any of you ever wonder what harry greb looked like fighting?

[AntonTheMeh]

-Greb Swaps Blows With Champion-

It was Harry Greb who again today gave Dempsey his stiffest workout. The Pittsburgher was in fine fettle after the excellent showing he made against the champion yesterday. He was full of pep. With the call of time signalizing the beginning of activities, Greb promptly rushed Dempsey. The onslaught was so sudden that Jack was caught off his guard and it took a solid left hook into the body, plied with all the force at Greb's command, which is considerable, to jolt Dempsey into action. Then the fur began to fly.

It was a whirlwind three rounds that these two fighters staged for the edification of the biggest crowd that has yet shoe-horned its way into the grandstand at the baseball park in front of which the ring is built. There were fully 2,000 people present, and they were treated to as much action in those three rounds as is usually crowded into eight of a real bout.

[AntonTheMeh]

Ring Magazine

August 1991

Harry Greb Is Alive

by Stanley Weston



I knew from the quiver in his voice that the gentleman calling on the phone wanted to tell me something he knew would knock my socks off. He was so right.

"They found a Harry Greb film!"

"You're full of you-know-what," I said. "Did you see it yet?"

"No. Not yet. But I'm getting a tape in a few days."

"Good," I said. "Give me a call after you do."

To understand the historic significance of what the gentleman was saying , you need some background. From the day when collecting boxing films became a cult art form, the most astute cult members grew increasingly frustrated when not an inch of film footage of Greb, an immortal of fistic immortals, had been uncovered. Compounding that frustration was the fact that extensive footage had been discovered of dozens of famous boxers, even 19th-century champion John L. Sulliven. As a matter of fact, the very first boxing movies were taken of an exhibition between Jim Corbett and Peter Courtney at Edison, New Jersey, in 1894, which was the year Greb was born. How could there be nothing on Greb?

My old friend, the late dean of boxing film collectors, Jim Jacobs, and I kidded each other for more than a quarter-century about the non-existence of Greb fim footage. Many times I would call Jacobs.

"Hey, Jimbo," I'd say, "You know what the mailman delivered this morning?"

"Don't give me that again," Jacobs would snort, knowing instinctivly that I was throwing him another Harry Greb curve. Jimmy knew I was jiving, but it was still fun.

The last time I saw Jacobs was a year before his death. He had come to our offices in Rockville centre in search of still photos of Stanley Ketchel. He found three pictures that he wanted. I promised I'd have prints made and send them to him. With Ketchel out of the way, we turned, as usual, to our favorite mystic subject.

"If somebody--somebody astute about fight films, not just a guy who knows nothing about collecting--found, say, Greb footage in his cellar or attic, and he called me for a deal, I would trade him anything I have in my collection for whatever he has of Harry greb," Jacobs said.

You can understand why, when i recieved that out-of-the-blue phone call about the possible discovery of Greb footage, why I immediately thought of my dear, late friend. As hopeful as I was that this would not turn out to be yet another Greb false alarm, I had mixed emotions. Wouldn't it be a shame if this was indeed the real thing and Jimmy hadn't lived long enough to enjoy it?

It was indeed the real thing! Remarkably sharp film footage of Greb had been discovered in the archives of a major American University, where it had rested, unnoticed, for about 65 years. You can imagine how tense and excited I was as I sat in the screening room with the young man who had brought me the film, collector Phil Guarnieri, waiting to see for myself wether or not this whole thing was for real. The first thing to fill the screen was the smiling face of Harry greb; the same face I had seen in hundreds of still photo's for more than half a century. But this time the face was alive. The eyes blinked, the head turned, the lips curled into a mischeivous smile. I was astonished and moved to the point of tears.

"I've got to be dreaming. This can't be! Pinch me, phil," I said to the young collector seated next to me. "Tell me I'm not dreaming."

For the next four minutes 43 seconds I was mesmorised, watching the great harry greb punching the bag, skipping rope, sparring with Philadelphia Jack o'Brien, exercising, clowning for the camera, playing handball, and suddenly dressed in the tight-fitting, striped suit of a broadway dandy, with an oversiazed brimmed straw hat and a broad grin on his one-of-a-kind face. (We all have lookalikes, but not Greb. He was a true original.)

To have an opportunity to see harry greb alive and in the prime of life was beyond my wildest dreams, comparable for a fight film collector to seeing Abraham Lincoln delivering the Gettysburg Address or Napoleon bidding farewell to his troops at waterloo. My only regret is that Jim Jacobs was not sitting with me in that screening room the day Harry greb was re-incarnated. Had he been there, years of kidding and teasing would have been erased by less than five minutes of wonderful reality.