🔥 RARE Antique Original Boxing Jewish Boxer Signed Photograph KING LEVINSKY 30s For Sale

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🔥 RARE Antique Original Boxing Jewish Boxer Signed Photograph KING LEVINSKY 30s:
$975.00

Levinsky was a rated heavyweight whose biggest wins came against ex-heavyweight championJack Sharkeyon a 10-round decision, and ex-light heavyweight championTommy Loughran, also on a decision. He was defeated twice byPrimo Carnera, and also lost toMax Baer.Although he never fought for the title, Levinsky faced all of the top fighters of his era.

Levinsky is best remembered for \"freezing\" in his fight withJoe Louis, who knocked him out in the first round.On February 18, 1931, Levinsky also fought a 4-round exhibition withJack Dempsey. Dempsey had embarked on a tour of exhibition bouts and was contemplating a comeback. The Levinsky fight convinced him that he was through as a fighter.

On November 19, 1935 Levinsky lost to professional wrestlerRay Steelein a boxer versus wrestler match in St. Louis, Missouri.

A May 1932Time Magazinearticle stated: \"If you defined the efficiency of a prize-fighter by his ability in the ring, Harry Krakow (\'Kingfish Levinsky\') would not rate better than tenth among U. S. heavyweights. Last year he had 15 fights, won only eight. If you defined efficiency as a fighter\'s ability to earn money at his trade, Kingfish Levinsky might rank as best fighter in the U. S. In the last 15 months, gates at his fights with Slattery, Griffiths, Carnera, Paulino and an exhibition bout against Jack Dempsey have amounted to $254,124.68. He may this year earn more than Schmeling, Sharkey, Dempsey, Carnera or Schaaf. Kingfish Levinsky\'s earning power is due partly to an engaging slapstick manner in the ring, an engaging entourage.... It is due partly to the fact that most of Levinsky\'s fights have been in Chicago, where everyone knows that he grew up on the West Side and entered the fish-peddling business with a pushcart on Maxwell Street.\"

For a portion of his career, Levinsky was managed by his sister Lena (Kraków) Levy.Known as \"Leapin Lena\", she was a colorful character who swore like a sailor, and rooted loudly for her brother during his bouts.Esquiremagazine, in its February 1939 issue, included an article profiling his new career as a professional wrestler.

Levinsky served in the US Army during World War II. In his later years he worked as a tie salesman in Miami Beach, Florida. He was married tofan dancerRoxana Sandfor just over a month in 1934. In 1935, Levinsky became a professional wrestler as Kingfish Levinsky working in the States and Canada until retiring in 1946.

A Look Back: King Levinsky

In an effort to link the past with the present, The Jewish Boxing Blog will present monthly a short biography of notable former Jewish boxers.

King Levinsky, sometimes referred to as Kingfish Levinsky, fought some of the best heavyweights of the 1930s. He usually didn\'t win, but he fought them. Well, sometimes he fought them; other times he just happened to be in the ring with them at the same time.

King Levinsky was born Harris Krakow on September 10, 1910 in New York, New York. The family moved to Chicago when he was very young. His father was a fishmonger in the Maxwell Street ghetto and King helped out in his father\'s shop. Levinsky had two brothers and four sisters, including Lena Levy, his manager. King dropped out of school in the fourth grade before learning to read.

Though he participated in street fights while growing up, Levinsky\'s choice to become a prizefighter was a bit curious. Hurting others wasn\'t in his personality. And he tended to exhibit clownish antics. His career began inauspiciously enough as his first fight was a decision loss to a previously winless boxer in 1928.

Things picked up to a degree and Levinsky faced future heavyweight champion Primo Carnera in 1931. Levinsky lost a ten-round decision. He lost two grueling fights- a ten round and then a twenty round decision- to Max Baer in 1932. But Kingfish defeated the great Jack Dempsey on February 18, 1932, in front of 20,000 fans. The bout was scheduled to be a four-round exhibition as part of Dempsey\'s comeback. On the advice on his sister Lena, Levinsky fought his heart out-unusual for an exhibition- and earned a decision victory. Dempsey never fought again.

The King was known for a wild right hand that was his trademark. It was a punch he telegraphed and yet it still managed to find the target on occasion. The 5\'11\" brawler used his left hand in the ring about as much as a Delhi native uses it to eat. But while the Delhiite has a good reason for not using his left- it is used for bathroom hygiene- only Levinsky knows why he didn\'t use his.

At the end of 1932, Levinsky lost to Carnera once again. But he handily beat former world champion Jack Sharkey on September 18, 1933. On December 28, 1934, Levinsky was scheduled to engage Baer is four round exhibition. His sister Lena devised the same strategy that had beaten Dempsey and had subsequently gotten her brother fights against notable opponents. Levinsky came out aggressive in the first round, even utilizing an effective jab. Baer was so furious he knocked the King senseless in the second stanza.

Levinsky was often criticized for flailing about and otherwise acting like a buffoon in the ring. Besides that dubious reputation, he is perhaps best known for his fight against Joe Louis on August 7, 1938. Levinsky was his usual brash self during the introductions, but put up little resistance once the bell rang. Some have accused him of fainting out of fright while facing Louis. In reality, he was severely overmatched. He succumbed to Louis\'s onslaught, going down, down again, and again, and finally for the fourth time before the referee stepped in and stopped the contest. Levinsky made it 2:21 seconds into the fight before the TKO came.

Levinsky finished fighting in 1939. After four straight losses and seven out of his last eight, the commission would not renew his license. Kingfish was famously a schlemiel and a terrible gambler. He was subsequently inducted into the army during World War II. The man who had grown up with Barney Ross and had been on friendly terms with Al Capone became a tie salesman in Miami Beach in his later years with his third wife. He died on September 30, 1991.

He wasChicago’s Fighting Hebrew,from the Kraków family of fishmongers
on Maxwell Street, who clubbed and dazed the great Dempsey, who rammed
his head in the chest of the giant Carnera, who swung so hard he spun around,
who wore his shoes on the wrong feet in the ring, who heard the Yiddish curses
of his sister the manager leaping in the first row, who smiled for the newsreel
cameras with fewer and fewer teeth, who married a stripper, who coiled his
right hand in a fighter’s pose on the cover ofThe Ringmagazine, who filled
stadiums with the clamor of refugees and worshippers from synagogues.

Please don’t let him hit me again,pleaded the King to the referee, squatting on
the bottom rope in the stadium where the White Sox threw the World Series,
the lights above the ring spinning two minutes into the first round, after
the hands of Joe Louis burned the grid in the brain of the King, who stumbled
face first to the canvas, the fighter dissolving into a fishmonger. The reporters
called him a coward, a deserter fleeing from the trenches to the firing squad.
Thirty years later, Union County College declared April 4thKing Levinsky Day,
and a Loser’s Fund of twenty dollars for a student with holes in his pockets.

When he quit the ring, the King sold ties, navy blue with a sprinkle of white
flowers, the nameKing Levinskyand a boxing ring emblazoned on the label.
He worked the tables at lunchtime in Chicago. Do you remember when I fought
Joe Louis?the patter began.Neither do I.The King would brandish shears
to snip off a customer’s tie, then pick out a new one from his suitcase.
Matches real good,he would say. He worked the crowds at the fights,
and the mobsters who always bet on the winner paid fifty bucks a tie.
When his sister died, he cried in a phone booth:I ain’t the King no more.

I worked in the stockroom at Sears with a middleweight who could have been
the bastard son of King Levinsky. Herbie Wilens, calledThe Hebrew Hitter,
would hit me, sparring bare-knuckled to mesmerize the boys in the stockroom,
the janitor glancing up from his mail order bride magazine. I was a boy who
drank cough syrup from the bottle, too slow to duck the right hand that
lit a match in my ear again and again, the heat spreading across my face.
Don’t kill him,said the janitor. Herbie stopped hitting me and hit boxes instead,
the boom of his hands crushing the cardboard where a bicycle or lawnmower
waited for Christmas. I was a poet, so I would write a three-word poem
under every dent left by the hands ofTheHebrew Hitter: Herbie Was Here.

Herbie would roar at the odes I inscribed to praise him on dented
cardboard boxes. We split twelve packs of Budweiser in his basement,
though I grimaced at the foam surging in my belly. We inhaled bong hits
on his couch, though the bubbling smoke of the bong seared my throat.
I imagined my uvula, that little punching bag, bright red, the skin peeled
away, as I wailed with Jimi Hendrix singingAll Along the Watchtower.
I told Herbie about the girl I kissed, how she hid me in her bedroom closet
till her Old Testament father shuffled to sleep, how I wrote her a poem
where she swam in a waterfall, how she dropped me and kept the poem.
Herbie told me about his father the brawler, swinging and skinning his knees
on the sidewalk. He told me about sparring the Mexican middleweight who
scorched his ribs, ranked number ten in the world.Leo hits so hard,he’d say.
The Hebrew Hittertrained on Budweiser and bong hits with me all night.

Later,The Ringwould call himinept Herbie Wilensof Gaithersburg, Maryland.
A Puerto Rican fighter from Jersey City, who would become the champion
of the world, later a security guard grateful to Jesus, strafed Herbie with hooks
and uppercuts till he stayed on his stool, chest heaving. At the Budweiser
Washington Championship Boxing Games, signed by the matchmaker to lose,
walking to the ring in his robe with the Star of David, he remembered the right
that would spank my face till I glowed red as the light blinking on a ring post,
and Sugar Ray Leonard’s older brother,Roger the Dodger, sprawled across
the mat. The crowd cheered the loser when he lost the split decision.

The days of sparring in the stockroom gone, the other stockboys buried
in the dumpster of my imagination, I dug for Herbie and found the body:
dead at fifty-five, cancer, the obituary listing the funeral home to visit years
after visiting hours were over, and his nickname nowhere on the record.
The Hebrew Hittercould have been the bastard son of King Levinsky,
even if he never sold me a tie in navy blue sprinkled with white flowers.
There was beer and weed on the couch, Hendrix in my blasted ear, the poem
of waterfalls where I drowned at sixteen. I carved the wordsHerbie Was Here
on every cardboard box dented by his hands, and he would roar like a fighter
on the cover ofThe Ringmagazine, middleweight champion of the stockroom.

Open today, Regards to Edith draws on Maxwell Street history and culture

Author Ira Berkow, who wrote “Maxwell Street: Survival in a Bazaar” in 1977, referred to the historic Chicago market as “the Ellis Island of the Midwest.” Aiming to celebrate that immigrant tradition, Heisler Hospitality opens Regards to Edith tonight.

But what’s with the name?

The inspiration for the West Loop restaurant came on the type of an evening familiar to many night owls: hours in front of a computer, watching one random video after another, before finding internet gold.

That’s what happened to Matt Eisler, co-owner of Heisler Hospitality. Eisler stumbled into an online rabbit hole one day, happening upon the story of a man from Maxwell Street named King Levinsky. Born Harris Krakow, Levinsky worked at his family’s Maxwell Street fish market by day but was a heavyweight boxer by night. During the 1930s, Levinksy earned a large following because he was an entertaining and gregarious fighter, said Eisler, who became fascinated by the boxer’s “colorful little world.”

As Eisler searched for Levinsky memorabilia, he found an authentic autographed photo on , with a note that read, “Regards to Edith, King Levinsky.” For months, the photograph sat on his desk. As Eisler thought more about who Edith was, he realized that it was the perfect name for the restaurant.

“The restaurant is really not about one person, it’s about the opposite, the aggregate of a community and everything that Edith represents,” Eisler said.

“What better name to represent something, not in specific terms, but allowed us to craft this warm identity without having to pigeonhole (us) with one specific person or culture or specific type of food.”

The menu, created by executive chef Jared Wentworth, is informed by old menus, personal experiences and contemporary techniques. The first section of the menu is titled “brown bag,” which Wentworth describes as “playful takes on classic Maxwell Street food,” such as the pork chop sandwich, pizza puff and cheese fries.

Seasonal items are contemporary takes on food people ate during Levinsky’s time, when they went home or to restaurants for dinner. The restaurant’s supper platters, meant to be shared between two to four people, are also influenced by the meals that the diverse residents of Maxwell Street would dine on: chicken Vesuvio, gyro-spiced rack of lamb, and a one-pot seafood stew of Maine lobster, head-on shrimp and littleneck clams floated in saffron lobster broth.

“To me, if everyone’s grandparents were a little better of a cook, that’s what these would look like,” Wentworth said.

He’s excited about the matzo ball soup, “which is neither a floater or a sinker,” said Wentworth, referencing the dumpling’s buoyancy. He hopes that these traditional dishes can be elevated with careful methodology and technique — like rendering foie gras schmaltz and garnishing with Burgundy truffle, in the case of the matzo ball soup.

The opening of Regards to Edith comes on the heels of a Heisler property opening (neighboring Prairie School, for which Wentworth also curates the menu) and closing (Trench in Wicker Park). Regarding Trench’s closing eight months after a hyped revamp, Wentworth is only looking forward.

“I can’t wait to get (Regards to Edith) open and be cooking for people, and not hear construction noises,” he joked.

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