[ARETE] Review, Gruver, Joe Louis vs. Billy Conn

[Duncan Jamieson]

All,
Please find below and attached Joshua Sopriaz's review of Ed Gruver, *Joe
Louis vs Billy Conn, Boxing's Unforgettable Summer of 1941*.
Thanks,
Duncan

*Joe Louis vs. Billy Conn: Boxing’s Unforgettable Summer of 1941** by Ed
Gruver*

*Reviewed by Josh Sopiarz, Governors State University *



During the oft-quoted taxicab scene from Elia Kazan’s *On the Waterfront*
(1954), Rod Steiger’s character, Charley, asks his brother Terry, played by
Marlon Brando, how much he weighs. Charley then says, “when you weighed one
hundred and sixty-eight pounds you were beautiful. You coulda been another
Billy Conn.” Those words, and Brando’s, “I coulda been a contender” retort,
were written by Budd Schulberg whose screenplay for the film won an Oscar
in 1955. Well known for his exhaustive knowledge of boxing minutiae,
Schulberg had witnessed just about everything boxing could offer by the
time, in 2002, reporters from *The Guardian* asked him to identify the
greatest fight he had ever seen. After a brief pause, Schulberg answered:
the “tremendously dramatic” action of the first Joe Louis-Billy Conn match.

That fight and its participants are the subjects of Ed Gruver’s most recent
book. *Joe Louis vs. Billy Conn *is a zippy read with its massive narrative
context (e.g. the incredibly rich sporting milieu of 1941, the biographies
of Louis and Conn, boxing history in general, race relations of the era,
and the rise of Fascism in Europe), carefully distilled so that readers
both familiar and unfamiliar with the particulars will find Gruver’s
exposition interesting and helpful and not at all overbearing. The first
half of the book is biographical and opens with two chapters dedicated to
Louis and Conn. A nice touch is that Conn’s biographical chapter is
supplemented by a brief foreword written by his son, Tim. Chapter three
introduces readers to the two fighters’ managers—Charles “Chappie”
Blackburn (Louis) and Johnny Ray (Conn). Chapter four recaps the fights
Louis and Conn had with others in the runup to their own championship bout.
And, lastly, chapter five tells the story of New York’s Polo Grounds and
the man, Don Dunphy, who provided the radio call for Louis vs. Conn. The
five remaining chapters are about the fight itself. An epilogue covers the
aftermath.

Gruver captures and illustrates the sights and sounds—and nervous
energies—surrounding the fight admirably. This is the difficult task. Video
of the fight exists and can be accessed with relative ease, though viewing
it might prove to be something of a let down by today’s standards. There
are limited cameras—black and white, obviously—catching the action, so
following exchanges between the boxers can be difficult. And, since the
fight was not broadcast on television, the uploaded videos come with
narration added in after the fact; some narrations were added by random
boxing enthusiasts. Dunphy’s radio call was recorded and has been
preserved, though finding it is significantly more difficult. Luckily,
Gruver interlaces quotes from Dunphy’s call into his explication of the
in-ring drama with probably—although aptly—embellished mentions of crooked
grins, creased faces, crashing lighting, and the like.

Gruver’s details throughout create a full picture of the ballyhoo
surrounding not just Louis vs. Conn but the state of the nation’s sports
and politics on the eve of its entry into World War II. One of these
masterful instances appears in the book’s fourth chapter “Prelude to a
Classic Confrontation.” Gruver, in making a larger point about race in
boxing during the first half of the twentieth century, uses Joe Louis’s
number of title defenses when compared to white champions who were believed
to have less to prove and thus fought less often. Remarkably, even for
1940s standards, Billy Conn was Joe Louis’s seventh opponent and title
defense in seven months before the two met in June 1941. Contrast that with
Jim Braddock, Max Baer, and Jack Sharkey who all defended their titles just
once during two-year reigns. Or Jack Dempsey who fought the same number of
title defenses as Louis, but over a seven-year, and not seven-month,
period. There are times when Gruver strays from Louis vs. Conn to work in
anecdotes or short descriptions of other fights that are interesting, but
not necessarily pertinent (e.g. a rather lengthy digression to the 1919
Dempsey vs. Willard fight in the fourth chapter). Ultimately, though,
Gruver’s book marks not just a unique fight, but also a unique moment in
American history when the country approached the precipice of world war.
Louis and Conn would meet again for a rematch after the War and, although
the outcome of the second fight was the same, though less dramatic, as the
first, the intervening years radically changed the men and their world.
Gruver captures this shift and presents it in ways sure to interest boxing
fans and researchers alike.



Gruver, Ed. *Joe Louis vs. Billy Conn: Boxing’s Unforgettable Summer of
1941*. Lyons Press,

2022. Hardcover, $27.95.


Remember to smell the roses as you recumber past

Duncan R. Jamieson, Ph. D.
Professor of History
Book Review Editor
*AETHLON: The Journal of Sport Literature*
Ashland University
Ashland, OH  44805
USA
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