Word: lewins
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...plot read like the scenario of an old Sydney Greenstreet movie, but the main character was all too real. Rugged, soft-voiced Ted Lewin, 52, is an American ex-prizefighter with a taste for dark shirts, penthouses, air-conditioned Cadillacs and shadowy wheelings and dealings. In and out of Manila, in the past two decades, he has turned many a fast peso...
Born Theodore Lieweraenowski in New York City, Lewin was a man who had had several brushes with the law but no convictions when he set out in 1939 to promote wrestling matches and open a cabaret in Manila. When the Japanese attacked the Philippines, Lewin, no man to duck a fight, enlisted and was captured on Bataan. At the Cabanatuan prison camp he proved his organizing ability by setting up a food delivery from outside that kept the P.W.s from starvation and the Japanese guards in pin money...
Back in Manila, proudly wearing MacArthur's Medal of Freedom, Lewin opened a cabaret and became the city's leading sports promoter (including the world's bantamweight boxing championship match in 1947). But he hit the really big money with a gambling joint called the Key Club off Manila's Dewey Boulevard. He was also a generous spender who won friends by donating $15,000 to a polio clinic and giving freely to orphans, lepers, war refugees...
...also knew how to do favors for the powerful. In 1949 the daughter of Vice President Fernando Lopez divorced her American husband, who got custody of their two-year-old son. Lewin helped her kidnap the boy in New Mexico, make it to San Francisco after a breakneck car-and-plane chase, and eventually reach safety in Manila...
Fred Vinton, Jorge Lemann, Bill Wood, Pete Smith and Dick Chute rounded out the singles victories. Vinton crushed Roy Anderson, 6-3, 6-1, at number four, and Lemann, playing fifth, came back after dropping the first set to beat Don LeWin, 4-6, 7-5, 6-2, in one of the afternoon's most interesting matches. Wood, at number six, ran right through "patballer" and retriever Ed Mills in the opening set, then inexplicably lost his touch and had to rally before winning...