John Arthur Johnson, nicknamed the "Galveston Giant", was an American boxer who, at the height of the Jim Crow era, became the first black world heavyweight boxing champion (1908–1915). He is widely regarded as one of the most influential boxers in history, and his 1910 fight against James J. Jeffries was dubbed the "fight of the century". According to filmmaker Ken Burns,
"for more than thirteen years, Jack Johnson was the most famous and the most notorious black boxer on Earth".
Alice Brady was an American actress who began her career in the silent film era and survived the transition into talkies. She worked until six months before her death from cancer in 1939. Her films include My Man Godfrey (1936), in which she plays the flighty mother of Carole Lombard's character, and In Old Chicago (1937) for which she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Robert James Fitzsimmons was a British professional boxer who was the sport's first three-division world champion. He also achieved fame for beating Gentleman Jim Corbett, and he is in The Guinness Book of World Records as the lightest heavyweight champion, weighing just 165 pounds when he won the title. Nicknamed Ruby Robert and The Freckled Wonder, he took pride in his lack of scars and appeared in the ring wearing heavy woollen underwear to conceal the disparity between his trunk and leg-development.
James John "Jim" Corbett was an American professional boxer and a World Heavyweight Champion, best known as the only man who ever defeated John L. Sullivan. Despite a career spanning only 20 bouts, Corbett faced the best competition his era had to offer, squaring off with a total of nine fighters who would later be enshrined alongside him in the International Boxing Hall of Fame. Corbett introduced a truly scientific approach to boxing, in which technique triumphed over brute force. He pioneered the daily boxing training routine and regimen, which was adopted by other boxers elsewhere and has survived to modern days almost intact. A "big-money fighter," Corbett was one of the first athletes whose showmanship in and out of the ring was just as good as his boxing abilities. He was also arguably the first sports sex symbol of the modern era after the worldwide airing of his championship prizefight against Robert Fitzsimmons popularized boxing immensely among the female audience. He did so in an era in which prizefighting was illegal in 21 states and was still considered among the most infamous crimes against morality.
James Jackson Jeffries was an American professional boxer and World Heavyweight Champion.
Robert Charles Benchley was an American humorist best known for his work as a newspaper columnist and film actor. From his beginnings at The Harvard Lampoon while attending Harvard University, through his many years writing essays and articles for Vanity Fair and The New Yorker and his acclaimed short films, Benchley's style of humor brought him respect and success during his life, from his peers at the Algonquin Round Table in New York City to contemporaries in the burgeoning film industry.
Thomas "Sailor Tom" Sharkey was a boxer who fought two fights with heavyweight champion James J. Jeffries. Sharkey's recorded ring career spanned from 1893 to 1904. He is credited with having won 40 fights, 7 losses, and 5 draws. Sharkey was named to the Ring Magazine's list of 100 greatest punchers of all time.
Grace Cunard was an American actress, screenwriter and film director. During the silent era, she starred in over 100 films, wrote or co-wrote at least 44 of those productions, and directed no fewer than eight of them. In addition, she edited many of her films, including some of the shorts, serials, and features she developed in collaboration with Francis Ford. Her younger sister, Mina Cunard, was also a film actress.
Reginald Leslie "Snowy" Baker was an Australian athlete, sports promoter, and actor. Born in Surry Hills, an inner-city suburb of Sydney, New South Wales, Baker excelled at a number of sports, winning New South Wales swimming and boxing championships while still a teenager. Playing rugby union for Eastern Suburbs, he played several games for New South Wales against Queensland, and in 1904 represented Australia in two Test matches against Great Britain. At the 1908 London Olympics, Baker represented Australasia in swimming and diving, as well as taking part in the middleweight boxing event, in which he won a silver medal. He also excelled in horsemanship, water polo, running, rowing and cricket. However, "His stature as an athlete depends largely upon the enormous range rather than the outstanding excellence of his activities; it was as an entrepreneur-showman, publicist and businessman that he seems in retrospect to have been most important."
Hazard's Pavilion was a large auditorium in Los Angeles, California, at the intersection of Fifth and Olive Streets. Showman George "Roundhouse" Lehman had planned to construct a large theatre center on the land he purchased at this location, but he went broke and the property was sold to the City Attorney, Henry T. Hazard. The venue was built in 1887 by architects Kysor, Morgan & Walls at a cost of $25,000, a large amount for the time, and seated up to 4,000 people. The building was constructed of wood with a clapboard exterior, and the front was framed by two towers.
Sir Charles Blake Cochran, generally known as C. B. Cochran, was an English theatrical manager and impresario. He produced some of the most successful musical revues, musicals and plays of the 1920s and 1930s, becoming associated with Noël Coward and his works.
William Russell was an American actor, film director, film producer and screenwriter. He appeared in over two hundred silent-era motion pictures between 1910 and 1929, directing five of them in 1916 and producing two through his own production company in 1918 and 1925.
Gentleman Jim is a 1942 film directed by Raoul Walsh and starring Errol Flynn as heavyweight boxing champion James J. Corbett (1866–1933). The supporting cast includes Alexis Smith, Jack Carson, Alan Hale, William Frawley, and Ward Bond as John L. Sullivan. The movie was based upon Corbett's 1894 autobiography, The Roar of the Crowd. The role was one of Flynn's favorites.
Henry Wetherby Benchley was an American politician who served in the Massachusetts Senate and as the 22nd Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts. In the 1850s, he was one of the founders of the Republican Party.
Yusuf İsmail, also known as Youssouf Ishmaelo, was a Turkish professional wrestler who competed in Europe and the United States as Yusuf Ismail the Terrible Turk during the 1890s. During his lifetime, native Turks knew him as Şumnulu Yusuf Pehlivan. However, writer Rıza Tevfik posthumously awarded him the honorific Koca ("Great"), and thus he was later remembered as Koca Yusuf.
The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight is an 1897 documentary film directed by Enoch J. Rector depicting the 1897 boxing match between James J. Corbett and Bob Fitzsimmons in Carson City, Nevada on St. Patrick's Day. Originally running for more than 100 minutes, it was the longest film released to date; as such, it was the world's first feature film.
Patrick McGuigan, commonly known as "Paddy" McGuigan, was an American boxer, promoter, entertainer, business man, and sports figure in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A member of the New Jersey Boxing Hall of Fame, he is considered one of the best fighters of the era and was a beloved figure among sports fans in the region, considered by many to be "The Pride of New Jersey." He became the New Jersey Lightweight Champion in 1890 and the Interstate New York & New Jersey Lightweight Champion in 1892. Fighting in both the bare-knuckle and gloved eras, he met virtually all of the world's top boxers in his class. At the peak of his career he traveled the country with William Muldoon's athletic carnival, "meeting all comers" in each city they visited. Once he retired from boxing professionally, he became a promoter and opened a fight club and a saloon in Harrison, NJ. He has been credited as one of the men responsible for boxing's rise to affluence in New Jersey after it was legalized in 1918 under the Hurley Law, being the first individual in the state to secure a license to legally host boxing matches. Paddy "must be chronicled as one of the greatest ringmen who ever lived," according to sportswriter Anthony Marenghi, and has been described by Hall of Fame manager Tom O'Rourke as the greatest fighter he had ever seen.
Joseph Rhode Grismer was an American stage actor, playwright, and theatrical director and producer. He was probably best remembered for his play The New South and for his revision of the Charlotte Blair Parker play Way Down East.
L. Lawrence Weber was an American sports promoter, stage show producer and theater manager. He was active in arranging vaudeville shows, legitimate theater and films. He once tried to bypass laws against importing a boxing film to the USA by projecting it on a screen just across the border in Canada and filming the screening from the USA side.
The Fight of the Century or the Johnson–Jeffries Prize Fight was a boxing match between the first African American World Heavyweight Champion of Boxing Jack Johnson and the previously undefeated World Heavyweight Champion James J. Jeffries on July 4, 1910, US Independence Day. It was highly significant in the history of race relations in the U.S., and led to the Johnson–Jeffries riots in which more than 20 people died.
