Word: blackburne
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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After a year of personal grooming (during which time Joe's terrific fists knocked out nearly every amateur he faced), Roxborough took his protege to Chicago, got wily Jack Blackburn, onetime Negro lightweight, to groom him for a professional ring career. "Joe didn't like to fight at first," says Blackburn. "But he was a natural fighter, easy to teach, and he learned more about the fight business in a month than most fighters learn in six months...
Jacobs succeeded in signing up Joe Louis. Whereupon Roxborough, Black & Blackburn, assisted by the Hearst press, began a promotional buildup. Because they knew whites (especially those who buy fight tickets) like Negro fighters virtuous, and remembering the stigma that still clung to colored fighters as a result of Jack Johnson's flamboyant wenching when he was world's heavyweight champion (1908-15), Louis' brain trust decided that their boy was going to be pure...
...nimble Italians were not scot free. Fairey Swordfish torpedo planes and Blackburn Skua dive bombers went whirring after them from the aircraft carrier Ark Royal, far in the rear of the British formation. These plunged and plopped their projectiles at the escapists, while their fighter escorts took on Italian defensive aircraft. As they returned to the Ark Royal, and reconnaissance planes flew up to check the battle score, Sir James led his ships away from land, down toward Malta and their original course, well knowing what a hornets' nest the action would stir up at the Cagliari air bases...
Here, besides the London area, is the home of Britain's aircraft industry. Leeds is the nest of the Blackburn Skua (naval dive bomber) and Roc (fighter). From near Birmingham come Fairey Battles (medium bombers). A plant of Fairey Aviation Co. is at Stockport in Lancashire, turns out the torpedo-launch ing Swordfish. The big Vickers long-range bombers, Wellesley and Wellington, are built at Chester on the Dee; the Avro Anson (coastal reconnaissance) at Manchester and Failsworth; Rolls-Royce engines at Derby...
...opinions of these Louis intimates: "Joe is a big, likable kid, but not too bright," spendthrift, sleepy, easygoing as an Alabama field hand. Marva Louis told how nonsmoking, nondrinking Joe frittered away fabulous sums of money on cab fares and cabaret checks for his friends. Trainer Jack Blackburn admitted that Joe didn't care much, one way or the other, about fighting. From newspapers and court files Earl Brown traced Manager Roxborough's connections with the numbers racket, Manager Julian Black's impressive police record. Some of the more lurid facts about the Louis entourage were generously...