”
HOLLYWOOD INTEREST
Jay Braddock said Cliff Hollingsworth, who brought the story idea
to Hollywood, relied on family material and did not read “Relief to
Royalty.” Yet during filming in Toronto, director Ron Howard’s staff
called the Jersey City Library repeatedly asking whether Braddock
had a crest on his robe, said Charles Markey, a library staff member.
Markey and others turned to Lud’s book and Dispatch columns. The
answer: Braddock didn’t have a crest on his robe, but did wear a
shamrock on his trunks.
Kevin Johnson, of Royal Books in Baltimore, found a copy of “Relief
to Royalty” this winter after hunting for five years.
With a dust jacket it’s worth $1,500, and $700 without one. With
a jacket and the signatures it would fetch a considerable premium,
Johnson said.
About 2,500 copies were published, hundreds of which were donated
by Lud to the USO during World War Two for soldiers’ recreation,
according to Lud’s son, Bob Shabazian.
Braddock died on Nov. 30, 1974, after which the biography was
serialized in the Dispatch. Lud, by then sports editor for five
decades, spoke about Braddock wistfully to his staff, including this
reporter, and described his struggle to write the book. He died in
July 1990.
“Keep punchin,” was his advice to young writers.
A photo taken just after the Baer fight illustrates Lud’s and
Braddock’s friendship. The fighter is hugging Lud with one arm as a
ring official holds up the other to introduce the new world champion.