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The Manassa Mauler and the Fighting Marine: An Interpretation of the Dempsey–Tunney Fights

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

Elliott J. Gorn
Elliott J. Gorn
Affiliation:
Elliott J. Gorn is Assistant Professor in the Department of American Studies at the University of Alabama, P.O. Box 2107, University, Alabama 35486. An earlier version of this paper was read at the American Historical Association meetings in Washington, D.C., on 28 December 1982. The author wishes to thank Randy Roberts, Lawrence Levine, Richard Wightman Fox, Jules Chametzsky, Ronald Story, Roy Rosenzweig, William Doty, and Ralph Bogardus for their aid and criticism. He wishes to extend special thanks to Max Gorn and Manny Cole for convincing him that boxing is a worthy topic of study. Finally, he gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation.
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Extract

I often have heard boxing fans remark that the prize ring reveals life the way it really is. The elemental combat between two individuals, the primal physical struggle, the quest for glory and fear of humiliation, all contribute to the belief that men in the ring are in touch with life's underlying realities. Significantly, depicting “life the way it really is” is precisely the role anthropologist Clifford Geertz ascribes to religious worldviews. Religions, Geertz tells us, do not just buttress social systems or justify conditions as men and women find them. They also explain the way the world works, cut behind surface appearances, and offer visions of underlying order which give meaning to daily life. Through drama and ritual, religion depicts the “really real” with idealized clarity. Religious symbols unmask the way the universe is in sheer actuality and demonstrate the moving forces behind mundane affairs. The truism that America's popular religion is sports takes on new significance in light of Geertz' observation. And in the pantheon of the 1920s, no gods shone more brightly than the heroes of the ring.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 19 , Issue 1 , April 1985 , pp. 27 - 47
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985

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References

1 Geertz, Clifford, “Religion as a Cultural System,” in his The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), pp. 87–125Google Scholar. I have also been influenced by Geertz'seminal essays, “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture,” pp. 3–30, and “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight,” pp. 412–453. Two fine general treatments of the spectacular growth of sporting interest during this era are Radar, Benjamin, American Sports: From the Age of Folk Games to the Age of Spectators (New York: Prentice Hall, 1983), part 3Google Scholar; and Betts, John Rickard, America's Sporting Heritage (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 1974), chap. 9Google Scholar.

2 This essay is necessarily a speculative venture. What reporters write is not invariably what masses of people think. Nonetheless, I have attempted to isolate broad themes which emerged repeatedly in the middle-class press. Because many newspaper stories were syndicated or came from wire services like the Associated Press, the fights were covered with substantial uniformity around the country. By focusing on the most often repeated symbolism, I hope to capture an essential core of perceptions held by fans and reporters alike.

3 For coverage of the fights as spectacles, see Chicago Tribune (hereafter CT), 24 Sept. 1926, p. 23; American Review of Reviews (hereafter, ARR), Oct. 1926, pp. 416–18, condensed in Reader's Digest (hereafter RD), Nov. 1926, pp. 399–400; New Haven Evening Register (hereafter NHER), 23 Sept. 1926, p. 1; The Literary Digest (hereafter LD), 8 Oct. 1927, p. 63; New York Herald Tribune (hereafter NYHT), 18 Sept. 1927, sec. 2, p. 5; LD, 17 Sept. 1927, p. 36; NYHT 17 Sept. 1927, p. 16, 23 Sept. 1926, p. 1; New York Times (hereafter NYT), 24 Sept. 1926, p. 1; RD, June 1927, Pp. 99–100, condensed from Success, May 1927. Some sources estimated that seventy thousand people who could not obtain tickets came to Philadelphia just to be near the action.

4 NYHT, 19 Sept. 1926 sec. 2, p. 6; 22 Sept. 1926, p. 1; 22 Sept. 1927, pp. 26–8; 20 Sept. 1927, p. 29; 19 Sept. 1927, p. 19; 17 Sept. 1927, p. 16, CT, 21 Sept. 1926, p. 21; 23 Sept. 1927, P. 25; NHER, 24 Sept. 1926, P. 28; Roberts, Randy, Jack Dempsey, The Manassa Mauler (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1979), pp. 228–9Google Scholar. Some individuals still condemned boxing as primitive, immoral and atavistic, but such sentiments were no longer as widely shared as in previous decades. See for example Outlook, 6 Oct. 1926, p. 179. For changing attitudes toward boxing, see Gorn, Elliott J., The Manly Art: Bare-Knuckle Prize Fighting and the Rise of American Sports (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, Forthcoming)Google Scholar. At the Chicago fight, “ringside” seats (one-third of the stadium) cost fifty-five dollars. Five dollar general admission tickets left some spectators eight hundred feet from the ring.

5 NYHT, 22 Sept. 1926, p. 28; 23 Sept. 1927 p. 27; Time, 3 Oct. 1927, p. 30; LD, 8 Oct. 1927, p. 63; CT, 22 Sept. 1927, p. 1.

6 NYT, 24 Sept. 1926, pp. 1–7; CT, 23 Sept. 1927, pp. 1–8; NYHT, 22 Sept. 1926, p. 29; 23 Sept. 1927, p. 27; NHER, 23 Sept. 1926, p. 1; 27 Sept. 1926, p. 22.

7 Saturday Evening Post, 18 Sept. 1926, p. 218.

8 See, for example, Betts, , America's Sporting Heritage, chap. 9Google Scholar; Dulles, Foster Rhea, America Learns to Play (New York: Appleton-Century Co, 1940), chaps. 17–22Google Scholar; Mrozek, Donald J., Sport and American Mentality, 1880–1910 (Knoxville: Univ. of Tennessee Press, 1983)Google Scholar; Allen, Frederick Lewis, Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the Nineteen Twenties (New York: Harper and Row, 1931), chap. 8Google Scholar; Lucas, John A. and Smith, Ronald A., The Saga of American Sport (Philadelphia: Lea and Febiger, 1978)Google Scholar; Rader, , American Sports, part 3Google Scholar. The psychologist G. Stanley Hall considered maintaining high morale – which he defined as the maximum of life abounding vitality – to be the central goal of modern man. Sports were an important symbol of the active life in a culture which feared that prosperity made men slothful and passive. See Morale: The Supreme Standard of Life and Conduct (New York: Appleton and Co, 1920)Google Scholar.

9 Knute Rockne, sales promotion speech, from Houston, McCready, Salesman From the Sidelines: Being the Business Career of Knute K. Rockne (New York, 1932), pp. 93–115Google Scholar, quoted in Sklar, Robert, The Plastic Age (1917–1930) (New York: George Braziller, 1970), pp. 258–68Google Scholar.

10 Lardner, Ring, Ring Lardner's Best Stories (Garden City: Garden City Publishing Co, 1938)Google Scholar.

11 The New York Evening World, cited in Outlook, 6 Oct. 1926, p. 167; NYHT, 19 Sept. 1926, Sec. 2, pp. 6, 7; Sept, 1926, p. 1; 24 Sept. 1926, p. 24; 17 Sept. 1927 p. 16; 19 Sept. 1927, p. 19; 20 Sept. 1927, p. 29; 22 Sept. 1927, pp. 26, 28; 24 Sept. 1927, p. 16; Time, 30 Aug. 1926, p. 24; NHER, 22 Sept. 1926, p. 23; 24 Sept. 1926, p. 28; CT, 24 Sept. 1926. p. 22; 13 Sept. 1926, p. 23; 22 Sept. 1927, p. 23; Outlook 28 Sept. 1927, pp. 105–6; LD, 16 Oct. 1926, pp. 42–6; ARR, 26 Oct. 1926, pp. 344–6, 419–20, also condensed in RD, Nov. 1926 pp. 399–400; The Golden Book Magazine, July 1927, p. 40.

12 The Wall Street odds before their first fight made Tunney a three-to-one underdog. Nevertheless, the New York Times reported that fully 90% of the Philadelphia crowd hoped for Tunney's victory. NYT, 24 Sept. 1926, p. 1. See also NYHT, 22 Sept. 1926, p. 29.

13 See Wohl, R. Richard. “The Rags to Riches Story: An Episode in Secular Idealism,” in Bendix, Reinhard and Lipset, Seymour Martin, eds., Class Status and Power: A Reader in Social Stratification (Glencoe: Free Press, 1953), p. 388–95Google Scholar. Alger's novels remained very popular into the 1920s; see Cawelti, John, Apostles of the Self-Made Man: Changing Concepts of Success in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), chap. 4Google Scholar.

14 Winer, Frank, “The Elderly Jock and How He Got That Way,” in Goldstein, Jeffrey H., ed., Sports, Games and Play: Social and Psychological Viewpoints (New York: Halsted Press, 1979), pp. 203–9Google Scholar. My interest in these fights has a personal basis. My father, too, found Tunney a perfect symbol for Jewish working-class aspirations, and he raised his children with stories of “Gentleman” Gene, the intellectual boxer.

15 CT, 20 Sept. 1927, p. 22; LD 16 Oct. 1926, p. 42; NHER, 24 Sept. 1926, p. 28; NYHT, 24 Sept. 1926, p. 1. Ironically, the plane flight left Tunney feeling weak and nauseous.

16 For examples, see NHER, 21 Sept. 1926, p. 11; 22 Sept, 1926, p. 23; 24 Sept. 1926, p. 28; NYHT, 19 Sept. 1926, Sec. 2, p. 2; 24 Sept. 1926, p. 1; 21 Sept, 1927, p. 25; CT, 24 Sept. 1926, p. 21 ; 22 Sept. 1927, p. 1; 23 Sept. 1927, p. 2; Tunney, Gene, “My Fights with Jack Dempsey,” in Leighton, Isabel, ed., The Aspirin Age, 1919–1941 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1949), pp. 157–8Google Scholar, originally published in Sport Magazine; LD 16 Oct. 1926, pp. 42–6; Outlook, 28 Sept, 1927, pp. 105–6. Tunney's career inspired a short story about a clean-cut young man trained by a psychologist using apparatus that measured reaction time. Claudy, Carl H., “The Book Fighter”, Everybody's Magazine 02 1927, pp. 105–117Google Scholar.

17 CT, 24 Sept. 1926, p. 21; 22 Sept. 1927, p. 1; 23 Sept. 1927, p. 2; NYHT, 19 Sept. 1926, sec. 2, p. 6; 25 Sept. 1926, p. 14; 18 Sept. 1927, SeC. 2, p. 5; 23 Sept 1927, 26; 20 Sept. 1927, p. 29; Outlook 6 Oct. 1926, pp. 167–8; Oct. 1927, pp. 144–6; ARR Oct. 1926, pp. 344–6, reprinted in RD Nov. 1926, pp. 399–400; LD 16 Oct. 1926, pp. 42–6; Johnston, Alexander, Ten and Out (New York: I. Washburn, 1927), pp. 221–6Google Scholar. The Coué institutes were but a single example of the plethora of therapeutic self-help nostroms. Allen, Only Yesterday, p. 69.

18 A point emphasized by Randy Roberts in personal correspondence. See, for examples, CT, 13 Sept. 1926, p. 23; 22 Sept. 1927, p. 24; 23 Sept. 1927, p. 29; NYHT, 18 Sept. 1927, sec. 2, p. 5; 22 Sept. 1927, p. 1.

19 NYT, 19 Sept. 1926, sec. 10, p. 1. The paradoxical fusion of mechanical imagery with frontier individualism lay at the heart of Charles Lindbergh's popularity in this era. See Ward, John William. “The Meaning of Lindbergh's Flight”, American Quarterly, 10 (1958), p. 3–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar, reprinted in Abrams, Richard M. and Levine, Lawrence W., The Shaping of Twentieth Century America (Boston: Little, Brown and Co, 1965) pp. 404–17Google Scholar.

20 Roberts beautifully evokes Dempsey's early days in chaps. 1 and 2. See also Dempsey, Jack and Dempsey, Barbara piatelli, Dempsey (New York: Harper and Row, 1977), chaps. 1–6Google Scholar; NYHT, 19 Sept. 1926, sec. 2, p. 7; 23 Sept. 1926, p. 1; 15 Sept. 1927, p. 25; Johnston, . Ten and Out, p. 208Google Scholar; Durant, John and Rice, Edward, Come Out Fighting (New York: Essential Books, 1946), pp. 73–4Google Scholar.

21 Ibid. Taking the name of a retired champion was a venerable boxing tradition. See Gorn, The Manly Art, for examples.

22 NYHT, 23 Sept. 1926, p. 1; 19 Sept. 1926, sec. 2, p. 7; Durant, and Rice, , Come Out Fighting, pp. 79–81Google Scholar; Johnston, , Ten and Out, p. 207Google Scholar; ARR, 26 Oct. 1926, pp. 419–20; Fleischer, Nat, Jack Dempsey (New Rochelle: Arlington House, 1972), pp. 70–6Google Scholar; Dempsey and Dempsey, Dempsey, chaps. 15–17; Roberts, , Jack Dempsey, chap. 4Google Scholar.

23 Ibid.

24 Durant, and Rice, , Come Out Fighting, p. 106Google Scholar. NYHT, 23 Sept. 1926, p. 26; 22 Sept. 1927, p. 27; Time, 21 Aug. 1927, p. 23; Fleischer, , Jack Dempsey, pp. 85–8, 96, 115Google Scholar; The Brooklyn Eagle, quoted in LD 16 Oct. 1926, p. 46.

25 Lardner, Ring, “The Battle of the Century”, The Saturday Evening Post, 29 10 1921, p. 86Google Scholar; NYT, 24 Sept. 1926, p. 1; Time 4 Oct. 1926, p. 28; 30 Aug. 1926, p. 24. Roberts amasses much evidence that the champion's image remained seriously blemished from 1919 to 1926, yet he never reconciles this with his argument that Dempsey was transformed into a wholesome boyhood hero. Until he lost the championship, both the hero and villain images remained, and the latter was particularly strong. For examples of press criticism of Dempsey, see LD, 16 July 1921, p. 27; 6 Oct. 1923, pp. 35–36; 13 Oct. 1927, pp. 60–63; Fleischer, , Jack Dempsey, p. 125Google Scholar; CT, 21 Sept. 1927, p. 23; Outlook, 6 Oct. 1926, p. 167–68; NYHT, 23 Sept. 1926, p. 26; Time, 4 Oct. 1926, p. 28.

26 Roberts emphasizes the differences between the working-class and middle-class press in personal correspondence. Louis Golding wrote of the fans' ambivalence toward Dempsey, , “They adored him and spat at him;” The Bare-Knuckle Breed (New York: Barnes, 1954), p. 222Google Scholar. See also LD, 9 July 1927, p. 46–9; NHER, 24 Sept. 1926, p. 28; CT, 24 Sept. 1926, p. 23. For examples of Dempsey's improved image late in his career see LD, 16 Oct. 1926, p. 46; RD, Aug. 1927, pp. 243–44; CT, 22 Sept. 1927, p. 24; 23 Sept. 1927, p. 29; NYHT, 18 Sept. 1927, sec. 2, p. 5; 22 Sept. 1927, p. 1; 23 Sept. 1927, p. 26.

27 Durant, and Rice, , Come Out Fighting, p. 76Google Scholar; LD, 16 July 1921, p. 27; 27 Aug. 1921, p. 27; Fleischer, , Jack Dempsey, p. 10Google Scholar. Doc Kearns harrassed Dempsey with a series of law Suits after the champion dropped him as his manager following the first Tunney fight. See, for example, NHER Sept 18, 1921, p. 16; Dempsey and Dempsey, Dempsey, chaps. 18 and 19; Roberts, , Jack Dempsey, chaps. 5–8Google Scholar.

28 Ibid.

29 Throughout his biography of Dempsey, Roberts sees the promotional hype as being much more successful in creating a positive image for the champion than my reading of the sources indicates. This difference may in part be a function of my emphasizing middle-class periodicals and Roberts stressing working class ones.

30 Time, 30 Aug. 1926, pp. 24–5; Tunney, “My Fights with Jack Dempsey,” pp. 157–8; Fleischer, , Jack Dempsey, p. 173Google Scholar.

31 CT, 23 Sept. 1926, p. 18; NYT, 20 Sept. 1926, p. 29; NHER, 20 Sept. 1926, p. 9; NYHT, 23 Sept. 1926 p. 1.

32 CT, 22 Sept. 1927, p. 24; NYHT, 22 Sept. 1927, p. 1; Gregory, Horace, “Dempsey, Dempsey”, from his Collected Poems (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964), pp. 5–6Google Scholar, reprinted in Swados, Harvey, The American Writer and the Great Depression (Indianapolis: Bobbs Merrill, 1966), pp. 349–51Google Scholar. Roberts also argues that Dempsey represented both a fighter against the oppressors of the common man, and an individual doomed to be overwhelmed by those very forces, pp. 267–70. Labor unrest was painfully real in peoples' memories. The Ludlow Massacre was but twelve years distant when Dempsey fought Tunney, while the brutal decimation of the IWW and the Big Red Scare occurred less than a decade before. The drifting hobo and unemployed laborer were terrifying images to the middle class. See for example Dubofsky, Melvyn, We Shall Be All, A History of the IWW (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1969), chaps 7, 19Google Scholar.

33 NYHT, 19 Sept. 1926, sec. 2, p. 6; 22 Sept. 1926, p. 1–29; 23 Sept. 1926, p. 1, 26; 17 Sept. 1927, p. 16; 20 Sept. 1927, p. 29; Time, 1 Aug. 1927, p. 23; NHER, 22 Sept. 1926, p. 22; 23 Sept. 1926, p. 22; 24 Sept. 1926, p. 1; Outlook 6 Oct. 1926, pp. 167–8; CT, 15 Sept. 1926, p. 29; 22 Sept. 1926, p. 25; 23 Sept. 1926, p. 18; 24 Sept. 1926, p. 1; Sept. 1927, p. 23; Johnston, , Ten and Out, p. 208Google Scholar; LD, 9 July 1927, pp. 48–9; ARR 26 Oct. 1926, pp. 419–20. Dempsey told boxing writer Ned Brown, “I wasn't the fighter I might have been, if there weren't so many rules. You're in there for three-minute rounds with gloves on and a referee. That's not real fighting.” Quoted in Cohane, Tim, Bypaths of Glory (New York: Harper and Row, 1963), p. 82Google Scholar.

34 The event was immortalized on canvas in George Bellows' “Dempsey and Firpo, 1924.”

35 Fleischer, , Jack Dempsey, pp. 124–5Google Scholar; Durant, and Rice, , Come Out Fighting, pp. 88–91Google Scholar; Golding, , Bare-Knuckle Breed, pp. 219–26Google Scholar; LD 6 Oct. 1923, pp. 35–6, 13 Oct. 1923, pp. 60–3; Johnston, , Ten and Out, pp. 217–19Google Scholar; NYHT, 22 Sept. 1926, p. 29; Roberts, , Jack Dempsey, chap. 9Google Scholar; Dempsey and Dempsey, Dempsey, chap. 21.

36 NHER, 15 Sept. 1926, p. 19; 22 Sept. 1926, pp. 22–3; 24 Sept. 1926, pp. 1, 28; LD 9 July 1927, pp. 48–9; NYHT, 19 Sept. 1926, sec. 2, pp. 2, 7; 22 Sept. 1926, pp. 1, 29; 23 Sept. 1926, p. 1; 15 Sept. 1927, p. 25; 18 Sept. 1927, sec. 2, p. 5; 21 Sept. 1927, p. 25; 22 Sept. 1927, p. 26; 24 Sept. 1927, p. 16; Johnston, , Ten and Out, p. 208Google Scholar; CT, 23 Sept. 1926, p. 18; 24 Sept. 1926, p. 21; Fleischer, , Jack Dempsey, p. 173Google Scholar. Light-weight champion Benny Leonard predicted in a syndicated article that the only way Dempsey might lose his championship in 1926 was on a foul. Leonard argued this was possible because Dempsey simply lost control of himself in the ring. NHER, 22 Sept. 1926, p. 22.

37 Turner, Victor W., Dramas, Fields and Metaphors (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974), p. 54–7Google Scholar; see also Turner, 's The Ritual Process (Chicago: Aldine Pub., 1969), chap. 3Google Scholar, and “Liminal to Liminoid, in Play, Flow, and Ritual: An Essay in Comparative Symbology”, Rice University Studies 60 (1974), 53–92Google Scholar.

38 Time, 4 Oct. 1926, p. 28. Similarly, the Chicago Tribune, 24 Sept. 1926, p. 23, reported “each person there seemed to be conscious of the fact that he was forming an important part of a human design unlike any that had ever been seen beneath the heavens.”

39 Geertz, “Cockfight,” p. 448.

40 Dempsey and Dempsey, Dempsey, pp. 201–2. When his ring career ended — after age and defeat humbled him — Dempsey was rarely reviled, but became one of the most popular and sought after figures in American sports history. Tunney, in contrast, seemed increasingly priggish, aloof, even arrogant in victory.

41 Recent works on the history of masculinity include Joseph, and Pleck, Elizabeth, eds., The American Man (Englewood Cliffs, Prentice Hall, 1980)Google Scholar; Kett, Joseph F., Rites of Passage: Adolescence in America 1790 to the Present (New York: Basic Books, 1977)Google Scholar; Stearns, Peter N., Be A Man (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1979)Google Scholar. The association of sports — especially boxing — with masculinity became a common theme in early twentieth century literature, perhaps most explicitly in the works of Jack London and Ernest Hemmingway. See Messinger, Christian K., Sport and the Play Spirit in American Fiction (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1981), chaps. 9 and 10Google Scholar.

42 Along with Dempsey, Babe Ruth was the decade's brightest sports star. Like Dempsey, Ruth was known for his love of the good-life, especially his insatiable appetite for food, booze and women. See Crepeau, Richard C., Baseball, America's Diamond Mind, 1919–1941 (Orlando, FL: University Presses of Florida, 1980), chap. 4Google Scholar; and Smelser, Marshall, The Life That Ruth Built (New York: Quadrangle, 1973)Google Scholar.

43 For the history of advertising, see Ewen, Stuart, Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture (New York: McGraw Hill, 1976)Google Scholar; Fox, Steven, The Mirror Makers: A History of American Advertising and its Creators (New York: Morrow, 1984)Google Scholar; Pope, Daniel, The Making of Modern Advertising (New York: Basic Books, 1983)Google Scholar; Lears, T. J. Jackson, “From Salvation to Self-Realization: Advertising and the Therapeutic Roots of Consumer Culture, 1880–1930”, in Fox, Richard Wightman and Lears, T. J. Jackson, eds., The Culture of Consumption: Critical Essays in American History, 1880–1980 (New York: Pantheon, 1983), pp. 1–38Google Scholar. Throughout Jack Dempsey, Randy Roberts does an admirable job of tracing the selling of sports.

44 These trends developed over decades, but were particularly evident by the 1920s. Especially helpful to my understanding of mass media and the consumer ethic during this period have been Lowenthal, Leo, Literature, Popular Culture and Society (Palo Alto, CA: Pacific Books, 1961), chap. 4Google Scholar; Lynd, Robert S. and Lynd, Helen Merrell, Middletown: A Study in American Culture (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1956), part 4Google Scholar; May, Lary, Screening Out the Past: The Birth of Mass Culture and the Motion Picture Industry (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1980), chaps 7 and 8Google Scholar; Fox and Lears, The Culture of Consumption; Leuchtenburg, William E., The Perils of Prosperity, 1914–1932 (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1958), chaps 8 and 9Google Scholar; May, Henry F., The End of American Innocence: A Study of the First Years of Our Own Time, 1912–1917 (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1959)Google Scholar; Meyer, Donald, The Positive Thinkers (New York: Doubleday, 1965), chap. 17Google Scholar; Boorstin, Daniel J., The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (New York: Atheneum 1978)Google Scholar; Erenberg, Lewis A., Steppin' Out: New York Nightlife and the Transformation of American Culture, 1890–1930 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1983), chap. 8Google Scholar; Lasch, Christopher, The Culture of Narcissism, (New York: W. W. Norton, 1979)Google Scholar; Lears, T. J. Jackson, No Place of Grace (New York: Pantheon, 1981)Google Scholar; Sussman, Warren I., “‘Personality’ and the Making of Twentieth Century Culture,” in Higham, John and Conkin, Paul, eds., New Directions in American Intellectual History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979) pp. 212–226Google Scholar; Rosenzweig, Roy, “Eight Hours for What We Will”: Workers and Leisure in an Industrial City, 1870–1920 (New York, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1983), chaps. 7 and 8Google Scholar. For a subtle discussion of spectacles in modern society, see MacAloon, John J., “Olympic Games and the Theory of the Spectacle in Modern Societies,” in MacAloon, John J., ed., Rite, Drama, Festival, Spectacle (Philadelphia: I.S.H.I., 1984), pp. 241–80Google Scholar.

45 Roberts tells the story beautifully in Jack Dempsey, PP. 258–63. For examples of the coverage, see RD Aug. 1927, pp. 243–44; LD 16 Oct. 1926, p. 46; NYHT, 18 Sept. 1927, sec. 2, p. 22 Sept. 1927, p. 1; 23 Sept. 1927, p. 1, 25; 24 Sept. 1927, p. 16; CT, 22 Sept. 1927, p. 24; 23 Sept. 1927, p. 29.