Jacobs Beach: The Mob, the Garden and the Golden Age of Boxing

by Kevin Mitchell, Mike Stanton (Foreword)

"Brings to life the fight world of that era. Mr. Mitchell's account is full of memorably drawn scenes, and the stories we haven't heard before make Jacobs Beach a cigar-chomping read."―Wall Street Journal"The value of Mitchell’s book lies not only in bringing back to life a lost era. He also shows us how the blood, sweat, and toil of the ring has been distilled into hard-won wisdom passed down through the generations―the connective tissue of the sweet science."―From the Foreword by Mike Stanton, author of the award-winning Rocky Marciano's Fight for Perfection in a Crooked WorldGangsters have always infected fight game. At the end of the First World War, through Prohibition, and into the 1930s, the Mob emerged as a poisonous force, threatening to ravage the sport. But it was only when cutthroat Madison Square Garden promoter Mike Jacobs, chieftain of a notorious patch of Manhattan pavement called Jacobs Beach, stepped aside that the real devil appeared former Murder, Inc. killer and underworld power broker Frankie Carbo, a man known to many simply as Mr. Gray.And Carbo wasn't alone. Along with a crooked cast of characters that included a rich playboy and an urbane lawyer, he controlled boxing through most of the 1950s, with the help of a diabolical deputy, Francis Blinky Palermo, who did much of Mr. Gray's dirty work, reportedly drugging fighters and robbing them blind. Not until 1961, when Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy shipped Carbo and Palermo to jail for twenty-five years, did it all come crashing down.Enriched by the recollections of some of the men who were there, Kevin Mitchell's Jacobs Beach offers a gripping, noirish look at boxing and organized crime in postwar New York City and reveals the fading glamour of both.

Genres: Nonfiction, History

356 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Little Timmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Exceptionally good history book. Well written with a nice flow to the chapters. Very recommended

[Lance · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is no secret that at the height of the popularity of boxing, there was a criminal element characters, first Madison Square promoter Mike Jacobs and then the notorious Mob boss Frankie Carbo, also known as “Mr. Gray”, is told in this well-researched book by Kevin Mitchell.

This updated version of the classic mob boxing book contains not only some new material but also some of the most detailed writing that can be found on the sport. Mitchell relies on stories from the men who were either at the fights or in the spaces such as Toots Shore where deals were made. Some of the most famous boxers were on the take from the Mob as well, from Joe Louis to Jersey Joe Walcott. They are just two of the fighters whose troubles out of the ring, be them personal or professional, are described in rich detail.

The dealings and actions of the Mob men and their lackeys are just as important to this book – in some cases, even more so and if the reader wants to learn more about the organized crime scene of that time. While the book starts with the dismantling of the ring from the second Madison Square Garden (my favorite story in the entire book) and tells of the power the arena and Jacobs’ influence in the game. This slowly eroded as Carbo became more entrenched and Mitchell takes the reader along into every seedy detail as they controlled more and more fighters.

The book itself is not a breezy read. Instead, it is one that has to be digested slowly and carefully so that the reader does not miss a thing. Whether one wants to read this for the boxing or the true crime, it is one that is a treasure to include in one’s library.

I wish to thank Hamlicar Publishing for providing a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

[Rhys Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

Of all the sports I read, boxing is most probably my favourite. No other sport reveals the true character of an athlete better than boxing, and no other sport endures them to the highs and lows that boxing does.

In Jacobs Beach, Kevin Mitchell takes us back to witness the boxing business in the early to mid 1900s, where the Mob effectively ran boxing. And if you wanted to be someone, you had to know someone.

Mitchell's detailed writing explains the slow transition of power in boxing from one seedy figure to another. He starts with the first Madison Square Garden (MSG) promoter Mike Jacobs, where we find out just how much power there was for whoever ran the Garden. Jacob's power slowly fades away to notorious Mob boss Frankie Carbo. He takes the reader along a journey behind the scenes of boxing in this era, giving us every unsavoury detail of how Carbo and his mob controlled fighters along the way.

Jacobs Beach is as much a story about boxing as it is a true crime novel. Mitchell weaves in the experience of some of the most well known and praised boxers of all time with the rise and fall of the Mob's stranglehold on boxing. There's frequent cameos from the likes of Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano and Jake LaMotta, who all had their dealings with the Mob.

This book is not one you'll want to fly through, careful digestion of Mitchell's words are required to fully appreciate this book.

[Casey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jacobs Beach is more a series of essays than a cohesive boxing history. Still, it is a fascinating look at the criminal underbelly of professional boxing in the thirties, forties, and fifties.

[Terence Bly · Rating 3 out of 5]

First 3/4 good, last 1/4 pants.

[Doris Raines · Rating 3 out of 5]

I LIKE THIS A LOT

[RICK "SHAQ" GOLDSTEIN · Rating 5 out of 5]

RICK “SHAQ” GOLDSTEIN SAYS: “I COULDA HAD CLASS. I COULDA BEEN A CONTENDER. I COULDA BEEN SOMEBODY.”
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“JACOBS BEACH”, is a tremendous look inside boxing and organized crime from the 1930’s through the 1960’s and beyond. The reader will feel like he’s inside every boxing-mob movie ever made… with the understanding that *TRUTH REALLY IS STRANGER THAN FICTION**… and when it came to boxing during these years *ART TRULY IMITATES LIFE*. The author expertly brings to light crime figures that include Frank Costello, Frankie Carbo, Blinky Palermo, Don King, and numerous Mafia notables that aren’t center stage in this expose’… but certainly wielded a heavy blow when needed. Every big name boxer from Jack Johnson to Joe Louis to Jake La Motta to Rocky Graziano to Rocky Marciano to Sonny Liston to Floyd Patterson to Cassius (Muhammad Ali) Clay to Jersey Joe Walcott to Kid Gavilan to Jack Dempsey to James “Cinderella Man” Braddock… and many, many more... from this era are depicted and not always in the best light.

The main crux of this book is whether fights were fixed during this time period… and the definite answer is a resounding yes! In addition, what is an interesting revelation is the almost monopolistic control the mob had on boxing… ranging from control of the arenas as well as the boxer’s managers… as well as the boxers themselves. If you wanted to fight in the “Mecca” of boxing Madison Square Garden you better play by the mob’s rules. In those days there were fights almost every night… and that included TV coverage. It was every fighter’s dream to fight in a main event at the Garden. The heart of the wheeling and dealing took place across the street at promoter Mike Jacobs office… which became known as “JACOBS BEACH”.

The author, Kevin Mitchell deftly moves from the under the table deals that lead to “THE SMART MONEY” being placed on the night’s “right” fighter… to the other fighter being told “THIS IS NOT YOUR NIGHT”… to Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver heading up investigations into organized crimes control of boxing which resulted in actual admissions by notables such as Jake La Motta years later. Mitchell simultaneously “bobs-and-weaves” like a championship fighter as he dances from explaining how “Cinderella Man” James Braddock not only won a miracle heavyweight championship… but wound up owning part of Joe Louis. From there you find yourself in the middle of the infamous Toots Shor’s watering hole as Rocky Graziano decks a drunk and belligerent Jackie Gleason. You’ll learn that famed writers such as Damon Runyon, Jimmy Cannon, and others picked up “envelopes” which helped influence their articles which in turn shaped the public’s perceptions. One absolutely illuminating area of the book was the interview with Budd Schulberg who wrote the script for the Academy Award winning film, *ON THE WATERFRONT* “which gave Brando perhaps his finest hundred minutes on the screen.” This all-time classic scene basically summarizes the real-life purpose of this entire book, when Brando says to his brother Charley:

“IT WASN’T HIM, CHARLEY!” “He tells him, pleading that the blame for his failed boxing career lay closer to home than an unnamed wise guy who’d been pulling the strings offstage.” “IT WAS YOU. YOU REMEMBER THAT NIGHT IN THE GARDEN, YOU CAME DOWN TO MY DRESSING ROOM AND SAID, “KID, THIS AIN’T YOUR NIGHT. WE’RE GOING FOR THE PRICE ON WILSON.” “YOU REMEMBER THAT?” “THIS AIN’T YOUR NIGHT!” “MY NIGHT! I COULDA TAKEN WILSON APART! SO WHAT HAPPENS? HE GETS THE TITLE SHOT OUTDOORS IN THE BALL PARK-AND WHAT DO I GET? A ONE-WAY TICKET TO PALOOKAVILLE… I COULDA HAD CLASS. I COULDA BEEN A CONTENDER. I COULDA BEEN SOMEBODY, INSTEAD OF A BUM, WHICH IS WHAT I AM…”

This is a riveting look behind the curtains into the mob’s control of the era that many boxing experts say were boxing’s greatest years.

[Adeyinka Makinde · Rating 3 out of 5]

The sport of baseball has traditionally been referred to as the national sport of the American nation. Its handsome uniforms, consisting of embroidered caps, buttoned tops and knickerbockers, suggested the spirit of civilized competitiveness. Adapted from English ‘rounders’, it was, and perhaps still is, seen as something of an embodiment of the American way. “Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America,” wrote Jacques Barzun, “had better learn baseball.” It was with such thinking in mind that in the early 20th Century, the organisers of the sport heeded progressive-era calls urging the separation of sports from betting and the sale of alcohol. But if baseball projected an idealised vision of how Americans saw themselves, boxing, it can be argued, reflected by large measure some of the unpalatable realities of the ‘American way’. Boxing, like baseball an English invention, was a truer reflection of the American dedication to martial prowess. Its freewheeling dedication to holding out to the top dollar, an unavoidable component of a laissez faire system, made it synonymous with a kind of freebooting capitalism. And, as Kevin Mitchell’s book reminds, a large scale plunder of sorts did occur; namely that orchestrated by Mobsters and their cohorts of the talents and financial entitlements of many of the fighters who put their lives on the line each time they stepped into the squared ring. It is a tale of a colossal shakedown and of exploitation, where the Jeffersonian quote about the “labours of the many and the profits of the few” never rang truer.
Boxing, some continue to argue, was a ‘better run’ sport during the period on which Mitchell focuses, that is, during the 1950s. The Mobsters, they say were ‘men of their word.’ Their grip, facilitated by the International Boxing Club (I.B.C.), an archetypal legally constituted body which served as a Cosa Nostra front, ensured that there were few fractured titles and that the best fighters were matched with the best. Yet, much of the evidence presented here tends to put the lie to an assertion of a well-run sport. Indeed, it shows how the Mobsters, due in large measure to their machinations, presided over a slow but inexorable decline of what had been a mass entertainment sport into one which was fast losing credibility among many fans, and in the greater scheme of things, was becoming increasingly marginalised.
Central to events was Frankie Carbo, a Mephistophelian-like figure at the heart of intrigues concocted through the edicts of the I.B.C. and the restrictive practices of the not very independent Boxing Managers’ Guild. Carbo schemed; conniving and cheating in equal measure as he enforced Faustian bargains whilst inspiring fear and dread among the boxing fraternity. And there were the fixes, where highly questionable decisions were made in favour of underdog fighters. Fighters with very good records would suddenly and inexplicably sustain losses. The pungent whiff of foul play in the wake of certain bouts most memorably those involving Jake LaMotta and Billy Graham caused immeasurable damage to the credibility of the game. LaMotta, the ‘’Raging Bull’ took a dive against the middling Billy Fox in order to secure a future title challenge, while Graham, a popular, highly skilled competitor, was decidedly robbed in a third meeting with Cuban legend, Kid Gavilan.
How did this all come about? And how did it all unravel? The sport itself, largely unregulated and since its earliest times existing on the margins of the law, had always attracted and made accommodations with gangsters, shysters and their ilk. That boxing would eventually be controlled by Mafiosi was something of an inevitability given the course of American history. Re-constituted by forward-thinking criminals such as Charles ‘Lucky’ Luciano who had seen off the ‘Old World’ thinking ancien regime of the ‘Moustache Petes’, and enriched by the vast proceeds of bootlegging garnered during the Prohibition-era, the Mafia were by the middle of the 20th century a force in American society. They controlled politicians, judges and police chiefs. And with the passing of the controlling torch from Mike Jacobs’ Twentieth Century Sporting Club to the I.B.C., they were well-placed to move in and monopolise the sport.
The I.B.C. entered into agreements with all the world champions from featherweight to heavyweight, guaranteeing that each would fight two title fights per year under the promotional banner of the organisation. Leading contenders were also contracted to fight exclusively for the I.B.C. Their stranglehold was completed via their control of the sale of radio, television and motion picture rights of the contests and indeed by the interests held by the I.B.C.s head, James Norris in Madison Square Garden and the Chicago Stadium among many notable arenas which provided the venue for most of the matches.
The sport remained largely unchecked and its Mob rulers unchallenged until Senator Estes Kefauver’s crusade, incorporating televised hearings by the United States Senate, a self-penned book and magazine articles, began piling on some much needed pressure. Although, Mitchell recounts the memorable televised inquisition of the debonair ‘Prime Minister of the Underworld’, Frank Costello, he does not refer to later disclosures that Kefauver’s apparent unabashed zeal at lancing the boil of surrounding criminality may have been tempered by the fact that he was set up and compromised by a Mafia boss who he failed to subpoena to the hearings. Kefauver, it is said was heavily into drink and a womaniser. Mitchell also refers to the Kennedy administration’s apparent reluctance to tackle the Mobsters in boxing. Robert Kennedy, the US Attorney-General, apparently refused Kefauver’s recommendation that a Federal Boxing Commissioner be placed within the Justice Department, a rebuff that Mitchell implies was grounded in the fact that the Mob had helped to deliver parts of Chicago to his brother during the 1960 presidential elections and that striking at the Mob would impact on the Democratic Party machines connections with local Mob bosses. But this surely isn’t a watertight rationale given the close attentions that the F.B.I. was giving to Mob lords like Chicago’s Sam Giancana and Carlos Marcello of New Orleans. Perhaps, it is best to conclude that the Kennedy’s did not understand boxing or care too much about it.
In the end, the I.B.C. was dissolved under a court order for breaching anti-trust laws and both Carbo and his Lieutenant, ‘Frankie ‘Blinky’ Parlemo were sent to jail.
It was not a happy ending though, as Mitchell who details the influence of gangsters prior to the Carbo-I.B.C.-era, also refers to the Mob’s successors, focusing on the successor-in-chief, Don King. Along the way, he speaks to old hands Al Certo and Lou Duva, New Jersey boxing men who offer personal insight; although he is punctilious in correcting a few inaccurate recollections.
Mitchell, an accomplished writer who is the chief sports correspondence for The Observer, is quite a sprightly writer who is adept at interweaving the critical social and political currents of the times into a fairly comprehensive narration of how the Mafia almost succeeded in sucking the life out of a sport. It is true that much of the workings of the I.B.C. and Carbo’s activities had been covered in a number of biographies such as those on Sonny Liston, respectively by Rob Steen and Nick Touches, but whereas the details in those works tended to distract from a more thorough understanding of their biographical subject, Jacobs Beach dedicates itself to the phenomenon of crime in the sport, bringing out the stories, not only of icons like Jake La Motta but also of less-known fighters like Billy Graham and Joe Micelli.
With fighters of the calibre of Sugar Ray Robinson, Rocky Marciano, Carmen Basilio, LaMotta, and Gavilan regularly practising their trade under the glare of television cameras, it is not hard to understand why the 1950s is often referred to as a ‘golden age’ of boxing. But what this book does is to remind the reader of the rotten underbelly of the sport that so thoroughly corrupted the game and which ultimately left the fight fan cynical and disillusioned. Alas, a symptom the sport of boxing has yet to shake off.

Adeyinka Makinde is the author of the biography Jersey Boy: The Life and Mob Slaying of Frankie DePaula.

[Mario · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some of the chapters were really interesting but in between I found it to be a bit too boring and didn't do justice to some of the fascinating characters that surrounded the boxing world during the 20th century.

[Ron · Rating 2 out of 5]

To be honest I did not finish this book.

It is interesting, However the writing is fairly sluggish and it felt more like a school textbook than a pleasure read.

I really wanted to enjoy this book, But I've tried off and on to the past month or so to read this and I just cannot.

[John Marricco · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was a lot of fun to read! Being a fan of boxing is a must, but what a scene MSG was back in the day. You can smell the sweat, the leather, the cigar smoke when you read this book. The interviews were awesome. Being that my father-in-law made the documentary "When We Were Kings", this book helped me fill in some of the blanks about boxing history.

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written with a sports reporters eye, this is a fascinating history of New York City boxing from the 30s thru the 60s. Not all the names are familiar but you will definitely meet all of the greats. Suffice it to say, one should be a fan of the pugilistic arts to fully enjoy the ride. The corruption in the sport is in the forefront which is to be expected. For me, this was boxing history in the most colorful and chilling form

[Terry · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not a quick, easy read, but personally I felt it was worth the time and effort. I learned a lot from this book and really enjoyed it. I love reading anything about the mafia, and this book didn't disappoint.

[Kasey]

Thank you for the opportunity to review this book as a giveaway recipient. I am excited to read it and will update my thoughts on this book soon!

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Throughly enjoyed this book

[Dayna · Rating 3 out of 5]

A well-researched exposé that sports fans & mob-curious will enjoy. I received a Kindle edition from a Goodreads giveaway.