Evening star., 1926-10-13

IN America, he invited lust those par
believed in him, and liked him in h
night preliminary fights, of unemplo
The benevolent McCabe was there
Tor example, he who saw promise in
the raw young boxer of the American
Expeditionary Force; Father Duffy
the fighting chaplain, perhaps the
bestowed figure among our veterans;
Jimmie Bronson, who directed the
corner on that rainy night when
the challenger became champion;
George Ransberry, who. though a
man of means. came down to Strouds-
burg to direct the cooking for the
training table; Bernard Gimbel, Dud-
ley Field Malone, Big Bill Edwards.
sporting reporters who had followed
his old fights, albeit only one of
them had picked him to win the
championship from the unbeatable
Dempsey
They had not met as a body since
the night Of the big fight, and the
train had no sooner slipped into the
Pennsylvania tunnel than they were
fighting the battle over, illustrating
the blows on each other.
In the smoking compartment, the
king had set up his throne, and all
the way to Philadelphia, the court
crowded it to suffocation while they
kept Gene Tunney talking. I. who
had been sent to interview him, de-
SPARED of getting him alone. The
best | could do was to edge a seat
beside him and cling to it selfishly
while questioner after questioner did
my work for me.
Handsome Physical Specimen.
That Tunney as a physical speci-
men is handsome, even beautiful, the
cinema had proved to all the world.
But photography even when 1t moves,
does not quite convey any face.
Seen for the first time, the cham
pion's good looks have points and con-
tradictions which the camera misses.
Beneath his mole-colored hair. brush
ed back pompadour fashion, he has
forehead as straight and as cleanly
carved as pillar. The frontal ridges
under his eyebrows, however, are
heavy-just little heavier. and they
would beetle like Jim Corbetts.
His eyes are of that cool gray-blue
which we have come to associate with
force of character. They are long
eyes. which half close when he smiles;
at such times they look, for all the
pleasantly of his mood, a little Orien-
tai. But they are set in an ample eye
beauty in man or woman.
His nose has that clean gunstock
cut which only the Celtic face shows
to perfection. The lip beneath 1t
curves upward as delicately as that of
a pretty girl on magazine cover
and then your eye follows on to full
Tipped mouth, firm and aggressive.
The curves of his jaws mt the clas-
sical pattern of male beauty as close
" as do those of his forehead; but
they come together in a square chin.
built to absorb punches.
Genes Face Never Still.
Since he is a Celt, neither his ex-
preston nor his hands are ever quite
still. In certain moods of converse
tion, he resembles that romantic and
dehonnair figure of Gene Tunney
which the director has made up for
the movies: In others, he is merely
humorous boy, glad to be alive ana,
hy some miracle, to be fulfilling the
dream of boy; and in still others he
can look powerful and even hard
But always, he radiates personality
and charm, part of which resides in
his engaging smile, which always is
coming and going when he talks: and
part in certain little trick of the
pose of his hand which suggests,
when he shakes hands with you, that
YOU are the very person he has waited
all these years to meet.
There are other contradictions about
him, even on first meeting. His pas
sion for books. as | was to learn In
The course of that day, is not an in
vention of his press agent. And he
speaks with the wide vocabulary ana
the turn of literary phrases which
mark the men who has read and alb
sorbed: all day long he was dropping
words which !, in my daily job, heSl-
tate to put on paper for fear not every
reader will understand.
Mixed with these were the vivid
and direct slang of the prize ring and
of his native Greenwich Village. He
punctuates all his narratives with
that emphatic "see"' which Ned
Townsend put 35 years ago into the
mouth of his Chimmie Fadden. the
BoWery boy, and which still survives
on the sidewalks of New York.
His voice that morning, had not
quite recovered from Dempseys
famous blow on the Adams applet
still was a trif1e husky. But under
meath all that II had a resonance
like a violin: a man with a nose and
a frontal structure like that could
not possibly have a dull or drear
voice. 1t is low. but penetrating and
we'll modulated, yet he speaks in the
accent of the third generation Irish
who inhabit New York's lower side.
Dempsey Encouraged Gene.
Cornelius Vanderbilt. perched on the
washstand in the corner, had asked
question which touched on the popu-
larity or unpopularity of Jack Demp-
sew: and at the moment, Gene Tunney