The supposition was that when the late Damon Runyon immortalized such
citizens as Angie the Ox, the Lemon Drop Kid and Meyer Marmalade, he
had largely consulted his own imagination. But last week, when Senator
Estes Kefauver's antimonopoly subcommittee opened hearings in
Washington on the fight racket, the characters who took the stand to
describe the octopus grip of the underworld on U.S. boxing were pure
Runyon—but Runyon without romance. Dominating the proceedings from offstage was Racketeer Frankie Carbo,
56, known to business colleagues as “The Uncle,” “The Southern
Salesman,” “Mr. Grey” and “Jimmy the
Wop.” Once convicted of manslaughter and five times arrested on
suspicion of murder, Carbo is currently serving a two-year sentence for
illegally operating as a boxing manager and matchmaker. In Carbo's
absence, his pervasive influence over the boxing world was detailed by
a man who should know: Truman K. Gibson Jr., 48, Negro ex-secretary of
the now defunct ring monopoly, the International Boxing Club. The Facts of Life. A onetime member of the President's
Committee on Religion and Welfare in the Armed Forces, University of
Chicago Graduate Gibson imperturbably testified that Carbo was one of
“the facts of life” in boxing. In order to ensure that Carbo would make
the boxers he controlled available for I.B.C. fights, said Gibson, the
I.B.C. paid more than $40,000 to the ganglord's wife whose last known
address proved to be half a mile out in Florida's Biscayne Bay. There were other facts of life, too, Gibson admitted. The cartel paid
$9,000 to Hoodlum Frank Palermo, who is allegedly running
Carbo's boxing empire while the boss is in jail. While Gibson doodled,
Subcommittee Investigator John Bonomi summed up his testimony: “Almost
every leading manager or promoter in the U.S. is either closely
associated with or controlled by Frankie Carbo in some degree.” Wyatt Earp's Boy. Gibson, himself under indictment for conspiring to
muscle in on the earnings of former Welterweight Champion Don Jordan,
was followed by a parade of less communicative witnesses. Among them: “Hymie the Mink” , a Manhattan
furrier turned boxing manager, who could not hide his astonishment at
Gibson's volubility . Admitting that he knew Carbo shuffled managers and
fighters like a deck of marked cards, Wallman nonetheless professed
astonishment at “all this stuff about stealing and robbing.”
Carmen Basilio, broken-nosed ex-middleweight, ex-welterweight champion,
who proclaimed himself enraged that men like Carbo and Palermo were
ruining boxing, but who restrained “my inner feelings because there are
ladies here.”
Jack Kearns, aging ballyhoo artist who once
managed Jack Dempsey, and the moving spirit behind a boxing managers'
guild, whose “good will” Gibson claimed to have purchased at a cost of
$130,000. Kearns's chief contribution: a bland assertion that as a
young boxer he himself was managed by Wyatt Earp and knocked around
Alaska with Author Jack London.
