Hey everybody, welcome to Retell Seller, an ephemera podcast where I uncover forgotten stories and the ephemera people leave behind. I’m Angie, a reseller of 10 years, and I’ll share one of those snippets with you. Let’s see what today’s find has to say.
This one is a little different because I don’t have a tangible item, no newspaper clipping, no article about today’s topic. But last week, I talked about Fred Noonan, Amelia Earhart’s navigator, who was with her when their plane went down.
Before I’d even completed the episode, I was looking at the scanned documents on Purdue’s e-Archive website, and they have Amelia Earhart papers under the George Palmer Putnam Collection.
They have everything from handwritten personal notes and letters to various telegrams, scrapbooks, and photographs. And I love how it’s available for all of us to look through. As I scrolled through, I see a couple of photos of Amelia with a large man, and the pics are titled “Amelia Earhart and Primo Carnera.”
I was so excited when I saw these. If you caught my first episode, my very first episode on ephemera, called “A Short Snippet About a Tall Guy,” I briefly mentioned a boxer by the name of Primo Carnera. Even then, it wasn’t even a story about him, but instead it was about a, quote-unquote, “nobody” wanting to try his hand at boxing.
So I was amazed when I saw this. I took it as confirmation I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing, and I know that probably sounds cheesy but whatever. I mean, I had never heard of Primo Carnera before my first episode, and here I am doing another story months later, and there’s a picture of him with Amelia, the topic of my most recent episode.
I had tried adding this bit about Primo into the Amelia and Fred podcast, but it was way too disjointed and I wasn’t doing a good job of incorporating it, so a new episode it is.
As for the photos, the first is of the two of them, Amelia and Primo, on the deck of a ship in 1932.
Primo is standing quite close to Amelia, to her right, with his legs about shoulder-width apart, hands at his side. He’s looking spiffy, wearing light-colored pants with a single buttoned top sweater over a collared shirt and tie.
He’s wearing two-tone oxfords, a cap, and a big smile. While not much, his stance does look like he may be trying to shrink himself down ever so slightly since Amelia looks so small next to him.
Amelia’s wearing a dark sailor’s outfit, standing straight-legged, feet close together in white shoes with her hands behind her back. I think she looks a bit shy, maybe uncomfortable.
And the second photo is of the two of them facing each other with arms outstretched holding each other’s hands. It looks like they could be dancing, although with Primo being a boxer, maybe he’s trying to show her a boxing stance, and she’s just not looking too sure of herself.
She’s wearing a white hat with a small grin on her face looking down, and the difference in size between them really shows in this one. Amelia, who was said to have been about five foot eight inches tall, weighing only about one hundred and eighteen pounds, while Primo stood around six foot six inches at about two hundred and seventy pounds
The last photo is of a place card announcing a dinner, and it says, “Dinner tendered on board the flagship Île de France in honor of Mrs. Amelia Earhart Putnam by Mr. Primo Carnera and Mr. Walter Friedman. Guests, Mr. George Palmer Putnam, Miss Anne Kane, Mr. Curtis Melnitz, Mr. A. Spitzer, Mr. Elmer E. Stockton. Sunday, June 19th, 1932.”
I found an article dated a day before on January 18th, 1932, titled “Amelia Earhart to Referee.” In part, it says, “Amelia Earhart tried her hand at something new today by acting as informal referee in a boxing exhibition in which Primo Carnera, the Italian heavyweight, was the big attraction.”
Another article talking mainly about Amelia and what she was up to at the time, dated October 1933, had a short bit about Primo saying, “Primo Carnera tossing a medicine ball on shipboard to America’s premier lady bird.”
And this is another one where I definitely don’t know anything about boxing, but I find it all interesting, what I kept seeing throughout reading about Primo, on the one hand, I saw him as he may have been a naive, kind man with a very large presence physically and figuratively, while on the other, he was most likely surrounded by a system that didn’t truly have his best interest in mind.
So starting out, Primo was born October 26, 1906 in Sequals, Italy. Forgive my pronunciations as well. Uh, he grew up extremely poor, and when his father left for World War I, he and his brothers had to beg. When he was twelve, he already had the look of an adult and was actually arrested because they thought he was a deserter, and his family had to convince them he was just a kid in men’s clothing.
He ended up emigrating to France to live with his uncle, who got him a job in boxing, and at one of the matches, the circus stopped by. They see this big guy offer him a job, which he took, becoming a wrestler for them. And this is probably the time when he becomes known as a quote unquote “freak.”
One day, the circus stops in a town where former heavyweight champion Paul Journe was, and he sees Primo, offers to train him in boxing, which he accepted. And then once they start training, Paul shows Primo off to a guy named Leon Say who organized some matches, one where Primo knocked out a heavyweight boxer only to apologize to him for hurting him, and his manager was not happy about that.
Early on, Owney Madden, a known mobster, is who bought Carnera’s contract. This would, as you can imagine, lead people to believe he was just a mob-controlled, heavily promoted fighter, and as he started fighting more, some would also see him as a huge, clumsy, no-real-talent boxer.
Primo had been fighting overseas for some time, and his first fight in America at Madison Square Garden, January 24, 1930, was against Big Boy Peterson, in which Carnera won in the first round because Big Boy Petersen punched himself in the jaw, knocking himself out or at least down.
They had a second match two years later where Carnera won again, and this time he went two rounds out of ten.
An article was written in nineteen thirty-two about the second fight saying the story goes, in part, when Big Boy was in his dressing room during the first match, two men came in with guns and told him he was going down in the first round, and if he didn’t, no one would ever see him again.
One week later, Carnera had a fight with Elzear Rioux where he fell down six times within forty-seven seconds. In a paper dated February 1st, 1930, it talks of how the Illinois Boxing Board wasn’t convinced as he went down way too easily.
And as a result, they held Carnera’s $18,000 dollars, then Wikipedia says Carnera was cleared and Rioux was fined $1,000 and his license revoked.
He fought a man named George Trafton, who may have been saddened by the fact that he was knocked down by Carnera in the first round, being suspended as a result for basically not holding his own. But he at least had success in football after that.
George Godfrey, a heavyweight boxer from Alabama, fought Carnera where George was disqualified for an intentional low blow in the fifth when he was definitely winning. Godfrey ended up losing his boxing license and half of his money while Carnera was cleared.
So my positive thinking about Carnera isn’t looking too good, is it?
70,000 people witnessed Larry Gaines beat Primo in London. Carnera had 60 pounds and four inches on him.
Primo lost to Jack Sharkey in 1931, and the next time they fought in 1933, Primo beat Sharkey, taking the championship title away from him.
In 1933, Carnera fought Ernie Schaaf by knockout in round 13. Ernie left the ring unconscious and died four days later.
An autopsy was done and they found he had meningitis, swelling of the brain, and was still recovering from a serious case of influenza.
Primo fought Max Baer in 1934, and Max was known to be an aggressive fighter And after he knocked Primo down 11 times before the fight was stopped, he would take the heavyweight title from Primo.
And Max Baer had also fought Ernie Schaaf and was ruthless with his attacks, including to his head. And Ernie had complained about consistent headaches after his bout with Max, and this was five months prior to Primo fighting him.
Primo went up against Joe Louis in June of 1935. An article at the time stated, quote, “A prize fight is unpredictable, but what I mean is that Joe Louis will knock that big old Primo CarnerA right into the middle of Labor Day.” And that he did in six rounds.
As a boxer, Primo was given many opportunities to be in movies, Fictional versions of him were written into comics. He’s been mentioned in various books and even music. He was married with two daughters, retiring from wrestling in 1962, and he died in 1967 from liver disease and complications from diabetes.
Many questioned if Carnera’s success was genuine or if it was built by promoters and the influence of organized crime. This is how an article early on in 1930, wrote about Primo: “Primo Carnera, the Italian giant, has earned (or been paid) approximately $60,000 for four fights against men of little or no comparative ability.”
Meanwhile, real fighters find it difficult to make money. Al Brown, a Panamanian fighter who holds the world’s bantam weight championship, defended his title against Johnny Erickson in a New York arena, for the sum of $800. Carnera gets that for a gym workout. Brown is a really great fighter but, the public is more concerned with freaks than it is with fistic class.”
In the 1930s, Primo and Amelia were in many of the same papers on the same days, same pages with their own individual stories. Primo was always preparing for a fight and Amelia always for a flight
Thank you for joining me as I shared a snippet of the past. I’d love to know if it connected with you in some way. Did it spark a memory or make you see something differently? If so, consider sharing it. Be sure to check out the show notes for additional info, links, and ways to connect. It’s not nostalgia, it’s human.
Until next time, may you find something worth holding onto
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pinny please
