From Poverty Bay to Broadway The Story of Tom Heeney. By Lydia Monin
From Poverty Bay to Broadway The Story of Tom Heeney. By Lydia Monin
Paperback / softback, very good condition, minor shelf/edge wear 272 pages Published by Hodder Moa, 2008 ISBN: 1869711254
On 26 July 1928 Tom Heeney entered the ring at New York's Yankee Stadium, in front of 46,000 spectators, wearing a Maori cloak. Guaranteed $100,000, he was about to fight world heavyweight champion Gene Tunney. In his hometown of Gisborne crowds cheered him on in what was described as 'the most ambitious radio station hook-up in history.' This was the golden, mafia-controlled, era of American boxing. From Poverty Bay to Broadway takes us into this world: the world of Tom Heeney. This beautifully written and extensively researched book follows the life of one of New Zealand's most colourful sports personalities from a labourer's cottage in Gisborne to the nightclubs of Broadway to fishing in Florida with Ernest Hemingway. It reveals both the infamous (he killed a man with one punch, left another for dead on the canvas and ran with gunmen, gangsters and racketeers) and the famous (he was New Zealand's first global sporting hero who became a member of the 'smart set' as the Jazz Age roared through Manhattan) Tom Heeney. The book includes photographs, illustrations and memorabilia from Tom Heeney's career, some never before published.