The Wilmington morning star., 1946-10-28
As Pegler Sees 1t
BY WESTBROOK PEGLER
Copyright, 1916, BY King Features Syndicate,
Tnc

No eOS go IL
man on or off and that Leo Durocher, te
manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, runs to
fires with Raft, l think of the time that a tel
low claimed that he was trimmed with loaded
dice in a craps game in Durocher's apartment
in New York. then I want to know more.
$ How tough is Raft, the great Hollywood
actor and celebrity, I want to know, and is
he really a gangster and, if so, how about
some details? And, if Durocher is so chummy
with Hollywood characters jerks, one sports
writer called them recently that a baseball
writer can't get into his dressing-room during
the season, and he hangs around places fre-
quented by gamblers and lends his apart
ment to Raft for a dicing party in which a
chump is taken for SIS, 500 on 10 straight pass
es. all tours and tens, again, why not give us
a tell? That is a reporters business, especial
Ilv the business of a columnist who goes in for
~punditry.
If your interest is like mine, then:
George Raft. the noted movie actor who
does gangster roles and gets, as l am told by a
truthful and conservative Hollywood executive,
more than $500, 900 a year, recently took part
in a radio program in New York called I'VE,
The People," he said he went to a fight IN
New York one night when he was II and was
called on to get into the ring and fight a guy
when one of the principals failed to show up.
Maybe that is true. but it is one of the
oldest stories in the fight business, and most
times it isn't. Raft said he licked the fellow
and that, later, in the dressing-room, a strang-
er rubbed him down, called him a game kid
and became his manager lin the four fights
l had after that"
THAT he said, was Mack Gray, here"
Mack Gray then horned into the broadcast
to say that he had been a Broadway fight man.
ager, as he might have been, although IN all
my years on the sport side I never heard OF
the mugg, and that years afterWard, Raft
phoned him from Hollywood to come on out
and handle his business as an actor.
"You meet a lot of people," Raft said, in
closing. Here today and gone tomorrow, but
the rarest thing you can find any place is
what I have got in Mack Gray - a friend
In November, 1914, a man calling himself
Martin Shurin, Jr., complained to the district
attorney of New York county that he believed
Raft had used crooked dice in winning S18,-
500 from him in a game at Durocher's apart
ment on March "a, 1914. Raft had given a din
ner party at the Sherry-Netherlands hotel,
where he occupied one suite and Mack Gray,
listed as his manager, occupied another. There
was a war on then and hotel rooms and meat
were scarce. but Raft had suite 8-F from Feb.
10 to April 2 and Gray had 6-F from Feb. rs
TO April 2. And, for the big dinner that Raft
gave for the fellow who was about to drop the
Sl8, 500, they had steaks. Raft had never seen
the sucker before, but still he gave him a
party, with steaks.
By a paradox that you may tackle for
yourself, although Raft is publicized as a
tough fellow with a temper who likes to
fight. Mack Gray is described as his body
guard. He is known as Killer Gray, although
there is no police record of his having killed
anybody and nobody knows where he buries
his dead, if any. Litter, younger Americans
were engaged in real killing at the time, and
were being killed, but probably not more than
a hundred of them, individually, were at all
renowned as tough guys. Raft and Gray were
stronger than millions of them, no doubt, but
you couldn't say they were tougher in a real
fight.
Shurin said it all started in the summer Of
1913 at a summer resort near Paving, N. Y,
Just down the hill from Governor Tom Dew
ey's farm. There he met several very nice fell
lows, one of them with a record of convictions
for burglary and robbery and of arrests on
three more assorted charges of armed robbery
and assault and-robbery which were dismiss
ed. They shot craps that summer and Shurin
lost several thousand and sWore off until just
after Christmas. Then the most charming Of
the bunch, the ACKNOWLEDGEMENT sub
ject, phoned him to renew the acquaintance.
Mr.. Shurin liked them so much that he gave
them a dinner party at his home and among
the guests was an added starter named Sonny
Barry whom Shurin had met somewhere else.
Sonny Barry, originally known as Samuel
M1ntZer, SAID the great movie ACTOR ana CeleO-
rity, George Raft. was coming to town and
would Shurin like to meet him? Would he?
Well, wouldn't you feel honored to meet a great
movie star of ~gangster roles personally? Shur.
in sure would like to meet him and, on March
"a, his dream came true.
Sonny Barry and the burglary-robbery-as-
sault character were there at the Sherry
Netherlands and the rest of the boys from the
quiet little summer place away from it all up
near Pawling and Raft and Killer Gin a manner
of speaking) Gray.
Gray's regular name turns out to be Max
Greenberg, and he is a cousin of Sonny Barry
Mintzer. Sonny Barry Mintzer had a few
fights in the ring in his youth, and presently
showed up as a horse-trainer in California.
There, by coincidence, a fellow of the same
name was reported by the New York Jockey
Club to have been elected from the Santa
Anita track on January 81, 1910, along with a
man who later was indicted there on a charge
of conspiring to fix races.
Well, they had cocktails first at the
Sherry-Netherlands and then dinner in a semi
private room. Shurin made a pass at paying
his share of the check, but the great movie
idol wouldn't think of letting his honored guest
lift any weight, and then, because Raft was
likely to be bothered by telephone calls, being
a slave of his idolatrous public, there was a
spontaneous decision to go over to Leo Duro-
cher's apartment and sit around and converse.
Continued Tomorrow