Max Baer and the Star of David (9 page)

The crowd chanted its approval—“
Max! Max! Max!
” they cried out again and again—and Max skipped around the ring, blew kisses to everyone, and even performed a quick, graceful soft-shoe dance of the kind he’d done in
The Prizefighter and the Lady.
In our dressing room a few minutes later, he continued to have the time of his life, joking with reporters and, with mock seriousness, telling them he was truly glad he hadn’t been up to commissioner Brown’s conditioning standards or there might have been a
real
tragedy in the ring. And when reporters asked him who his current sweetheart was—Jean Harlow or June Knight, Bee Star or Shirley La Belle—Max declared that his only sweetheart was his mother.

“And what a sweetheart she is,” he went on. “Wouldn’t think of suing me for breach of promise. And boy, what an advantage that is since dames have already cost me more than a hundred thousand bucks!”

When asked if rumors were true that he’d taken up with Dorothy Dunbar again, he said that he thought their having been separated seven times was enough. “Besides,” he laughed, “I’m too young to get married again.”

Then Max put on a fawn-colored gabardine suit, a brown-and-white striped shirt, a brown-and-white striped necktie, a new pair of tan toe-cap oxford shoes, and, with Buddy, Jack Dempsey, Jerry Cassell, me, and the rest of our entourage, he went out on the town—to the Stork Club, Toots Shor’s, the Cotton Club, and other favorite haunts, where, on that night, and all day the next day, and on the days and nights that followed, he rejoiced in the good wishes of others—Jews especially, who claimed him, with his blessing, as
their
champion—the first Jewish heavyweight champion ever—and where, for all those fortunate enough to know him, his boundless energy and spirit transformed New York City into a New Jerusalem of joy—a pleasure dome of luxurious indulgences unlike any I had known before, or have known since.

When, ten days later, the time came to pack up and head cross-country for Livermore, he surprised me with the news that we would, for a while, be parting ways. Mickey B. Friedman, who had been Max’s stand-in during the making of
The Prize Fighter and the Lady
, would take his place on the west-bound train while Max slipped away, disguised as a bearded Bible salesman, and headed south for Washington, DC. There, his public words about marriage notwithstanding, he was going to pay court to a woman he’d met a few months earlier, Mary Ellen Sullivan, and see if she was who he believed she was: the girl of his dreams who was going to make the great dream of his life come true.

“But your dreams
have
come true,” I said. “You’re the heavyweight champion of the world, in addition to which you have already met, several times over, the girl of your dreams, and have even married one of them…”

“Ah, but none of them till now have made my heart do somersaults the way she does,” he said. He kissed me softly on the cheek. “You know me well, Horace—you and your wife know me better than anyone—so I can level with you the way I can’t level with anyone else, but the
real
dream is to be the champ, which I’ve done, but also to be the champ with a woman I love by my side—a woman who can help me bring some fabulous baby Baers into the world. And guess what? I think I found her!”

I congratulated him without voicing my skepticism, and I wished him well on his journey. I said that I had been favorably impressed with Miss Sullivan when we had met her at the Willard Hotel in Washington, where she was the manager of its coffee shop. She had a sweetly sassy way about her that had endeared her to us both, so that I could truthfully say to Max that, like him, I had become fond of her.

“And you know what it’s gonna be like, me and her and baby-makes-three out at the ranch—what I figured out, dumb me?”

“Pray tell me,” I said.

“Why, it’s gonna be so wonderful, it’s gonna be almost—” he paused “—
unbearable
! That’s how wonderful it’s gonna be! Completely and totally un-
baer
-able! Get it?”

Then he laughed, embraced me again, and while he did, my thoughts turned to Joleen, and to how news of Max’s new lady-love—or of the possibility of marriage to this woman—might affect her. When he asked if I realized that what he was giving me was “a genuine and undisputed heavyweight championship Baer hug,” though, I could not help but pull him close to me and wish him well.

Upon my return to the Baer ranch, I found Joleen to be as she had been before: quiet, sullen, distant. She performed her chores well and efficiently, and was respectfully affectionate with me in ways a wife was expected to be with a husband, but other than perfunctory exchanges—about the weather, about work accomplished and work still to be done—and muted expressions of congratulation on Max’s triumph, along with token inquiries as to his whereabouts and plans, she showed little interest in anything beyond the essentials of daily living: eating, working, sleeping.

On the third day of my third week back home, however (Max was still, as far as anyone knew, in Washington, DC), I returned to our cabin from a sparring session with Buddy on what was, for California in summer, a refreshingly mild late afternoon in July, to be greeted by a strange aroma. Joleen was sitting on the floor at the foot of our bed, in the dark—I mistook her, at first, for a shadow—her face covered with what seemed to be gray powder, but which, I saw upon closer perusal, were ashes.

The crate in which she had kept her dolls was bare.

I knelt beside her and instead of asking what she had done, I phrased my question, and concern, as a statement: “You have burned your dolls,” I said.

“You are a wise and observant brother,” Joleen said.

“But why—and why now?”

“Why? In order that my ghosts truly
be
ghosts,” she said. “Why now? Because you are home, and I am safe again. I know you will protect me.”

“Protect you from
what?
”

For the first time since I had returned to Livermore, she smiled at me, and when she did I felt my heart surge with a love for her that I had for some time forsworn.

She took my hands in hers and kissed them. “The dark beast that has been pursuing us has made its home in my heart,” she said. “Therefore—in this way—will I keep him from making his home in yours.”

“Because you love me?” I said.

“Because I love you,” she said.

She rose from the floor and, her arms around my neck, her body warm against mine, she recited a verse from The Song of Solomon: “‘We have a little sister, and she hath no breasts; what shall we do for our sister in the day when she shall be spoken for?’”

I answered, as did the brothers in The Song of Solomon: “‘If she be a wall, we will build upon her a palace of silver; and if she be a door, we will inclose her with boards of cedar.’”

“Yes,” she said, and she kissed me lightly on the lips. “And now lie down with me, my brother—lie down with a woman in whose heart the dark beast, whose vile desires will not be denied, rejoices.”

Max returned to the ranch the last week in August, ebullient as ever, and bearing news: first, that he had agreed to fight an exhibition bout against King Levinsky in Levinsky’s home town, Chicago. “Levinsky’s a real hundred per cent Yid, not like me,” Max said, “so that every Jew west of the Mississippi, and then some, are gonna show up, and the Kingfish and I are gonna give them a show they’ll remember for the rest of their lives.”

His second, happier piece of news, about which he swore Joleen and me to secrecy, was that within a year, after he’d fought a few exhibitions to build up the gate for the first defense of his title, and to lay away some loot for the Baer babies who would soon be running around the ranch, he and Mary Ellen Sullivan would tie the knot.

Joleen offered him her hand. “Congratulations,” she said. “I trust she will prove worthy of you.”

“Hey,” he said, moving to embrace Joleen, who stepped away and began dusting our books with an invisible cloth. “No need to pout or be glum, Joleen. This won’t change nothing between us.”

“Of course not,” she said. “You will still be you, and I will still be me, and Horace will still be Horace.”

“But Mary Ellen and me will be married!” Max exclaimed. “And then the four of us will start in making families, and our babes will play with each other and become friends too.”

“And perhaps the beast in my heart that you took for your own, will destroy your dreams,” Joleen said.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Max said. “We ain’t got no beasts around here—hogs and cows, and some horses now—gorgeous horses for my father, from the purse Carnera brought in, which is
his
dream come true, see—so what’s this you’re talking about—?”

Joleen pushed Max against the wall, and kissed him passionately in a way that made me fear she would sink her teeth into him.

Then she took a step back, and began dusting the walls.

“Hey—thanks,” Max said. “I mean, I guess that’s the way you people congratulate friends when they bring good news.”

“I think not,” I said, and I took Max by an arm—seized it—and turned him toward me. “I think Joleen is suffering from what is known as a melancholic disposition, and I think she means what she says about the destruction of your dreams. I think we need to be discreet about how and when we reveal our wishes to her.”

“My husband is a wise man,” Joleen said, and she waved her phantom cloth at Max so that motes of dust seemed to emanate from it, gray specks that floated weightlessly in the waning light of day.

Max nodded. “I’m sorry for your troubles, Joleen,” he said. “I love you like I love my own mother—like I love Horace—like I love—well—
all
the people I love. But I’ve known people in life who’ve had the black willies and believed they’d never be happy again, but I’m here to tell you that you’re gonna be happy again, and you and me and Horace are gonna have good times like always.”

“May your words find their way into God’s cold, unforgiving heart,” Joleen said.

“You got that right,” Max said. “And I swear to you that though me and Mary Ellen are gonna get hitched and call it marriage because it will
be
marriage—we’re doing it—
I’m
doing it—mostly so I can bring some baby Baers into this crazy world.”

“How sweet,” Joleen said. “Have you inquired of
them
, and gained
their
approval for your decision?”

Max took a deep breath before he spoke again. “And here’s something I been thinking and hoped I wouldn’t have to say out loud,” he said. “But what I want is for things to be on the up and up with us the way they’ve always been, because compared to what I’ve known with you two, what I have and expect to have with Mary Ellen is more like a contract, okay? I mean, compared to what I have with you, like I said, it’s just what I guess you’d call a long-term mutual arrangement.”

“But legalized.”

“
That’s for the kids we’re gonna have!
” Max shouted. “Don’t you understand
anything
I’ve been saying?!”

“I understand everything you’ve been saying,” Joleen said.

“Let me put it this way then,” he said, and I saw that, fists clenched, he was trembling. “Mary Ellen is a good woman, and I know you and Horace are gonna like her—love her, I hope—but you’ll always—always always—be first in my heart.”

“What heart?” Joleen said, and saying this, she walked out of our cabin, and toward the fields where his father’s new horses were grazing.

Three days before the new year of 1935, Max entered the ring against King Levinsky at Chicago Stadium for what was to be the first of five exhibition fights. Although Max could lose his championship title in such an exhibition bout if (and only if) an opponent were to knock him out, the object of such exhibitions in those days was to provide a first-rate show for boxing fans while bringing in good money for promoters and the champion. And traveling around the country and having good times between championship bouts was the ideal life for Max. Levinsky, however, who had defeated fighters such as Jack Sharkey and Tommy Loughran, and who was managed by his sister, Lena “Leaping Lena” Levy, had ideas Max had not anticipated.

When the bell rang for round one, and the fighters met in the middle of the ring, Max laughed and, as if preparing to annihilate Levinsky with a single punch, performed an elaborate windmill windup with his right arm, at which point Levinsky stepped forward and slammed the hardest right hook he could to Max’s jaw.

Max, playing along, wobbled around the ring as if he’d been hurt badly, then thrust his chin forward to give Levinsky an easy target, whereupon Levinsky again punched Max in the jaw. “
Hey!
” Max screamed at him. “
We’re supposed to be having fun!
” So they danced around together for the first round, Max keeping Levinsky away with nifty jabs and nimble footwork, but when, at the start of round two, Levinsky strode to the center of the ring, and gestured mockingly for Max to come and get him, Max had had enough. “That’s it,” he said to Cantwell, and he charged at Levinsky, and pounded him—left right, right left, left right—then finished him off with a crushing right that sent Levinsky to the canvas, where he was counted out, and from which he had to be carried to his corner.

“He thought he could sneak in and make himself king,” Max said to reporters afterwards, “but I turned that blowhard into a dead fish.” And when the reporters peppered him with questions about his romances, and asked if it was true that he was engaged to one of his new sweethearts, not Mary Ellen Sullivan, but Mary Kirk Brown, a New York café society lady, he laughed. “I know many girls,” he said, “many lovely girls. But I think I shall still order à
la carte
for a while.”

And so he did. He courted many ladies, and he also continued to court Mary Ellen Sullivan, traveling to Washington, DC, when we were nearby, and sometimes when we were not, and twice hiring private planes to get him there so that the two of them could work at persuading her family, who were devout Catholics, to accept Max as a son-in-law.