THE WITNESS
Humphrey Bogart (left) with Mike Lane in The Harder they Fall .
In his 80s, Schulberg collaborated with acclaimed filmmaker Spike Lee.
but to attack the boxing racket.” It’s a concern which never goes away in his work. Decades later, bemoaning the reign of Don King, he wrote: “The only major sport without an acknowledged Authority – boxing remains as unregulated as Mike Tyson’s adolescent career as a street brawler/thief.” The issue of corruption would come up most clearly with his novel The Harder They Fall . He’d been inspired to fictionalize an account of one of the most shameful scandals in boxing history: the crooked heavyweight championship of Primo Carnera. Carnera, an Italian fighter with mob backing, had allegedly had his fights fixed all the way up to the heavyweight title. Nicknamed “The Man Mountain,” he was built up in the press for his imposing 6-foot-6, 260-pound stature. His size was considered freakish when he took the title from Jack Sharkey in 1933. In spite of Carnera’s obvious glass jaw, he won and held the title of heavyweight champion for just under a year. (It was
also talked at length to close friend Fidel LaBarba, who won the world flyweight championship in 1927. LaBarba knew the ins and outs of the fight biz and provided firsthand intel on the whole sad affair. The resulting novel, written from the POV of a patsy fighter’s reluctant publicist, is caustic and heartbreaking. When The Harder They Fall was adapted for the screen in 1956, some changes were made. Most notably, there was an alternate ending where the protagonist argues for an outright ban on boxing. Schulberg, in spite of his critique of the fight business, was a great lover and advocate for the sport and was furious. He wrote: “I accuse my friend Mark Robson of making his film out of hating for the sake of hating. Without taking the artistic trouble – the Dostoyevskian trouble – of first learning to love that which he would destroy.” The call for a ban was eventually removed from the film, with the completed version ending in a plea for
boxing reform instead. Schulberg was still unhappy with the ending, which he felt dishonest to the specifics of his experience. He was a man truly devoted to exploring the moral complexity of the sport, in both its murkiness and its glory. As he put it, his novel had been seen as “the harshest put-down of boxing ever written in America.” But his intention had been to protect the sport, not to destroy it. Schulberg was equally invested in the boxing movie , pointing out that cinema and boxing were essentially made for one another. He wrote: “For the boxer, there are one-stop nights of do or die. Go out a winner or loser for the rest of your life. The high-wire drama is made for the screen.” Even when Rocky was a sensation in 1976, you’d be sure to find Budd Schulberg had an opinion on it: “The sometimes silly Sylvester touches a nerve. He’s every nebbish’s dream of glory. No wonder it copped an Oscar and box office gold.” Well into his 80s, Schulberg would
audience by saying he’d seen his first match 78 years before. For me, though, the most striking part is when he discussed the affinity between writers and boxers. He always insisted that boxing was an intellectual sport, better compared to a chess game than to a bloody brawl in a back alley. A certain mental toughness is required. As he put it, both boxers and writers have to brave things solo, and on a stage. “You’re out there under the bright light, feeling naked and alone. And what you do or fail to do out there can make or break your reputation for life.” Both of these disciplines “involve nothing less than mankind’s ability to cope. To struggle. And finally, our determination to overcome all obstacles, and to endure,” he said. Budd Schulberg felt that there was great significance in dedicating one’s life to writing, in the same way there was in dedicating it to boxing. That he dedicated himself to both is something we can all be grateful for.
taken from him in a brutal beating by Baer, who put him on the canvas no less than 10 times.) Eventually, Carnera would learn that his triumph was not his own. In the process, his crooked handlers had siphoned off his earnings and left him with next to nothing. He returned to his native Italy, humiliated and broke. And while he would continue to box for several years and later found success as a wrestler, entertainer and restaurant proprietor, the scars of the scandal would last a lifetime. The seeds for the novel were first planted when Budd was a teenager, on a trip with his family in Europe. “We went to see him in London, and Carnera won on a foul in the fourth. My father and I, being pretty knowledgeable fans, felt the fight was not exactly kosher.” In preparation for the book, Schulberg
flirt with cinema, even while his true love remained the sport itself. He collaborated with director Spike Lee on a project about Joe Louis, which remains, to date, tantalizingly unfinished. It was provisionally entitled “Save Us, Joe Louis” – a reference to an apocryphal story of the champion’s heroic status in the Jim Crow South of the 1930s. (As recently as 2020, Spike Lee has spoken about the promise he made to Schulberg to get “Save Us, Joe Louis” on our screens. So maybe fight-movie fans should keep their eyes peeled.) Schulberg continued to write and appear ringside even in advanced age, penning pieces on Oscar De La Hoya and the dramatic fall of Mike Tyson. In 2003, he was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame, where in his speech he wowed the
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