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Pugilist turned biographer Ross spars with us in his debut, an account
of the short, mostly happy life of fearless Al "Bummy" Davis
(1920-45), a nice kid with a fierce left hook and a volatile, short
fuse. It all took place in Brownsville, a land of gangsters in candy
stores, of sudden death among egg creams. Everyone, readers may gather
from this text, spoke in colorful argot filled with Yiddishisms: Gertude
Berg joined with James T. Farrell, Henry Roth meets Damon Runyon. The
street names, the people, the ambience, the very air are all quite accurate,
but the set scenes, the dramatics, and especially the dialogue are frankly
dubious. Although no one other than those involved can know last thoughts,
intimate conversations, or amorphous motivations, Ross delivers them
all anyway. He knows what Lepke Buchalter thought, what Albert Anastasia
felt, what Kid Twist Reles said to his wife and just how that dirty
bastard Reles took his fatal plunge from a window at Coney's Half Moon
Hotel. Ross recreates what revered Cantor Yossele Rosenblat said to
Bummy Davis (né Davidoff). And he clearly knows what Davis felt
as he beat Tony Canzoneri in Madison Square Garden. It's a colorful
tale that traces the life and times of an appealing street guy who keeps
straight despite two gangster brothers. (Too bad John Garfield is no
longer available for the title role.) If this reads more like a frisky
novel than straight social history, it certainly has more brio and is
more realistic than any ordinary history of life for some folks during
Prohibition and after in Brooklyn. And it's funny too, in a Runyon Redux
way, as present tense kayos the past. So maybe it's overdramatized:
ya wanna make somethin'of it? Fluent and lively as a flyweight ten-rounder.
Publishers Weekly
Bummy Davis vs. Murder Inc.: The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Mafia
and an Ill-Fated Prizefighter
Humming with wisecracks and crowded with oddball characters and lovable
cranks, this mesmerizing anecdotal history rewrites the maligned legend
of Jewish prizefighter Al "Bummy" Davis. Born Albert Abraham
Davidoff in 1920, Davis was a plucky young street scrapper who rapidly
became one of the most brash and charismatic boxers of his generation.
With a devastating lefthook and irrepressible chutzpah, Davis won many
of his professional fights and nearly all of the hearts in Brownsville,
the once infamous Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn, N.Y. Home to Abe
"Kid Twist" Reles and "Pittsburgh Phil" Strauss,
two of the Jewish mob's most feared henchmen, Brownsville was where
lighthearted kvetching and the shouts of pushcart vendors faded into
the muffled screams of the mafia hit. In the hands of Louis "Lepke"
Buchalter and "Big Al" Anastasia, Murder Inc. turned the business
of crime into a vast, well-oiled enterprise. As the younger brother
of Willie Davidoff, one of the Buchalter's trusted bagmen, Davis never
escaped his brother's shadow and the tabloids had a field day painting
him as a dirty, low-life thug. To Ross, a former professional boxer
and fight promoter, the story of Bummy Davis is inseparable from that
of Depression-era Brooklyn, where the mob was still in its infancy and
people were in desperate need of a champion. Having scoured the memories
of Brownsville natives and boxing associates for scraps of stories,
Ross stitches them together with wonderfully imagined scenes and crackling
dialogue. Although the book is wreathed in the golden halo of nostalgia,
Ross writes with the flair and spellbinding magnetism of a natural storyteller.
Forecast: The book spans a variety of genres – true crime,
Jewish/New York history, sports biography – and is likely to draw
a diverse readership.
Library Journal
Al "Bummy" Davis was a tough but good-hearted boxer of the
1930s and 1940s. He was also the brother of two lesser members
of a New York Jewish crime gang that added a string of minor crimes
to its brutal contract killings. Ross, a former boxer, manager,
and promoter, writes colorfully and sympathetically of Davis's
ultimately tragic career. With the Davis saga he blends the reign
of Murder, Inc., under its leader Abe "Kid Twist" Reles.
Reles would in the end betray his associates but pay for it with
his own life when he was thrown from a Coney Island hotel. Despite
the often searing details, this is a worthwhile hardboiled story
for sports and crime collections. [W.C. Heinz's wonderful 1951
account of the Bummy Davis tragedy, "Brownsville Bum,"
appeared most recently in The Best Sports Writing of the Century
(1999).-Ed.]-Morey Berger, St. Joseph's Hosp. Lib., Tuscon, AZ
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information
Boxing Insider
By Mike Greenhill
The history of organized crime in America's 20th century, and in New
York City in particular, has been well chronicled. Movies, books and
television have brought the mobster to life, both to glorify his deeds
as well as to revile them.
The connection between gangsters and boxing, nearly
non-existent now, was much larger in scope in the first half of the
20th century. It is against this backdrop that author Ron Ross has penned
his second boxing work, "Bummy Davis and Murder, Inc.: The Rise
and Fall of the Jewish Mafia and an Ill-Fated Prizefighter."
This is much more than a boxing book. In an attempt
to accurately describe Depression-era life and the characters of Brooklyn,
New York (and its Brownsville section in particular), Ross has succeeded
marvelously.
The story is centered around the short but fascinating
life of lightweight contender Al 'Bummy' Davis (born Albert Davidoff)
and his friends, relatives and enemies that pervaded the mostly Jewish
neighborhood of Brooklyn known as Brownsville. Though known today as
the African-American ghetto that spawned Mike Tyson, Riddick Bowe and
Shannon Briggs, this area before World War II was primarily Jewish,
and a place where Hebrew and Yiddish were spoken as just as often as
English.
Ross deftly captures the atmosphere of this time and
place with dialogue written in Runyonesque style, dripping with phrases
and syntax reminiscent of the Bowery Boys, Chester Reilly or any "film
noir" movies about boxing, New York or both. The era has also been
covered well in some of the films of Woody Allen and Neil Simon, but
Ross's characters were real, and life was more pessimistic and dangerous.
His history is funny in spots, but just as frequently morbid and moving
in others.
The reader sees Bummy rise from a 1920's street peddler
(mixed with thoughts of becoming a cantor) on the streets of Brownsville
to accomplished prizefighter, all the while courageously rebuffing the
efforts of the mob in general, and the notorious Frankie Carbo in particular,
to purchase Bummy's contract and thus pull Davis into their sphere of
influence.
Murder, Inc., as the Brooklyn mob was known back then,
was a regular Rogues Gallery of scum, including Davis's older brother
Willie 'Big Gangy' Davidoff. Some older New Yorkers today say "back
then in Brooklyn, you grew up to be one of three things --- either a
businessman, a cop or a bad guy". Abe Reles, Pittsburgh Phil, Dasher
Abbandando, Happy Maione, Louis Lepke, Albert Anastasia .Ross's description
of their infamous exploits, through narrative and dialogue, makes the
reader feel as if the author had been witness to all of their doings
on a first-hand basis.
In the midst of this environment of loan-sharking,
extortion, bookmaking and murder, Al Davis did whatever he could to
walk the straight and narrow. His only two weaknesses were bad luck
and a bad temper, hardly a suitable combination. Bummy was never one
to walk away from a fight, and it cost him on several occasions, whether
it be on the streets, in the ring, with the mob or in the Army, eventually
leading to his untimely death at age 25 while chasing armed robbers
out of the Brooklyn restaurant bar he had opened after his retirement.
While never one to provoke violence, Davis's rage,
which never strayed too far from the surface, and his unavoidable relation
to his gangster brothers Willie and Harry, put him in the position of
fighting to clear his name as often as he fought in the ring. Frequently
looked upon as a pugilistic villain, even in his home city of New York,
Davis's undeserved reputation reached its zenith in 1940 when he was
disqualified against eventual champ Fritzie Zivic for roughly a dozen
blatant low blows, thrown only in retaliation for Zivic's well known
and oft-used dirty tactics.
The incident led the N.Y. State Athletic Commission
to suspend Bummy's license to box in New York State, and it wasn't until
Zivic lobbied the commission a year later that Bummy's license was restored.
Davis was unfortunate enough to be the one to pound legend Tony Canzoneri
in front of the former champ';s adoring public early in Davis's career,
and this, along with sportswriter Dan Parker's own personal vendetta
toward Davis, caused by a culinary prank administered to him by Willie
Davidoff, strongly encouraged public animosity toward Bummy even before
the Zivic debacle.
All of this history is so well presented by Ross that
even though most boxing historians, as well as hardcore fans are familiar
with the story of Bummy Davis, you still find yourself unable to put
this book down, and one becomes so emotionally invested in the main
character that one keeps hoping the tearful conclusion somehow ends
differently, even though you know it will not. The gut-wrenching irony
of a man who kept his nose clean amid a sea of sharks but still died
a violent death at least provides us with the consolation that Bummy
Davis succumbed while performing a heroic act.
Bummy Davis and Murder Inc. is published by St. Martin's
Press, 175 5th Avenue, New York, N.Y., 10010, phone # 800-221-7945 ext.
580. It retails for $26.95 and is available at most major bookstores,
websites such as Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com, or by e-mailing
the publisher at www.stmartins.com.
Mike Greenhill is a freelance photojournalist and a
boxinginsider.com contributor.
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