If You Met Max Baer (1934) 🇺🇸

September 21, 2024

Would you rather I talked to you like I am — just in my shorts, Katherine, or should I go over to my dressing room and put on some clothes?”

by Katherine Albert

It was a terrific problem for the pugilistic Max Baer. You could tell by the very bewildered way his forehead wrinkled that it was by way of being a big decision. Not being able to cope with it all by himself, he left it up to me. We had, incidentally, met just a second before.

Mind you, the question of modesty did not occur to Max. It was simply — and one can see his mind working as one may watch the inside of a clock (the only difference being that a clock is more complicated) — it was simply this: did he look more ravishing in the purple fighting trunks and loose flowing bathrobe or would he knock me cold quicker if he were all done up in his smart street clothes? Max couldn’t decide. He likes himself both ways.

I decided in favor of the street clothes. It was not a question of modesty with me, either. I’d seen him in shorts — that’s all. I thought a little variety would be fun.

It took him quite a while to change. After all, he had to be impressive, but in due time I found him seated opposite me in one of the offices in the publicity department at the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios. Max (remember that he had called me Katherine instantly and I didn’t want to be outdone in informality) filled the chair and slopped over the sides. His personality filled the room.

“Tell me about yourself,” I began.

That approach — with the average movie actor — usually brings, “Oh, there’s nothing to tell about me,” or, “Well, what, specifically, would you like to know about me?” It is, as a matter of fact, an old and not very good approach any more. But looking at Max Baer I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“Tell me about yourself,” I had said. Max thought that was a fine idea. So he began to tell.

“My wife’s eleven years older than me, see? We’ve been married two years and separated four times and divorced once. She’s got money. But she’s jealous of my success.

“Of course, when we walk down the street together I’m always followed by a bunch of kids who beg for my autograph. It’s good business to sign for the kids. Besides, I liked kids. But she always stands by in a bored way while I’m writing my name. Just jealous, see? That’s why we got a divorce.

“There hasn’t been a colorful fighter since Dempsey. I’ve got color. I’m young — just twenty-four — I grew up on a California ranch. I’m colorful. Why, whenever I walk into a newspaper office and the reporters interview me, they always get a story. That’s swell for a champ.”

I murmured that I could get his point of view. And then I asked him how he liked working in pictures.

“Sure, they’re okay. No, I wasn’t a bit scared. What’s there to be scared of a camera for? I was more scared of Myrna Loy. I’d seen her in all these parts where she knifes a guy in the back or shoots him in the head or something. When I heard she was working in my picture, ‘The Prizefighter and the Lady,’ I was scared. I thought she might kill me. Then I met her and I said to myself, ‘What’s wrong with you — a great big fellow like you scared of a little girl like her?’ And I wasn’t scared any more. See, it was just all those parts she plays. Now everything is swell.

“They want me to stay in pictures. They say I’m swell in my part. But I think I’d be foolish to sign up in pictures, don’t you? See, there are lots of movie stars — but there’s just one champ.”

I asked, rather timidly, “You’re sure you’re going to win the title from Carnera [Primo Carnera] next June, aren’t you?”

“Sure I’m sure. I can win from Carnera. You see, we’re having a fight in this picture. They wanted me to knock Carnera out in the picture, but he wouldn’t take a knock-out. He said it was bad for a champ to do that. So I said, ‘If Carnera won’t take a knock-out, I won’t take a knock-out.’ They had to re-write the story. Now it’s a draw.”

He got up out of the chair and stretched himself.

“Well, Katherine, did I give you a story?” he asked as he ran his hand over his dark curls.

“You certainly did, Mr. — er — Max,” I answered.

“Hope you see the fight in June,” he said pleasantly. “Then you can tell people you met the champ.”

In a second he was gone. And I sank back in my chair to ponder over Max Baer.

Should I say he was conceited? Should I make the lead of my story, “Max Baer is the most conceited man who ever set foot in Hollywood”? No, it wouldn’t be fair, for it really isn’t conceit that permeates his personality. You couldn’t possibly say that a little child with a bow of pink ribbon on her hair who preens before the mirror is conceited, could you? That’s the way it is with Max. Nothing is sophisticated, nothing so civilized as conceit could ever be a part of him. It is just guileless, childish ego. Max Baer thinks he’s good. He sees no reason for hiding his light under a bushel. And out on the M-G-M lot he has them gasping.

When he first came out he announced that he was engaged to June Knight. Somebody reminded that he had — at that time — a perfectly good wife.

“Sure I know,” Max said, “but we’re separated.” It was difficult to explain that, really, one couldn’t be engaged to one woman unless one were actually divorced from one’s wife. Max couldn’t see it. Now he and Dorothy Dunbar are divorced. But in the meantime Max has seen so many pretty girls in Hollywood that he has sort of forgotten about June. He has, for instance, seen Garbo. And what’s more, he’s seen her at work on the set — something that not even M-G-M’s chief executives have seen.

Garbo, as you know, has her set guarded as if she were wearing the Hope diamonds. No outside eyes are ever permitted to look upon her while she works. In very intimate scenes not even the electricians and property boys are allowed to watch her. Black flats are placed around her — just out of camera range.

So you can imagine how everyone felt when Max suddenly announced “That Greta Garbo is certainly a pretty girl. And it sure is interesting to watch her act.”

“Watch her act?” everyone shouted. “How do you know?”

“I just been watching her all morning,” Max answered.

They wouldn’t believe him until he had told them exactly what scenes had been taken and what costumes she had worn. They checked up with the assistant director and found it was all true.

This is how it happened: Max had thought it might be amusing to watch Garbo work. He didn’t know one had to have a drag with the heavenly fathers to be allowed on her set. So he just went up to the door of the stage and asked to go in. The guard on the door explained that there was no admittance. And then Max looked at the guard and the guard looked at him and suddenly they began shaking hands and thumping each other on the back. Seems the guard had once been Max’s sparring partner, so he said Max might go in and look at the set but the minute Garbo and the rest of the company arrived he must leave.

Max promised, but he had no more than gotten inside when Garbo appeared. He hid behind a flat and stayed there all morning peeping out at intervals to see The Garbo emote. And what was the poor guard to do? Go in and haul the future champ off the set? Well, it didn’t seem feasible — so Max, his second day in Hollywood, saw what few people who have been in the studio eight years have ever seen.

Max fought his first fight when he was nineteen. It was an impromptu battle at a school dance. He knocked his opponent out and the next day bought a sandbag and boxing togs. With these came his decision to become a fighter. In Oakland, California, he trained at the famous old Jimmy Duffy Gymnasium and while there was picked up by a manager. In his first professional fight — with an Indian, incidentally — he knocked the fellow to the floor four times in the first round and knocked him out in the second. Altogether he has fought forty-seven ring battles. Thirty-five were won by knockouts, seven he won by decisions and five he lost.

Jack Dempsey is Max’s closet friend. Dempsey tells him what to do — as much as anyone can tell him what to do.

In the ring Max has one idiosyncrasy. If he sees a pretty girl at ringside he can no more help showing off before her than his friend, Garbo, can help running from people. So he prances around and looks over his shoulder to make sure she’s watching his every move. In doing that he leaves himself wide open to his opponent’s fists. But instead of being a bad thing, it’s a very good thing. When he is actually hurt he begins to get mad and when he’s mad he forgets the girl and starts in to fight.

On the set, during the first scene, he and Carnera played like a couple of kittenish lions. Max is a great one for a joke and thinks it’s a scream to put tacks in the director’s chair and things like that.

They told him — just before the divorce — that he was talking too freely about his wife, that it was wrong for him to say she was jealous of his career and older than he, etc., etc.

Max was surprised.

“I shouldn’t talk like that?” he repeated.

“No. you shouldn’t,” his adviser said. “Okay,” said Max. “My mistake. I’ll never do it again.”