The Library Of Congress And All That Jazz

Portrait Of Billie Holiday,

For DownBeat Magazine, ca. 1947.

(Photo by William P. Gottlieb, Courtesy of the Library of Congress.)

Call it chance, fate, destiny, or kismet. Often sheer luck--good or bad--determines the shape of our lives. Eighteenth century poet and philosopher Johann Friedrich Von Schiller believed that "what seems to us mere accident springs from the deepest source of destiny." He never met 20th century photographer William P. Gottlieb, but if he had, Schiller would have marked him as "Exhibit A" in the perpetual philosophical trial of free will vs. determinism.

Portrait of William P. Gottlieb, ca. 1940.
(Photo by Delia Potosky Gottlieb, Courtesy of the Library of Congress.)

William Gottlieb planned to become an economist, but instead of spending his life devising dry theories on the workings of capitalism, he became a capital photographer. Gottlieb spent his life creating some of the best pictures ever snapped of great musicians. The Library of Congress (LC) recently digitized and posted over 200 of Gottlieb's portraits of jazz giants--with hundreds more to come--on one of its Flickr sites. But a biography of Gottlieb in the Library's Performing Arts Encyclopedia, reveals that these fabulous photos would never have been taken without a case of food poisoning, a rained-out tennis match, and a cash-strapped newspaper.

Jo Stafford Backstage, ca. 1946

(Photo By William P. Gottlieb, Courtesy of The Library of Congress)

William P. Gottlieb was born in Brooklyn, New York on January 28, 1917. Gottlieb was orphaned in his early teens, a sad fact that nevertheless may have encouraged him to take risks and follow his heart. After high school graduation, he pursued a degree in economics from Lehigh University. Gottlieb's membership in a fraternity led, in a somewhat convoluted manner, to his interest in jazz. The day before the end of his sophomore year, the cook at Gottlieb's frat house dished up a meal featuring underdone pork. For Gottlieb, and several of his "brothers," this resulted in a severe case of trichinosis and a summer's worth of bed rest.

Duke Ellington In His Dressing Room
at the Paramount Theater, ca. 1946.
(Photo by William P. Gottlieb, Courtesy of the Library of Congress.)

Gottlieb's sickbed boredom was frequently eased by a high school friend, "Doc" Bartle. Bartle was a sometime classical pianist, but his music of choice offstage was jazz. He often brought along the latest jazz records, by artists like Duke Ellington and Louie Armstrong, when he visited his convalescing pal. Gottlieb's casual listening to jazz soon became a habit, and a genuine jazz buff was born.

Glen Gray In His Dressing Room
at the Paramount Theater, ca. 1946.
(Photo by William P. Gottlieb, Courtesy of the Library of Congress.)

Upon returning to Lehigh, Gottlieb became the editor of the school's monthly magazine, The Lehigh Review. As editor, Gottlieb ran articles on live jazz performances in Philadelphia and New York City in every issue, along with monthly reviews of jazz records. He also began to have an interest in photojournalism, which was on the rise due to the popularity of Life and Look magazines. The multi-talented Gottlieb was also on Lehigh's varsity tennis team, which led to the second happy accident that changed his life. And once again a friendship was instrumental in maintaining William Gottlieb's connection with the world of jazz.

Buddy Childers and Stan Kenton, ca. 1946-47.
(Photo by William P. Gottlieb, Courtesy of the Library of Congress.)

A college buddy of Gottlieb's was the nephew of the business manager of the Washington Post, Don Bernard. When the friend learned that Gottlieb would be playing in a tennis tournament in Washington, D.C., he encouraged his pal to call his uncle. Gottlieb listened politely but thought it unlikely he'd have time to chat with Bernard, since the tennis team would only be in town for a day. But he did bring some writing samples with him--just in case. When the tennis matches were rained-out, Gottlieb called Bernard's office at the paper. Bernard just happened to be in on that particular Saturday, and told Gottlieb to come on over. Despite the fact that the college kid was still in his tennis whites, Bernard was impressed enough with the writing samples to recommend Gottlieb for a job in the advertising department of the Post. Upon graduation from Lehigh in 1938, Gottlieb became an ad salesman for the paper.

Billie Holiday and Her Boxer, Ca. 1947

(Photo by William P. Gottlieb, Courtesy of the Library of Congress.)

After a few months on the job, Gottlieb offered to write a weekly column on jazz for the Sunday edition. The Arts Editor agreed, and his pay jumped from twenty-five to thirty-five dollars a week. But more importantly, he became the writer of the first jazz column to appear in a daily newspaper. At first a Post photographer was assigned to illustrate Gottlieb's column. But soon the management of the paper decided the arrangement was too costly, and the lensman was reassigned. Unwilling to publish the column without photos, Gottlieb sold his prized record collection and used the proceeds to buy a camera. With a lot of help from the Post's staff photographers, and a tremendous amount of practice, William Gottlieb taught himself how to take photos that were not only good enough for publication, but were works of art in their own right.

Django Reinhardt, ca. 1947.
(Photo by William P. Gottlieb, Courtesy of the Library of Congress.)

By age twenty-two, Gottlieb was known in the Washington, D.C. area as "Mr. Jazz." But Mr. Jazz had a growing family, so he left the advertising arm of the paper in 1941 to earn a graduate degree in economics at the University of Maryland. However, he never gave up writing and illustrating his Sunday jazz column. After serving as an Army photographer in World War II, Gottlieb once again followed his heart, and in 1945 he moved to New York City, determined to become a full-time jazz writer and photographer. He stopped in at the New York office of DownBeat magazine, and was pleasantly surprised to learn that the staff was not only familiar with his work for the Post, they downright admired it. Gottlieb was hired on the spot as an assistant editor.

Mary Lou Williams, ca.1946.

(Photo by William P. Gottlieb, Courtesy of the Library of Congress.)

Soon, Gottlieb's photographs became even more popular with DownBeat's readers than his writing, and several of his shots even made the magazine's cover. For five years he documented the New York jazz scene, photographing and writing about many of popular music's greatest artists. But, by the end of the decade, the jazz scene was changing, and Gottlieb was worn out. Feeling out of touch with the newest music, and wanting to spend more time with his family, Gottlieb left DownBeat. As he put it, "I was really something of a square; I had a wife and children, and the joys of staying out until four a.m. with musicians, even those who were my idols, had evaporated, especially since I was often the only sober one there."

U.S. Postal Service Stamps
Based On Gottlieb's Photos, Issued in 1994.
(Image Courtesy of the Library of Congress)

But even after his "retirement" from the jazz scene, William Gottlieb's photos lived on. His photos from 1938 to 1948 are among the most frequently reproduced jazz images in the world, so iconic they were even used as the basis for a series of United States postage stamps in 1994. More than 200 of his photos were collected in a 1979 book, The Golden Age of Jazz. In 1997, Gottlieb became the first photographer ever honored with DownBeat's Lifetime Achievement Award. He remains a member of good standing in the Jazz Photographers Association, still takes on the occasional assignment. Not bad for a guy whose career in jazz journalism began with bellyful of roundworms.

Thanks to the Resource Shelf for the lead.

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Ransom Center Exhibit Proves Costume Creates Character

Percy Anderson (1851-1928)
Costume design for A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1911.
Margery Maude as Titania.
(All Images Courtesy Of The Harry Ransom Center.)

Though most actors would be loathe to admit it, an essential ingredient for creating a believable character on stage or screen is a costume. Could Charlie Chaplin convince us he was The Little Tramp without his derby hat, baggy pants, and big shoes? Or to use a more recent example, would anyone buy Sarah Jessica Parker as Carrie Bradshaw if she didn't sport her "J'adore Dior" t-shirt, Jimmy Choo stilettos, and Hermes Birkin bag? A new online exhibition from The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin shows virtual visitors that the costume designer was already the actor's best friend as far back as the Victorian era, and that one firm in particular helped hundreds of British thespians get into character whether they trod the boards or made magic on the silver screen.

Costumier's copy, after Aubrey Hammond (1893-1940)
Costume design for The Circle of Chalk, 1929.
Anna May Wong as Chang-Hi-Tang.

The exhibition, entitled A Tonic To The Imagination: Costume Designs for Stage and Screen by B.J. Simmons & Co., spotlights the work of the British company which remained London's premier preparer of costumes for operas, operettas, plays, pageants, pantomimes, musicals, movies, and revues for over 100 years, from 1857 to 1964. This sartorial showcase is divided into 10 distinct types of costume design, illustrated by 228 images taken from 60 historic theatre and film productions.

Percy Macquoid (1852-1925)
Costume design for The Merchant of Venice, 1908.
Alfred Brydone as the Prince of Morocco.

The Ransom Center acquired the B.J. Simmons archive, one of the largest of its kind in the world, in two installments in 1983 and 1987. This vast collection is comprised of 34,000 original costume designs and costumier's copies of the originals, as well as almost 30,000 related items such as production timetables, research materials, selected articles and reviews, touring dates, rental arrangements, and photographs of individual costumed actors as well as ensembles. Altogether the Simmons materials fills more than 500 standard-sized archive boxes.

Costumier's copy, after Doris Zinkeisen (1898-1990)
Costume design for The Way of the World, 1924.
Edith Evans as Mrs. Millamant.

Artists employed by B.J. Simmons often copied a set of designs for use in the studio, these "costumier's copies" allowed the designer of record to retain the originals. Some costumier's copies are simple tracings, but most are freehand drawings, and those from the late 19th century are often incredibly exact watercolor renderings. The skilled artists hired by Simmons could not only recreate every minute detail of a designer's work, but also add construction notes, fabric swatches, and even incorporate the actor's face and body type to more accurately portray the finished product. Because stage plays from this era were rarely photographed, costume designs are often the only surviving visual record of these early productions.

Gordon Conway (1894-1956)
Costume design for Aunt Sally, 1933.
Directed by Tim Whelan for Gainsborough Pictures / Gaumont British Picture Corporation, Ltd.

In 2002, the Ransom Center was awarded a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) for the preservation, arrangement, description, cataloging, and selected digitization of the B.J. Simmons costume design collection. The Simmons collection was in dire need of conservation work. While stored in London, all paper materials in the collection, regardless of size, were folded into letter-size packets, placed between acidic pieces of cardboard, and then bound with cloth ribbons. Papers on the exterior of these packets were often coated with soot from the coal-burning fires of the British metropolis. Many items showed a great deal of wear and tear, and all were full of folds and creases from decades of disuse.

Percy Anderson (1851-1928)
Costume design for Trial by Jury, 1920.
A Lady in the Box.

All papers in the Simmons collection were surface-cleaned to reduce the soot, humidified in a water chamber to soften folds, and then gently blotted and pressed until flat. Any attached fabric swatches were removed during the process, and then replaced using non-rusting stainless steel pins. Materials were then placed in acid-free folders large enough for them to be stored flat within archive boxes. Drawings in need of more extensive conservation were noted for further work. The Ransom Center's paper conservation department completed work on approximately 12,500 drawings and other documents over a two year period. Associate Curator for Performing Arts at the Ransom Center, Helen Adair, stressed the importance of the government grant: "The Ransom Center is fortunate to have had the support of the NEH for this cataloging and preservation project. The NEH recognized that the collection as a whole is more valuable than the sum of its parts, and we never would have been able to tackle a project of this size without its generous support."

Percy Anderson (1851-1928).
Costume design for Chu Chin Chow, 1916.
Courtice Pounds as Ali Baba.

The results of this painstaking work are now available to anyone who visits the Harry Ransom Center's website. The images selected for A Tonic To The Imagination: Costume Designs for Stage and Screen by B.J. Simmons & Co. represent the major strengths of the collection. Preliminary sketches and final renderings of costumes for the grand opera, patriotic pageants, Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, classic plays by Shakespeare and Shaw, and British cinema are all part of the online exhibition. Two complete costume portfolios for the play Trelawny of the "Wells", one for the 1898 premiere and one for the 1926 revival, are also included. This allows viewers to compare each designer's unique conception of the same material, and to see the progression of stagecraft through the years.

Unknown Designer
Costume design for The Scarlet Pimpernel, 1928.
Julia Neilson as Lady Blakeney.

In the late 19th and early 20th century, costume designers were rarely credited in theatre programs by name. Many did not sign their sketches and renderings, so the creators of these pieces, which were so essential to the effectiveness of stage and screen productions, remain anonymous. But after gazing at the intricate and thoughtful creations on view in this exhibition, there can be little doubt that without the costume designer, even the actor with top billing might wind up being an unknown.

Emory Library Digitizes The Mother of Pulp Fiction

SAVAGE, Richard Henry. The Little Lady Of Lagunitas: A Franco-Chilean Romance. London: Routledge, 1892.

(Image Courtesy of Monash University Library.)

A cutting-edge imaging tool of today, a robotic digital book scanner from Kirtas Technologies, is allowing more readers than ever to enjoy the fruits of a previous publishing innovation: the yellowback. Yellowbacks, nicknamed "mustard plasters," were the Victorian era version of airport novels: railway reads that were cheaply bound in papered fiberboard, and usually sold for two shillings (about 50 cents). Their nickname comes from their most common cover: a three-colored illustration, often luridly sensational, printed on an eye-poppingly bright, yellow-glazed background. Emory University which holds the second largest collection of yellowbacks of any American university, has announced that more than 1,200 of these 19th century rarities have now been digitized and made available for free downloading.

GOULD, Nat, The Lady Trainer. London: Long, 1906.

(Image Courtesy Of Monash University Library.)

"There are a good number of yellowbacks where we have the only known copy of the text, so we're able to make that available to people around the world," says David Faulds, librarian at Emory's Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library (MARBL). "They're very rare now because they weren't that sturdily built, they just disintegrated or were thrown away. It's an aspect of 19th century life that's disappeared today."

MARK TWAIN, A Yankee At The Court Of King Arthur. London: Chatto & Windus, [c.1893].

A pirated yellowback version of A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court.

(Image Courtesy of Monash University Library.)

Though less well-known to scholars and collectors than the more exploitative "penny dreadfuls," yellowbacks hold an important place in publishing history. Antiquarian book expert Anthony Rota noted in his authoritative history of the printed book, Apart From the Text (1998), that if "one had to describe in one word the books that transformed not only series publishing but all publishing in the last half of the 19th century, it would be 'yellow-back'."

[BRADDON, Mary Elizabeth], Lady Audley's Secret. London: Simpkin, Marshall, [188?].

(Image Courtesy of Monash University Library.)

These cheap books essentially ended the era of the three volume novel, or three-decker. The boom in train travel, along with an increasingly literate, but not necessarily wealthy, population, dried up the demand for heavy, bulky books. Yellowbacks were the first lightweight, portable book, inexpensive enough to be printed in mass quantities, and priced to be affordable for the growing working class created by the Industrial Revolution. And the eye-candy covers of the yellowbacks, prominently displayed in train stations, were among the first examples of using savvy design and marketing to create a best seller.

HARDY, Thomas. The Hand Of Ethelberta. London: Sampson, Low, 1888.

The back cover advertisement was a standard feature of most Victorian yellowbacks.

(Image Courtesy Of The British Library.)

The yellowbacks were such a financial success upon introduction in 1847, that nearly every major publisher of the day began a series aimed at the railway reader. Yellowbacks were not mere sleaze or trash, they were often reprints of works from the finest authors of the day, including Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Jane Austen, Anthony Trollope, and Thomas Hardy. In America, British authors were favored by printers, as copyright laws allowed them to be "pirated," and sold without the payment of royalties. For the same reason, American and French authors were favored in England. Victor Hugo, Honore de Balzac, Mark Twain, and Bret Harte were particularly popular. Yellowbacks that weren't reprints were sometimes genuine first editions of the work of a foreign author: the first British translation of Pushkin's The Queen of Spades was published as a yellowback.

FEVAL, Paul, Bel Demonio. London: Ward, Lock. And Co., 1863.

KETTLE, Rosa, Fabian's Tower. London: Ward, Lock. And Co., 1880.

(Image Courtesy of The British Library.)

There were also wildly successful writers whose work appeared only within the pages of these early versions of "paperback originals." The yellowbacks began what we now take for granted as "genre fiction." French writer Emile Gaboriau's (1835-1873) series of titles featuring thief turned police officer Monsieur Lecoq were the template for all future detective fiction, and directly inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's creation of Sherlock Holmes. Another French writer, Maria Louise Rame, who wrote under the pen name "Ouida," popularized the historical romance novel. Without her yellowbacks there would have been no Harlequin Romances, and even worse, no covers featuring Fabio. A "confessions" genre also began with yellowbacks. It included, in 1860 alone, The Confessions of a Thief, The Confessions of a Horse Dealer and The Revelations of a Catholic Priest. Would we have today's best-selling junkie "memoirs" from writers like James Frey without these?

PLUES, Margaret, Geology For The Millions. London: Routledge, 1863.

(Image Courtesy of The British Library.)

But the yellowback was not limited only to fictional works. First editions of important Victorian literary journalists, such as George Augustus Sala, Edmund Yates, and Douglas Jerrold were all published as yellowbacks. And the next time you're checking out Warren Buffett's stock tips, remember that an investment guide was the first yellowback proper: in April 1853 Ingram, Cooke & Co., published Money: How To Get, How To Keep, and How To Use It with an illustrated cover on a yellow background. [Horace Mayhew's Letters Left At The Pastrycook's (1853) was the first title published in the format, but with white wrappers.] This format is also the source of the endless stream of "how to" books that now flood our libraries, everything from proper etiquette, the correct way to mount butterfly specimens, the rules of parlor games, and the process of at-home taxidermy, all described between the yellow covers. Travel guides and war reporting were also staples of non-fiction yellowbacks.

SULLIVAN, John L., Reminiscenes Of A Nineteenth Century Gladiator. London: Routledge, 1892.

(Image Courtesy Of Monash University Library.)

The heyday of yellowbacks, which Matthew Arnold dismissively called "tawdry novels... designed for people with a low standard of life," was between 1855 and 1870. During this period, printers gave cover artists free reign to design the illustrations and lettering on the covers and spines of titles which were published in runs as large as 100,000 copies. Volumes from this era have an integrity of style which was lost when, due to lower costs, printers standardized outer typography, thereby reducing artists to hired guns, producing only pasted in illustrations. By the 1890's yellowback covers were shoddy, monotonous, and undistinguished. What had begun as a publishing innovation became shorthand for a cheap product of inferior quality.

OUIDA, Pipistrello. London: Chatto & Windus, [1885].

(Image Courtesy Of Monash University Library.)

Yellowbacks did not entirely disappear: they were replaced by higher quality formats, which often recycled the earlier books' most outstanding cover illustrations. The digitization of yellowbacks by universities will give this unique piece of publishing history a new lease on life. As Emory rare book librarian David Faulds points out: "Some of these books are so rare that they've been lost to history. Scholars and casual readers can now discover these works. There may be aspects of them that are of interest not only to literary researchers, but also social historians looking at Britain or America in the 19th century, or women's lives in this period, what they were reading, how they are portrayed or what they wrote."

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Houghton Library Exhibit Illuminates The Book Within The Book

Guillaume d'Estouteville (ca. 1412-1483), Epistola ad heremitas Sancti Augustini, Central Italy, after 1475. This volume is comprised of a series of letters written by various Popes to Augustinian Hermits. Depicted here is the presentation of the book to a member of the Holy Order by Pope Sixtus IV. The compiler, who later became Dean of the College of Cardinals in Rome, is seen standing beside the papal throne.
(All images courtesy of the Houghton Library.)

Lovers of the quiet, solitary refuge of books seem to find themselves outnumbered today. In a world where the moving, electronic image has become the most common form of mass communication, readers may wish they could have lived in an earlier time. A time in which the bound, printed word still reigned supreme as the major source of knowledge and culture. A new exhibit at Harvard University's Houghton Library looks back at such a time, The Middle Ages. It shows that in the medieval world, at least for the upper classes, books were essential to nearly every important part of everyday life.

Polistorio (Polyhistoria), Northern Italy, late fourteenth century. This volume, written in 1383, is a world chronicle that focuses on the city of Rome. The image seen here shows a copyist at work, using one text to create another. The depiction here is idealized, as actual calligraphy was done on loose sheets, which were only later bound together.

The show, Books in Books: Reflections on Reading and Writing in the Middle Ages, is made up of 10 of the library's most important medieval manuscripts. Spanning more than three hundred years, from the early 12th to the early 15th centuries, each of these texts show books being written, created, presented, exchanged, read, or studied. These artifacts show that for those living in Europe's Dark Ages, books illuminated ancient history, literary traditions, and religious doctrines. They also dictated social customs, manners, morals, and the appropriate role of art, music, dance, sports, and games in courtly society. And, in the case of the Bible, the book was even taken as the literal word of God.

Book of Hours, Use of Sarum, England, ca. 1420. this prayer book combines Flemish and English modes of illumination. The image shows St. Jerome, patron saint of libraries and librarians, holding a quill and a pen knife in his hands as he works on a long unfurled scroll.

The images of books within books in these manuscripts serve a wide variety of purposes. Portraits of writers at work identify them as the authorities behind the text. Dedication portraits pay tribute to the patrons who commissioned the works, and often depict the finished book's presentation. Sometimes the images help to convey how a book is to be received: readers may be shown engaging in a discussion over the text, or a solitary reader may be seen inviting the viewer to quietly look over his shoulder, or they may show a reader benefiting from the wisdom gained upon finishing and applying the work's content to improve his daily life.

Konrad von Ammenhausen (ca. 1300), Schachzabelbuch, a translation into German of Jacobus de Cessolis (flourished 1288-1322), De ludo scachorum. Austria (Vienna?), before 1408. The full title of the original Latin work, of which this manuscript presents a translation into German, reads, in translation: "Book of the Customs of Men and Duties of the Nobles and the People as Seen through the Game of Chess." The work uses the game of chess as an allegory of the social hierarchy. It contains tinted drawings of bishops, knights, peasants, money changers, physicians, innkeepers and gamblers, among others. Here two elderly gentlemen may be engaging in a discussion over the volume.

The artistry of the calligraphy and illumination of each manuscript in this exhibition points out how immensely the physical creation of books has changed over the centuries. The painstaking hand work of each volume could not be more different from the mass produced, printed paperbacks of today. But the fact that the book survived through so many technical innovations is comforting in light of the advent of e-books, Kindles, and iPads. In one form or another, the written word lives on.

Treatise on Tournaments, France, between 1452 and 1475. This compendium on the form and organization of knightly contests brings together several works. The work may have been written by the great bibliophile, Jacques d'Armagnac (ca. 1433-1477), the Duke of Nemours, whose great library was confiscated by Louis XI after his execution for treason. The image here depicts a knight presenting the book to his lord. Other illustrations include fictive coats of arms for the 150 Knights of the Round Table, and watercolors featuring suits of armor.

The Harvard University Books in Books show will be on display through June 25, 2010 in the Amy Lowell Room of Houghton Library. It was a joint project of the library and Professor Jeffrey F. Hamburger, the Kuno Francke Professor of German Art & Culture, and the Chair of Harvard's Medieval Studies Committee. As part of the project, the manuscripts were digitized, and are available in an online version of the exhibition. This use of modern technology brings rare books and manuscripts to a far wider audience than they have ever previously enjoyed. It reminds us that even though the book may no longer be the center of our culture, some of the items that seem to be replacing it are ironically making it more accessible.
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Kaplan Boxing Archive: From Contender To Champ

Poster For An Exhibit of Materials From The Hank Kaplan Boxing Archive.

(All Images Courtesy Of Hank Kaplan Boxing Archive At Brooklyn College.)

The rags to riches story behind Brooklyn College's Hank Kaplan Boxing Archive just got a little richer: on April 16, 2010 the collection's chief archivist, Professor Anthony Cucchiara, became the winner of a $315,000 endowment from the National Endowment of the Humanities (NEH) to organize the largest and most extensive boxing collection in the world. "This two-year grant will allow us to process and preserve this invaluable collection that spans two centuries of boxing history," says Prof. Cucchiara.

Finding the funds to organize, catalog, and digitize the 2,600 books, 500,000 photographs and negatives, 1,200 posters, reams of clipping files, scrapbooks, documents, letters, and memorabilia that make up the Kaplan collection was a daunting task. A $50,000 seed grant from Barry Feirstein, Chair of the Brooklyn College Foundation, allowed Prof. Cucchiara and his team, Assistant Archivist Marianne LaBatto and Conservator Slava Polischuk, to begin an inventory of the over 2,000 cartons of material. But the goal was to make the entire collection available to the public, in accordance with the donor's wishes.

A Rare Poster For A Fight That Never Took Place. The Bout Was Rescheduled When Then Cassius Clay, Later Muhammad Ali, Became Ill.

Fortunately, the Brooklyn College academic charged with the task has more than a professional interest in this treasure trove of boxing memorabilia. Anthony Cucchiara works out every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday at Gleason’s Gym in Brooklyn with Hector Rocca, who trained the recently-deceased fighter Arturo "Thunder" Gatti, as well as "Million Dollar Baby" star Hilary Swank. It was the friendship between the pugilist professor and donor Hank Kaplan, an authority on boxing nicknamed "the sweet scientist," "the human encyclopedia," and "the Lord of the Ring," that resulted in the $3 million collection coming to Brooklyn College.

Hank Kaplan's life story sounds like something straight out of the Dead End Kids. Kaplan was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1919, the son of Jewish immigrants from Lithuania. His father died when Hank was only nine, leaving his seamstress mother to raise four children alone. At times the family was so strapped for cash the children were temporarily placed in orphanages. His interest in boxing began when he suffered a bloody nose in a boyhood fistfight at a charity summer camp for hard luck city kids in upstate New York. He fought as an amateur middleweight, and later turned pro, winning his first and only bout. But this was in the early 1940's, and World War II ended his ring career. Kaplan joined the U.S. Coast Guard upon learning that its Director of Physical Training was former heavyweight champ Jack Dempsey.

Hank Kaplan At His Fighting Weight In The 1940's.

During the War, Kaplan was trained in the disinfection of contaminated ships, and after attending the University of Miami on the G.I. Bill, he began a career with the Centers For Disease Control (CDC). But his passion for prizefighting never waned. He retired at age fifty-five, and began a second career with his first love. In the 1950s and 1960s, he was a publicist for the brothers Chris and Angelo Dundee, who molded the careers of Muhammad Ali and other champions, and he occasionally promoted fights on his own. He served as a public relations consultant to top fighters, founded the Wide World of Boxing Digest, and wrote dozens of articles on the sport for such publications as Boxing World, The Ring, the London Times, and Der Stern. He served as a boxing consultant to Sports Illustrated for 24 years, and later worked for ESPN, HBO and Showtime. Over time Kaplan became known as a scholarly, reliable, and eloquent source of information on anything and everything related to the fight game.

Throughout his life Kaplan collected memorabilia related to the sweet science. Much of his collection was given to him by trainers and fighters he befriended. He knew every boxing champion of his day, including Jack Dempsey, Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano, Henry Armstrong, Jake LaMotta, Sugar Ray Robinson and Sugar Ray Leonard. He met an eighteen year old kid named Cassius Clay at the Fifth Street Gym in Miami in 1960. By the time Clay became "The Greatest," Kaplan and Heavyweight Champion of the World Muhammad Ali were fast friends.

Kaplan's Comprehensive Collection Includes Products Endorsed By "The Greatest."

But Kaplan's one-man history of boxing isn't just about the champs. He kept detailed records on virtually every professional boxer and trainer in history, and on judges, referees, and announcers, too. Kaplan kept vast files on what he called "fistic arcana," such as mainstream and unorthodox training methods, boxing in the movies, animals in boxing, bare-knuckle fighting, and Jewish and Italian boxers who adopted Irish names. Despite his association with big-name boxers, Kaplan was devoted to the memory of each and every fighter. His files on now-forgotten fighters like Joe Grim, a palooka whose professional record of 6-91-9 was the worst of all time, were as important to him as the rest: "Even when I was 16 or 17, I said there's got to be some way to remember them," Mr. Kaplan told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel in 1995. "If someone were to ask me why I keep the archives, I guess that's what I'd say: Someone has to be charged with remembering them."

By the beginning of 1990, Kaplan's collection filled two rooms in his Kendall, Florida home, and an entire two-car garage. Then in 1992, Hurricane Andrew ripped the roof from the garage, putting much of the collection at risk. Kaplan was able to save nearly everything he had collected, but he began to think seriously about what would happen to his vast historical archive after his death. David Smith, a supervising librarian at the New York Public Library, learned about the Kaplan archive from the writer David Margolick, who was researching his book, Beyond Glory: Joe Louis vs. Max Schmeling, and a World on the Brink. Then Smith read a 2005 article in The New York Times that mentioned Professor Tony Cucchiara's devotion to boxing. Smith arranged the introductions that led to Hank Kaplan's archive finding a new home at a college in his boyhood home town.

A Portrait Of Hank Kaplan By Artist Bob Carson.

Hank Kaplan became ill in late 2007, and Prof Cucchiara received a call from his daughter, Barbara Kaplan-Haar, who informed him that her father intended to leave the entire collection to Brooklyn College. Mr. Kaplan died two weeks after that call. "I think Hank liked the idea that the collection would be coming to Brooklyn," Professor Cucchiara said. "And it could be that he thought, since I'm both an academician and a boxer, that I would not let him down." "Some people would want to turn up their noses at a boxing collection," he added. "But the story of America is in this archive. Boxing is more than a sport. It's a lens through which to look at American cultural history." The professor and the donor share an undying admiration for the sweet science, "None of this is for my own glory," Kaplan said of his collection. "I have no dreams of great rewards. My love of boxing comes first."

Posted by Nancy Mattoon