The Greatest Jewish Boxer You've Never Heard Of

In this episode of Shoga Speaks, Dr. Robert Philipson interviews author Doug Century about his biography Barney Ross: The Life of a Jewish Fighter, exploring the extraordinary life of Barney Ross—a Jewish boxing champion, World War II hero, and outspoken recovering addict. Born Dov-Ber Rosofsky in an Orthodox household, Ross rose from Chicago’s Jewish ghetto to become a national sports icon in the 1930s, defeating opponents in matches that symbolized resistance amid the rise of Nazi Germany. Century traces Ross’s evolution from the ring to the battlefield at Guadalcanal, where he became a decorated Marine, and later to his public struggle with heroin addiction and advocacy for drug policy reform. The episode also touches on Ross’s Hollywood ties, failed biopic, covert support for Israel’s founding, and his fading place in Jewish American memory—offering a rich portrait of resilience, identity, and legacy.

Host Info
Hosted by Dr. Robert Philipson
Robert is a former professor of African-American studies with a passion for jazz and art. A published author and Harlem Renaissance historian, he has produced multiple films about the intersectionality of race, music, and sexuality.

Guest Info
Doug Century
Doug Century is a journalist and the author of Barney Ross: The Life of a Jewish Fighter. douglascentury.com

Music

“Echoes of Sinai” - WAYA & Cafe De Anatolia

“There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight” - Bessie Smith

“Boogie Boogie Bugle Boy” - The Andrews Sisters

“You’se a Viper” - Stuff Smith & His Onyx Club Boys

“Hooray for Hollywood” - Johnny Mercer, Dick Powell, Frances Langford, Johnny Davis, Gene Krupa

“Kaddish” - Rachel Hyman

Connect With Us:
Website: shogafilms.org
Instagram: @shogafilms
Facebook: facebook.com/shogafilms
Twitter: twitter.com/shogafilms
Sign up for our newsletter at shogafilms.org

Website: www.shogafilms.com;
Instagram: shogafilms;
Facebook: facebook.com/shogafilms;
Twitter: twitter.com/shogafilms

Transcript

Doug Century: My name is Douglas Century. I'm the author of a book, Barney Ross, The Life of a Jewish Fighter, which is the first full length biography of one of the greatest Jewish fighters and American heroes, probably of the 20th century. The book was published in 2006. It made some Jewish bestseller lists. Very, very well reviewed.

I think it's one of my best books. I'm very proud of it. 

Robert: We're going to start in media res, as they say. Describe the scene of June 4th, 1934, when Barney returned to Chicago from his championship win in New York. 

Doug Century: In 1934, when Barney defeated the then welterweight champion of the world, Jimmy McClarnon, he returned to Chicago to a hero's welcome.

The mayor, in an open car with Barney's mother, Ma, they were paraded through the streets of Chicago, and it was One of the biggest events, one of the biggest sporting events, certainly of the 1930s for Chicagoans, and he was treated as demigod.

Robert: What was Barney's birth name and what did it mean that his family line was considered a Cohaine? 

Doug Century: Barney was born Dove Bear, Rosovsky. The family in Chicago shorted it to Soff. Dove Bear is a Hebrew name, but he was known as Barrell and his family would call him Bear Chick. And they were kohanim, meaning it descended from the priestly line.

There were Khans, there are Levys, uh, Levites. And then there's people like me that are just Israel, the common man. But Co the kohanim were the priests. Even to this day, uh, Khe cannot go into a cemetery. They're considered a kind of a holy class. And, and Barney really was raised with that. And to this day, Kohanim are almost ritually pure than other Jews in, in religious sense.

Robert: Where did Barney grow up, and what was his Jewish background? 

Doug Century: He was born on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, around Rivington Street, into a very, very Orthodox family. We would now call it ultra Orthodox. The family moved when he was very young to Chicago, and his dad had a little grocery on Maxwell Street.

Maxwell Street, for those who don't know Chicago, was like the Lower East Side. They called it the Ghetto, the Jewish Ghetto. Barney grew up with the absolute strictest of Jewish tradition. You would have cholent, you can't even turn on your oven on Shabbat, so you would have a very special dish cooked all day Friday.

His father, if you can visualize a man with payets, which are the side locks, would be in synagogue, would be praying all day long, and Barney was raised in that tradition of obviously keeping kosher, praying and observing the Shabbat very strictly. 

Robert: Why did Barney fall away from religion? He was orphaned.

Doug Century: His father was murdered in a hold up when Barney was 12. He was just about to become bar mitzvah at age 13. And two men came into the store. Their apartment was literally across the street and they heard gunshots. So Barney was able to run across the street and actually hold his dying father in his hands.

The two men got away. It's a petty crime, robbery, and his father was murdered. His mother then had a nervous breakdown and was sent off to Connecticut. He had three youngest siblings, George, Sam, and his younger sister were all put in an orphanage. But Barney was on his own and it became a bit of a street tough.

And at that point, fell away completely. Actually became very angry at God and angry at religion. Like he began to eat pork. I remember he said at one point, my father was the most strict religious sadak. He was a holy man almost. And he didn't deserve that death. So he became very angry at the world and at God.

Please, oh please, oh do not let me go. You are mine, and I love you best of all. You'll be my man, I'll have no man at all. There'll be a hard time in old town tonight. 

 Robert: Why did Barney begin fighting? 

Doug Century: In those days, in places like New York and Chicago, Chicago was still a very ethnically divided city. The Jews lived around Maxwell Street.

There was a Polish neighborhood nearby, an Italian neighborhood nearby. It's still the Little Italy of Chicago. And in order to just go to the swimming pool, you crossed ethnic neighborhoods. They didn't let you in. People didn't get stabbed, but they would fight. And Barney was very quick. He got known. As for being good with his hands.

I think everybody that grew up in that era talks about, we all fought. You just couldn't come through their neighborhood without it being a fist fight that happened with Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky on the [00:05:00] lower East side where they were, the Jews and the Italians were fighting, but these ethnic street fights, you learn to handle yourself with your fist.

Robert: So how did he enter boxing? 

Doug Century: Well, because he was getting a reputation in the streets as good with his hands. In this era, there were many, many boxing gyms. It's not like today. There were. on almost every corner in the poorer neighborhoods. And they would be filled with guys smoking cigars and mob guys, basically.

So he went into a famous gym called Grafton's and he said, Hey, I want to fight. I want to be a fighter. A very famous trainer named Dave shade said, kid, everybody thinks they can fight. Street fighting is a lot different from box. And he tells the story Dave Shade had on a fedora and had a cigar in his mouth.

And he said, kid, if you can knock the cigar out of my mouth, you can become a fighter. And just using body movement alone, Barney's whiffing and whiffing and whiffing and he couldn't knock the cigar. So he went away for about a week and Barney said something like, I cracked the atomic code of what boxing is.

It's you must punch where the guy is going to be, not where he is. Came back, knocked the cigar out of Dave Shade's mouth. And they, they started to put them in a little three rounders. He wasn't a pro, but you'd get a watch or a pair of shoes and he called it being a pawn shop fighter, meaning he'd get a little prize, go pawn it off and started to make a little living at it, chapter five of my book begins.

Boxing. David Remnick observes in his fine Muhammad Ali biography, King of the World, Boxing has never been a sport of the middle class. It is a game for the poor, the lottery player, the all or nothing at all young men who risk their health for the infinitesimally small chances of riches and glory.

Barney, like many Jewish fighters, tried to keep his boxing career a secret from his mother as long as possible. There's many reasons for that, but the first thing they would do is change their name. So Barney's role model was a great fighter named Jacob Finkelstein, first guy out of the ghetto. And he, he just looked at the Marshall Field sign and he said, Oh, I guess I'm Jackie Fields.

So Barney took Rosofsky and made it Ross. And his mother only read the Yiddish papers, so for as long as he could, she didn't know he was fighting. There was no stature in the Jewish culture. Unlike maybe Irish culture, where you could say, Oh, my son's a fighter. Religious Jews did not view it as anything good to do.

Political Jews, the common It was seen as you were a starker, a strong guy. You kept it as secret as you could from your mother, because your mother's worried about you getting your concussive brain damage, we would call it now. But by the time he got well known, Marusofsky, uh, knew he was fighting, and she was so scared for him that she had to come to every fight and watch it.

Barney's mother remained so religious that she was worried about him, wouldn't listen on the radio. A lot of the fights were Friday night, and the whole neighborhood would walk Ma Rozovsky down to the Chicago Stadium. Most Jewish fighters kept their career secrets from their mothers because it was almost a shanda, a scandal in the family.

You should become a lawyer, a doctor, or something more than just a guy punching someone's brains out. 

Robert: What percentage of professional boxers during the 1920s and 30s were Jewish? 

Doug Century: In the 1920s and 1930s, although it's hard to imagine this now, roughly one third of all professional fighters were Jewish.

There's been estimates as high in the 1920s as 3, 000 professional fighters in the United States being Jewish. Boxing was a very Jewish sport on all levels. The best trainers were Jewish, many of the promoters were Jewish, Everlast, the famous company that made the gear, was a Jewish company. So in many regards, you could say boxing was a very Jewish sport in the 1920s and 30s.

People need to understand that in the 1920s and 1930s, there were three big sports in America. Horse racing, baseball, and boxing. There was no NFL, there was no NBA. Of course, horse racing was a sport of kings. Baseball players like Hank Greenberg and, and Babe Ruth, they were seen as almost aristocratic.

Jews are very proud of, of Hank Greenberg and how he wouldn't play on the high holidays. Boxing has been forgot, not just in the Jewish community. I don't think a lot of Italians remember Tony Canzanieri or Willie Pepp. Boxing has fallen down the ladder of, uh, Sports that are followed in the world, in America in general, so I would, most people don't know who Jack Dempsey is, let alone the Jewish people knowing who Annie Leonard was.

It'd be very hard for us to find young people today who know much about the history of boxing before, let's say, Muhammad Ali. 

Robert: To what extent were boxing matches pitched as Irish vs. Jew or Italian vs. Jew? 

Doug Century: But one of the great things about this era in New York City and Chicago, to some degree New Orleans, is that, uh, boxing was always a tale of ethnic succession.

The Irish were the first great fighters. Then came the Jews. And you find that the Irish were so popular that some Jewish fighters, like Moshe Schnoor, went by Mushy Callahan. 

Robert: Ha ha! Sorry, that's good. 

Doug Century: So many Jewish fighters early on took names. Even Barney Ross sounds Irish. And the funny thing is then, once the Jews became dominant, you have fighters like Sammy Mandel, who was actually Mandello, who was an Italian who wanted to sound Jewish.

The promoters were playing to the ethnic pride of largely the Lower East Side, places where dense communities rooted for their ethnicity. And yes, they played it up in a way that you would not find politically correct today. The Irish fighters would come out with a green robe and the harp of Ireland.

The Italian fighters would come out like Tony Canzanieri to a tarantella and Barney Ross came out to the strains of this very sentimental my Yiddish mama wearing a bathrobe his mother had made with blue and white stripes that looks very Jewish. It was a good selling point because the Jewish fans would come out for the Jewish fighters, the Italians, and they often made it into almost ethnic wars when the fighters themselves didn't hate each other.

You could sell out Yankee Stadium if a great Irish fighter was fighting a Jewish fighter. 

Robert: Please read the Henry Armstrong poem. 

Doug Century: Two fighters of oppressed races fighting each other, just like that. Doesn't seem exactly sensible or right. We're not mad at each other. We're just fighting for the things we need.

It comes right back, the same old thing. To live, man must fight. The great welterweight fighter, Jimmy McLarnon, who was really known as Babyface, or the Babyfaced Assassin, was a great fighter from Ireland. He happened to have fought six or seven great Jewish fighters in a row and knocked them all out. So the press began to call him the Jewbeater, the Scourge, or the Fighting Sons of Israel.

He didn't have an anti Semitic bone in his body, and he hated it, but it sold tickets. There's a matchup of the two best fighters in the lighter weight classes, Jimmy, the Babyfaced Assassin McLarnon, at 147. And Barney comes to New York for a massive fight at the Madison Square Garden Bowl, which was a huge outdoor stadium that held 60, 000 people.

And it was the biggest fight of 1934. And to set the scene for Barney, of course, Hitler had come to power in 1933. There were pro Nazi rallies in New York. There was a huge German Bund in Yorkville in New York. And Barney said, I felt that I was offending the honor of the Jewish people to show that Hitler was wrong about us.

And in that first fight, all three fights, there was a trilogy, all three fights went the distance, but Barney beat him. And he was the first man in history, 15 round fight, first man in history to hold the lightweight. And the welterweight title at the same time. And it was an epic, epic battle. They then fought one year, calendar year later.

McLarnin won a very close decision. And then again, in 1935, they fought third in the trilogy and Barney Ross won. And at that point, he was considered the master of McLarnin. That trilogy, if you go back and look at those fights, were considered three of the greatest fights of their time. And that's what guys did in those days.

They didn't wait five, six years like they do now. They fought pretty quickly. Uh, Barney was followed by the Jewish fans. One of the things he did that made those fights so epic was that he trained at the Grossinger's in Catskills. So all of the celebrities of Jewish Broadway, Al Jolson and Fannie Brice came up and watched him train.

It became quite a spectacle. At that first fight in 1934, the Marx brothers were there and the owners of. All the baseball teams. It was the place to be seen. I think you can go back and look at them and say they're three of the best sites of the 1930s. 

Robert: When did Barney reassociate himself with Orthodox Judaism and how has that manifest?

Doug Century: Although as a young man, Barney has sort of given up on the Jewish religion. As he started to see that he was being a representative of the Jewish people, he was photographed with a little mezuzah. He would openly read the Talmud at the training camp. I think he had beliefs in the Jewish religion that he felt strongly about.

But he didn't. or anything anymore, but he outwardly expressed his Judaism in a way of saying this is who we are. One of the first pictures of a Passover Seder ever in a newspaper is the Barney Ross family celebrating, and they had to even explain this was the Israelites coming out of the exodus of Egypt.

Barney was very proud to tell the world what Jewishness was. 

Robert: What was the social atmosphere like for Jewish boxers during the 1930s?

Doug Century: After 1933, when Hitler came to power, well through until the beginning of World War II, many Jewish fighters felt that they were doing something more than boxing, that they were upholding the idea that Jews were not.

Or cowering, or victimized people, or untermenschen. World events, and this actually manifested itself, of course, with Max Schmeling versus Joe Louis. World events sometimes are writ large more than the fight itself. It's not really their responsibility to prove to the world that Jews could fight and be tough, but world events forced that upon them.

And Barney definitely said when he defeated Jimmy McLarnon in 1934 in the first fight, he said, I felt if I had not won that fight, I would have died. That's how important it was to him. 

Robert: What eventually brought Barney's downfall as a boxer? 

Doug Century: From 1934 to 1938, he had a lot of fights and he was unbeaten. He was a [00:15:00] reigning welterweight champ.

Nobody could touch him. He was one of the best. And he started slacking. He didn't train as hard as he used to. He smoked. His kid brother, I got to know his last surviving brother, George Rassoff, who was in awe of Barney and had been a Golden Glove fighter himself, said, Barney would be smoking in the dressing room, and his trainers hated it.

So if they came in, he'd hand the cigarette to his kid brothers. They'd pretend it was you. What happens to a lot of fighters, so if you went, if he went from 1934 to 1938 when he fought Henry Armstrong, undefeated, you start slacking on your training. You're not training as hard, you're not as hungry. He was getting a little older, too.

I mean, he wasn't an old fighter, but, you know, you start living the good life. He had all these showgirls around him, and he certainly was a man who liked nightlife. There's a very famous photo where he beat McLarnon and his face is all bruised up. And there's three blondes that look like Mae West on his arms.

And the headline is, To the victor belong the Goyles. 

Robert: Describe Barney's last professional match. 

Doug Century: Barney was undefeated until 1938, when he faced an incredible force of nature, an African American fighter named, Henry, or Hank Armstrong, they called him Hurricane, or sometimes Homicide Hank. He knocked out everybody he faced, and he started at a very light weight, I think phantom weight.

He went up, up, up. He was just a wrecking machine. They called him the perpetual motion machine. And Barney faced him, and for the first four rounds outboxed, you can see it. He could have handled him, but then his legs went, you just see it. There's a moment in the fourth round where his legs stop moving, and then Armstrong pummels him.

Almost to the point of his head is swollen. And everybody wanted the fight stopped. He was taking such a beating and his friends wanted to throw in the towel. And he said, if you throw in the towel, I'll never talk to you again. A champ has a right to go out the way he wants. And I'm not going out on my stool.

Some people say to this day that Henry Armstrong out of respect might have carried Barney, but he survived the 15 rounds, but was beat badly. And he said, famously, I swore when I started this fighting game, I would only take one beating in my life. And after that, he never fought again. His mother was there at the fight, and his kid brother, who I knew, George, said we had to walk out.

We couldn't watch him get so badly beaten. And when George went and saw his brother Barney in the dressing room, Barney just said, I feel so bad for the guys back home who bet on me. It was an unfortunate way to end a career, but he didn't want to ever fight again after that. And Armstrong absolutely is one of the Hall of Fame greats.

As was McClarnon, as was Tony Cantaneri, so it's not like he lost to a bomb. He lost to one of the greatest fighters of all time. He still got a fantastic welcome in Chicago. He did. He was still a hero in Chicago, and on the strength of his whole career, he set up the Barney Ross Cocktail Lounge. And, yeah, Barney was a great piano player.

He could play by ear. Down in the Loop in Chicago, you could go to the Barney Ross Lounge, and Barney would be there playing the piano and greeting people. Glad handing and yeah, he was a celebrity, very beloved guy. Probably the most popular athlete in Chicago at that time.

He was a famous trumpet man from Mount Chicago way. He had a boogie style that no one else could play. He was the top man at his craft. But then his number came up and he was gone with the draft. He's in the army now, a blowing Rey. He is the Booy Boogie Bule boy, a company beast. They made him blow a bule for his Uncle Sam.

He brought. Because couldn't jam the captain to understand because the next day the cap went out and now the company jumps when he plays. He's the booy of 

Robert: in 1942, Barney joined the Marines at age 32. Why? 

Doug Century: December 7th, 1941. Of course, Pearl Harbor happened and Barney was in the Barney Ross cocktail lounge when he heard it.

He immediately wanted to enlist, but he was too old. He was 32. He needed a special age waiver. He joined the Marines because they was the toughest outfit. So he figured if I'm going to join, a lot of fighters were in the services. A lot of the best professional fighters went into the coast guard and you could get by just doing exhibition fights.

That was Joe Lewis did that. That was just good for the cause. Barney wanted to go to camp Pendleton at age 32 and be a Marine. And he was trained to be a Marine. The Marine Corps were so delighted to have a world champion that they said, here, you can teach us self defense. So for about six months, he just was at Camp Pendleton teaching the Marines how to throw hooks and jabs.

He could have stayed as a fighting instructor. And then he went to his CO and said, I want to see action. I want to go into the fight. Another thing that had happened to Barney was that he never saved his money. He loved the racetrack. He would go and, you know, famously bet a 60, 000 purse Also, by 1942, he really didn't have much money.

He felt his life wasn't really adding up to much anymore. And I think he looked at combat as perhaps a way that he [00:20:00] might go out with some valor. 

Robert: Describe the Battle of Guadalcanal. 

Doug Century: Barney was involved in the Battle of Guadalcanal in the Pacific Theater. There were three major turning points in World War II.

People know about Stalingrad and El Alamein, where Rommel was turned back. But the first victory for the U. S. forces against the Japanese Up until then, the Japanese had been island hopping and taking every victory. And at Guadalcanal, the first Marines went in and fought this epic, epic death match. It was a horrific battle to capture an airfield, a very important airfield on Guadalcanal.

Barney was not with the first Marines, but he went in with the second Marines. And they were still fighting their way through. And eventually they did beat the Japanese and that Guadalcanal to this day is considered the moment in 1942 when the tide began to turn. It was the first good news that the U. S.

had in the war against the Japanese. One of the things that made Guadalcanal such a hellish place was the jungle environment, the mosquitoes, the malaria. Barney was there fighting it out, and one night he went out on a patrol with about six men, and they got ambushed by a much bigger contingent of Japanese.

Most of the guys around Barney got killed, a couple survived. Barney dragged this really heavy guy who had been a professional golfer. He single handedly carried these guys into a foxhole. And then he was such a clever man. He stayed alive through the night, firing machine guns from one position, going to another position and firing so that the Japanese would think there were more people there.

But really Barney, a couple of guys were still alive, but Barney was the only one shooting. When, uh, Don came, they were relieved and he had killed 22 Japanese. So that night in this foxhole where he was shooting and thinking he was going to die at any moment, Barney kept reciting the most primal prayer for us Jews, which is the Shema Israel, which is, Shema Israel, Adonai Hear, O Israel, the Lord is your God, the Lord is one.

And we learn about this very young, if you have a Jewish education, the martyrdom of, let's say, Rabbi Akiva, who was martyred by the Romans, and they flayed him alive, and it's told, As Rabbi Akiva was in his dying breath, he said the Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu. I don't know, Echad is one. I almost think sometimes that Barney was reciting it almost as if he was ready to die.

Now I'm the king of everything. You gotta get high to have that swing. Light a tea, let it be. Cause you's a viper. Now your throat gets dry, you know you're high. Everything is dandy. Truck into the candy store. Bust your conch on peppermint candy. Then you know your body's set. You don't give a darn if you don't pay rent.

Robert: How did Barney become addicted to drugs? 

Doug Century: During that night, Barney was badly wounded with shrapnel. He also contracted malaria, and very little was understood about addiction at that point. The go to drug was morphine, and there were these syrettes you could self inject. So the medics, you know, Barney was in pain.

A lot of these guys went, you needed more? You took more so you could self inject. After a certain point, I guess, you get a tolerance. It's hard to imagine that medics would say, Hey, just keep injecting yourself, but throughout the rest of his stay in Guadalcanal, he became very addicted to morphine. When Barney Ross returned to the United States in March of 1943, his story was on the front page of every newspaper.

Because here was this boxing hero from the 1930s and now in 1943, Hero of Guadalcanal. He was welcomed into California as a hero, but when he came to Chicago, that was another parade with his mother, and he's in full Marine uniform. He was decorated with the Silver Star, which they used to call the Jewish Congressional Medal of Honor, because apparently Jews didn't often get the Congressional Medal of Honor.

But he was considered one of the great war heroes. And the irony is, when I look at those photos of the parade in Chicago, you can see the glassiness in his eyes. So at this moment when he is being celebrated as one of the great heroes of America, he's in the throes of a horrible addiction, which required him to go to doctors that would talk them into giving him drugs.

And, and eventually he couldn't get the drugs from doctors. So he became a heroin addict. At the moment when he was at the greatest adulation, he was falling into the deepest of addiction. Barney had become a junkie, a real full blown junkie, getting drugs off the street, mafia controlled drugs injecting himself all the time and his beautiful second wife, Kathy said, I'm going to leave you.

She couldn't deal with it. There was no rehab. There were no places to treat your addiction. You had to go down. So he did. He went down and turned himself over for arrest just for being an addict, not for being a seller of heroin. And they shipped him off to the U. S. Public Health Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky.

And as his brother said to me, [00:25:00] I went to visit Bertrick there. It wasn't a hospital, it was a fucking jail. Bars. He went through the throes of, you know, hell. So in the U. S. Public Health Hospital, they were smart enough to lower the dosage bit by bit by bit. And I guess at some point Barney said, you know, F this, I just stopped.

And he decided he would beat it cold turkey. Although it was like Dante's Inferno, when he talked about insects crawling inside his skin. He came out of there clean, and he never relapsed on heroin ever again, although he became a big drinker. Substituting, and he was always a smoker and a drinker, but he never used heroin again.

And because he had kicked the habit, he was able to stay married. He stayed married, he also became a very vocal campaigner for some very sensible things about heroin. He testified for one of the first U. S. congressional hearings into drugs and he said something that is still profound today. He said, we need to treat addiction as a medical problem, not a criminal problem.

So you want to go after that racketeers that are bringing in the drugs. That's one thing, but the addict is just a medical. And that was in the fifties. We're still dealing with that issue today. I met a guy who was in the South Bronx who said, I'll never forget. I went, I was going to this rough high school in the South Bronx, Jewish guy.

South Bronx used to be Jewish. He said, and Barney Ross came to school, and he just gave us this talk about drugs. And not like a lecture. And he said, look, you can smoke cigarettes, and he said, stay away from that shit. He talked to them like a guy who had been through it. He said that, that stuck with him forever.

So he became a very vocal advocate for sensible ideas about how you can keep people off drugs and how we should really treat it as a medical problem.

Just look and plan, and any shop girl can be a top girl, if she pleases the tired businessman. Hooray for Hollywood! You may be homely in your neighborhood. To be an actor seems to factor. You make your kisser look good. Go out and try your luck. You may be Donald Duck. Hooray for Hollywood! Barney had been connected to show business people from his early days fighting.

And when he lived in New York, he belonged to what was, the Actors Temple. So he was around Broadway people, and I often joke, I said he had to be the first Marine, or the only Marine to come back from war and have a Hollywood agent already. So he had this guy named Lou Irwin. I don't know his stature as an agent, but there's a wonderful article I quote in my book where he said, You should see all the big names clamoring to play Barney in the movie of his life.

We've got Edward G. Robinson, it was Cagney, and John Garfield. He mentions John Garfield. John Garfield was the perfect person to play Barney, because John Garfield himself had boxed. John Garfield himself had been a street guy, much like Barney had been. I don't know much about whether they met, but I know that Garfield had big plans to do the Barney Ross story, and eventually they worked out an option.

Robert: What happened to the plan to make the Barney Ross story? And why? 

Doug Century: Because of Barney's arrest and his public humiliation as being an addict, his reputation was damaged pretty much permanently. My grandparents had a restaurant in Chicago on the north side. He used to come in sometimes, and my mother, who knew nothing about sports, said, I remember the news that Barney Ross was a drug addict.

It became this, this horrible sort of scandal. And, uh, at that time, I guess in Hollywood, you could not possibly make a movie about a war hero who's also a drug addict. Ten years later, you could make Man with a Gold Marmer. But Barney's story became a different thing entirely called Body and Soul. Barney was eventually paid 70, 000 by Garfield's production company, although they didn't have anything to do with him further in the film.

And he felt quite embittered, I think, because they did take very clear elements from his story for Body and Soul, but it was no longer the Barney Roth story. 

Robert: So what were the elements of Barney's life that made it into the final film?

Doug Century: In the finished film, Body and Soul, as the screenwriter and director took elements of Barney's story, it's very clear that his father is murdered.

There's a very close relationship with the mother. He's a hero of the neighborhood. This is Garfield's character. And there's a very quick reference to them being Jewish. You can't say that they didn't look at Barney's life for that part of the inspiration. There's nothing about being a war hero or drug addiction, of course.

But the very setup of that was clearly taken from the Barney Ross story. Barney did get involved with the mob the way the Garfield character did in Body and Soul. Although Barney was closely associated with organized crime figures in Chicago, he never threw a fight, and he was never asked to take a dive as in on the waterfront.

Robert: How did Barney's story make it to the big Hollywood screen, and with what result? 

Doug Century: Ten years roughly after, a film comes out called Monkey on My Back, and it's a B movie. It's an actor named Cameron Mitchell. And it is the Barney Ross story. It's an awful movie, but it, the posters all show a guy with it.

And it says junkie, the hottest hell on earth. And Barney's kid brother said, we saw these posters all over Chicago. It was like going through it again. Because there was a Vogue, Sinatra had been in a movie about heroin. They, Instead of making a great movie in which heroin is just part of it, they just made it about a junkie, but bar, but Barney did it for the money.

Robert: What was the Bergson group and what was Barney's connection to it? 

Doug Century: Long before the state of Israel existed, there was a right and left movement for independence in Israel, or in British Mandate of Palestine. And the right wing, there was a guy named Hillel Kook. He went by Peter Bergson. He would have represented the Irgun, which was the later headed by Menachem Begin.

And they were the right wing, you could say almost terrorists, but Bergson group in America did some really good things. They were publicizing the holocaust as early as 1943. Peter Bergson was very influential in exposing what the Nazis were doing. Any, anytime Jews were in trouble, Barney lent his name to it.

So Barney, they had a huge pageant toward the country about the, what we now call the holocaust. And Barney bought tickets for everybody. Later, when the war of independence began Barney. Wanted to get in the fight and wanted to go over there and fight for the new state of Israel. There were a lot of Jewish vets from the U.

S. Army, and British vets, and they wanted to get over there and fight for Jewish independence in Palestine. Barney was part of forming what was called the George Washington Legion. It was going to be a group of all Jewish G. I. s who would go over and fight, and they were told explicitly, if you do, you'll lose your citizenship.

So it never got off the ground. Some Jewish guys did go over and become pilots and stuff and became Israelis, but you had to make your choice. So Barney was stymied in that. But he did get involved in smuggling guns through a lot of his contact. Barney had a position with a shipping company in Massachusetts, and Barney was definitely involved in the smuggling of guns from Jewish mafia guys like Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky.

I mean, they had guns, and it's well known. Meyer Lansky said very well, I've got a lot of guns in this country. Barney was a conduit for that. He knew those guys, and he also had access to the shipping company, so he helped. He helped the Jewish cause even though he couldn't personally go and be a soldier.

Yizkatol v'yizkatash sh'mi rabba Be'omad y'varach Yerusei v'yoman meyach machusei Be'cham ayei yachon uv'yom meyachon Uv'chayei de'chol meys Yisraei Uv'chayei de'chol meys 

Robert: When and how did Barney die? 

Doug Century: Barney Ross died very young. He was just a man in his mid fifties. He had been smoking his whole life, and he got lung cancer.

And he really had no money. A wealthy friend gave him an apartment on the shores of Lake Michigan, which is a beautiful place in Chicago. And they had these beautiful fundraisers. At least he got that. The boxing world came together. With these tributes to Barney Ross and they basically raised enough money for his funeral and a little bit of money for his widow.

He died an impoverished man, he died, like many boxers, Joe Louis, very few boxers save their money. But he died at least with this great sense of tribute that the boxing world, even young Cassius Clay, I mean this was 67, came to pay tribute because everybody at that time knew what a great fighter he was and what a great man he was.

And one of the great sportswriters, Jimmy Cannon, said he didn't need to win a title to be a champion. 

Robert: Please read the New York Times obituary of Barney Ross. 

Doug Century: A student of the Talmud who turned to prize fighting, Barney Ross was regarded as one of the toughest champions. Outside of the ring, moreover, his heroism on Guadalcanal and his victory over a narcotics habit brought him further recognition as a man who had never been knocked out and had never quit.

Robert:  Is Barney Ross a remembered part of Jewish American history? 

Doug Century: Unfortunately, I would say Barney Ross is not as well remembered as he should be by Jewish Americans. I went to a Jewish school in Canada, and I can recall, we used to get this, it was almost like highlights for children, and there was a cartoon panel, and it was the story of Barney Ross.

He didn't have heroin addiction, but he did have his father getting murdered, and I read that when I was eight or nine years old. So if you went to a Jewish school and you learned about Jewish athletes, but no, not the way that Sandy Koufax is very well remembered and other great figures of Jewish sporting lore, Jewish boxing champions are not remembered well in any of it.

The greatest of them all, we would say is Benny Leonard of whom people said Benny Leonard was so great. He used to wear pomade in his hair. Benny Leonard was so great a boxer that his hair was never once even messed up in the ring. Which is bullshit, of course it was. But that showed the regard they held for When I was writing Barney Ross, and I would go give talks, even among Jewish people, I would say, well, I wrote about Jewish boxing.

Young people would say, who, Matzah Ball Levine? He had Jewish boxing. It's this sense that Jews aren't athletes, but it's a testament to Jewish upward mobility. In America that there never were second generation Jewish boxers. No Jewish boxer wanted his kids to become a boxer. So we've almost had this collective amnesia.

And I remember walking to an Irish pub and there's all these great boxing champions. And I see in an Irish pub, a Wee Mollie, something frame Boris assigned to Barney Ross. And I said, you'd only find Jewish boxer on the wall in an Irish because there aren't really Jewish bars and they don't really hang them up at Jewish community centers.

So there's really no place in Jewish culture. They're not going to be in synagogues. It just shows that we don't really value that aspect of Jewish culture. It's a very, very, I don't know, nebbishy view we have that we are the Woody Allens and the Seinfelds. We don't see ourselves as physically strong, although since my book came out, there have been stories, movies of these great Jewish boxers in Europe who had to fight in Auschwitz.

There were Jewish boxers in Europe. Jewish boxing existed throughout history, but we just have had collective amnesia because there are no longer any Jewish boxers. If you grew up in the suburbs, like most of us North American Jewish people, we just don't have any need to get our brains bashed in. 

Robert: How did your views or feelings about Barney change as a result of writing the book?

Doug Century: I got to know Barney Ross's family very well after the book came out, his surviving nieces and nephews. And I then learned even more stories about what a sweetheart of a guy he was. This is, you imagine boxers, he had a bastion nose and, but he loved to play the piano. And on Independence Boulevard, where they lived in Chicago, it was hot in the summer and he'd play piano by, by ear.

And he loved to play. People told me Barney would play my Yiddish mama and his mom had since died. And he would play at the piano and cry, and I thought, what an image. But I also got to know people that met him at Grossinger's. A girl sent me a picture, she's a little girl holding his hand. I gave a talk in New York City about Barney Ross, and a guy got up who had fought in the Marines, was a Jewish guy, and he said, Barney Ross was the greatest man that ever lived.

I didn't realize the degree to which, especially in New York, people remembered him and idolized him. I have a funny story if we have time. This is a good one. When the book came out, I got this email out of the blue from a guy named Myron Sugarman in New Jersey. And he said, Barney Ross was the greatest guy that ever lived and I knew him really well because he used to hang out with my father, Shuggie Sugarman.

My father ran the Jukebox Association of New York City and Barney was always there. And I stupidly answered, well, wasn't that mobbed up? And he said, kid, do yourself a favor and Google the name Myron Sugarman. Myron Sugarman is the last of the old school Jewish gangsters. And he was such a big time gambling figure that the, uh, Genovese crime family and the Philadelphia crime family had to have a sit down over who controls the Jew from New Jersey.

I got to know Myron pretty well. He's since written a book about himself as a Jewish gangster. He said he's the caboose on the train. There aren't any of the Meyer Lansky generation anymore. And Myron's about 80 something. Myron went to Bucknell University, where Philip Roth had also gone, and belonged to a Jewish fraternity.

And they needed a speaker to come out. And they said, well, why don't we get Barney Ross? And it's about a three hour drive from Manhattan straight out to Pennsylvania, where Bucknell is. And he said, as we drove, Barney wanted to stop at every tavern along the way. And every tavern, they would say, it's the champ!

And he would down a shot. And they said, oh my god, by the time we got to Bucknell, he was three sheets to the window. He could hardly stand up. And I said, what did you do? He said, we got Barney inside, and he got up as drunk as could be. And these, uh, he gave the. Most inspirational, the most unforgettable speech.

And it include [00:40:00] the Kohanim blessing. Even drunk Barney, nobody who was in that room could forget that speech, even though they didn't even think he could get up out of the car to stand. 

Robert: Yeah. I mean, the man's

Doug Century: one of a kind.