Tunney a literary champ, too

NEW HAVEN, Conn.

Heavyweight boxing champion Gene Tunney was famous for twice defeating rival Jack Dempsey. What isn’t well known is that he loved Shakespeare and counted such literary giants as Ernest Hemingway and George Bernard Shaw among his friends.

Mr. Tunney’s unusual life of boxing and books will be on display Thursday in an auction of his memorabilia by Sotheby’s in New York. Items on the block include the gloves he wore and the stool he sat on when he defeated Mr. Dempsey in the 1920s, a collection of Shakespeare’s plays from the 17th century and books inscribed by Mr. Hemingway.

“It wasn’t a persona or an act that he did to get attention,” says Selby Kiffer, a senior vice president at Sotheby’s. “This was really who he was. He was just as comfortable if not more comfortable in a library than in the boxing ring.”

Mr. Tunney, who grew up in a poor Irish immigrant family in New York City, died in 1978 at age 81. His widow, Polly Lauder Tunney, a Carnegie Steel Co. heiress, died in April at age 100 at her home in Stamford, Conn.

Mr. Tunney is most famous for his fight with Mr. Dempsey on Sept. 22, 1927. The bout in front of 104,000 at Soldier Field in Chicago was a rematch of a fight Mr. Tunney had won as a challenger a year earlier.

Mr. Dempsey knocked Mr. Tunney to the canvas in the seventh round, but the referee delayed the count because Mr. Dempsey did not immediately heed a new rule that the count could not start until the fighter was in a neutral corner. Mr. Tunney rose at the count of nine and went on to win. Many fans and reporters thought Mr. Tunney would have been counted out had it not been for the delayed count.

The 10-ounce gloves Mr. Tunney wore during that fight are expected to sell for $35,000 to $50,000.

Mr. Tunney shocked the boxing world not only with his defeat of Mr. Dempsey, but also when he told Associated Press reporter Brian Bell during an interview before the bout that he loved literary classics. The story prompted one of Mr. Dempsey’s bodyguards to say dismissively of Mr. Tunney’s chances against the champ, “Tunney, he reads books.”

While boxing champ, Mr. Tunney once lectured at Yale University about Shakespeare for nearly an hour without notes. He related characters in Shakespeare’s plays to those in his own life, comparing the blustery soldier Ajax in “Troilus and Cressida” to a loud contemporary boxer, says his son, Jay Tunney, who is writing a book about his father.

“He brought Shakespeare into his own life and showed people in the audience how Shakespeare influenced him,” the son says. “That’s what made his lecture stand out.”

Mr. Tunney owned the first complete collection of Shakespeare’s plays, published in 1685. It is expected to sell for $80,000 to $120,000.

Mr. Hemingway gave Mr. Tunney three books, including “A Farewell to Arms.” Mr. Tunney turns up in a later Hemingway book, “Island in the Stream,” when the characters drink to him at a Havana bar.

Mr. Tunney also sparred with Mr. Hemingway, typically after the men had had a few drinks, Jay Tunney says. One time after a debate about whether a street fighter could take a professional boxer, Mr. Hemingway accidentally gave Mr. Tunney a bloody nose, prompting him to respond with a few fast punches that stopped just short of Mr. Hemingway’s face.

“Hemingway was absolutely flustered,” Jay Tunney says. “He turned a little shade of white.”

Mr. Tunney was also close friends with Shaw, who admired boxing and also had risen from poverty.

Jay Tunney says boxing was not secondary to his father’s literary interest, for he recognized that boxing enabled him to rise out of poverty and gave him the confidence, courage and discipline to become a successful businessman and family man.

“Dad was always an interesting combination of brains and brawn,” Jay Tunney said. “More and more he leaned on brains.”