TUNNEY’S LOVEMAKING.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 3846, 18 September 1928, Page 1

TUNNEY’S LOVEMAKING.

FUTURE WIFE AN HEIRESS. STORY OF THE WIOOING. FEW PARALLELS IN FICTION. New York August 22. Miss Mary Josephine Lauder, whose grandfather was partner of Andrew Carnegie, and who is heiress to steel millions, is to marry Gene Tunney, the retired heavyweight champion boxer of the world. 'The story of Tunney’s wooing, which has been going on for six years, has few parallels in romantic fiction. In 1922, when Tunney was just beginning to .get his foot on the ladder of fistic fame, he met Miss Lauder, then aged 16. They both admit it was a case of love almost

at first sight. Tunney, to quote those who interpret him to the Ameriean public, took stock of himself. Son of Irish immigrants, a marine in the navy, with nothing but a common-school education. To marry wealth and refinement, he must acquire both.

It is now stated that Tunney’s fondness for Shakespeare, which has made himself intensely unpopular with boxing fans and writers, was inspired by Miss Lauder, He lived to see the day when he addressed the English literature class at Harvard on Shakespeare, and to amass a fortune of £300,000. When Tunney fought Dempsey, he added to his message on the radio : “My felicitations to my friends in. Greenwich, Connecticut.” Everyone imagined, as he was bora and reared there, that there was nothing significant in the message, but his financee was born and reared there also, and the message was intended for her. It was repeated when he beat Dempsey again a year later. Tunney’s engagement would not have been announced now, but for the fact that it was disclosed by a servant that had been dismissed from the Lauder home.

Tunney was never popular in the ring, where the crowd likes its heroes raw or “neat.” Dempsey, a Lithuanian, who can only speak vernacular English, got a cheer that equalled in volume that accorded both Tunney and Heeney when he went into the ring just prior to the recent fight. 'The press even interviewed Dempsey on fondness for Shakespeare. 4 The crowd greeted Tunney with cries of “tea fighter” at the Stadium, and not more than 40,000 turned up to see him defeat Heeney. A-year before that Dempsey drew 150,000, three-fourths of whom would have liked to see the “Manassa mauler” batter the student into defeat. As Tunney’s popularity waned in prize-fighting ranks, it grew in Eastern society, and he was a gnest at homes at Long Island, Bar Harbor, Lake Forest, and the exclusive Newport. iSome of the most prominent firms in Wall Street, hearing that he intends to take up a business career, have offered him positions. Tunney makes no secret now that he never did like the prizering: for him it was but a means to an end. He will be soon forgotten. And that is his desire.

Tunney spent two hours between boats, in Canada, a year ago. He was passing through Victoria, British Columbia. Of those two hours, an hour and a-half was spent in the Library and Archives of Parliament, whose librarian described him afterwards as “a pripce among students.”