TONY Was AN ICEMAN

New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 3, 14 July 1939, Page 45

TONY Was AN ICEMAN

With apologies to "Look," "Time" and half-a-dozen other patterns of modern American journalism. The things you did not hear when you listened on the radio. N { AYBE Tony Galento is talking as big as he was, and maybe he’s not. Maybe he’s still thinking that beer is good and Joe Louis. just a bum; and maybe he’s not. Maybe he’s thinking that a few cuts on the face and a bruise here and there were cheap for the best publicity a " pub" ever had, and 100,000 dollars thrown in. In the language of the Great Ammurican Reepublic Tony went into the ring against Louis on June 28 in the guise of a beer barrel in short pants. His battle equipment was a fierce left exercised by swinging ice blocks, and an earnest desire to have it connect with Joe’s chin. Otherwise, nerts, Before the fight Tony did everything but train. His favourite recreation was demonstrating that his centre of gravity was so far from his head that he could drink 25 pints of beer without inverting. They tried to make him train in the country, but Tony preferred city smells and smoke, black cigars, and rich Italian dishes. Out in the country he had no audience for his ballyhoo. In town he could preen, prune, and display himself like an Aberdeen Angus bull in a crowded market. He was (Louis must just about have knocked him into the past tense) the answer to the publicity agents’ dreams of big type in a heavenly news-sheet. It might even be gathered from some of the periodicals which have reached us that he was Young America’s ideal of cave men, as cave men should be in all right thinking democracies, One paper pictured him as a gorilla, another as ‘a great bully blustering out his contempt for lesser men with lesser paunches; one made him a beer soak; all, a glutton. It would appear, too, that there is a Mrs. Tony, married in April, 1938, and Tony, junr. Did the camera boys like shooting Tony and Mrs. and the Kid? Ask yourself. See him menacing the world, fists clenched, teeth set, eyes wicked little slits, and, in the words of " Look," with hair on his chest, beer in his belly (pardon), and confusion in either fist. Then see him smiling fatly, infant gently cradled in those mighty arms, wife

nestling close-wow! Or how they won the prize at the National Sports’ Alliance Ball: Tony in top hat and tails, white tie,. carnation, and cane, with Mrs, Domenico Antonio Galento all eveningdressed, with bag, bracelet, and flowers in her hair. The "best dressed" couple if you please. Would that be human interest? And the fierce Tony, whose hot blood had never been cooled by all the ice he carried, was prey even to the weaker human emotions, On the eve of his preliminary to the Louis-Schmeling fight Tony saw a corpse, and was so affected that he lost. He was almost late for another fight one night. To complaints, Tony said he’d had two tons of ice to deliver on the way. Hence the name. Every second car in the street on the day of the Big Fight was tuned in to hear Tony bat Joe in the first and third rounds, and Joe knock Tony blind in the fourth. But that is not the real story. It is something like this. Tony began with nothing. He worked his way up from the ranks. The battle of life did not find him wanting in spirit any more than the battles of the ring found him wanting in strength. His life will be an example for years for boys with a spark of ambition to treasure up in memory; to cherish in those secret places of the heart where all inspiration comes from; to think of in moments of stress; to look back upon with the fortifying knowledge that what one man can do, given the will, the courage, the perseverance, and the weight, others can do also. Tony was only an iceman, Now he owns a bar.