Good condition.

Behind the Floyd Patterson-

Tom McNeeley Fight:

THE ARTFUL

MANEUVERS

OF THE

MILLIONAIRE

MANAGER

Peter Fuller is a governor's son, Harvard '46,

owns a Cadillac agency, 80 race horses and a

heavyweight who could get his head blown off

after only 24 pro fights

By TIM HORGAN

THE DARK green 1961 Cadillac convertible with Massa-

|chusetts plates "555" whooshed down Boston's Storrow

Drive, along the banks of the Charles River. It nosed into

the congestion at North Station, turned and glided past

staring onlookers to a parking space in front of a tall, thin,

shoddy building on Friend Street, Boston's boxing strip.

A tanned, brown-haired man with the flattened nose of

a fighter jumped from the Cadillac and trotted easily up

the three dirty flights of stairs to the New Garden gymna-

sium. He waved cheerily to the gym loungers, pushed open

a dressing room door and confronted a muscular heavy-

weight in green jumper and trunks.

"We'll go three rounds today, Tom," the arrival said in

greeting. "Okay?"

"Okay by me," agreed Tom McNeeley, the 23-year-old,

undefeated ex-football player from Arlington, Massa-

chusetts, who fights Floyd Patterson for the heavyweight

championship of the world this month.

"But remember," the man added. "No right hands."

"I promise."

"The last time you promised you hit me that right up-

percut and almost tore my head off."

McNeeley laughed. "It was an accident," he said, "I for-

got." He swung through the door and into the big, shabby

Photos by Calvin Campbell

OCTORER 1041

----------- 2 -----------

gym. "I'm too old for accidents," the man said to a by-

stander. "I'm 37 years old. I shouldn't be sparring with

Tom. Oh, I don't mind boxing. I love that. It's just that he

needs to work on his right hand and it doesn't do him any

good to spar with me."

Stripped, he had a young man's body, 5 feet, 102

inches, 195 pounds; wide, wide shoulders; tapering waist;

hard, muscular legs. He pulled on trunks, T-shirt, jumper,

and began bandaging his hands deftly.

He took a set of gloves off a hook on the wall and

barged out of the room. McNeeley was already in the ring,

shuffling around to keep his sweat. A short, pugnacious

man, Jackie Martin, laced on the sparmate's gloves. When

the bell rang, the man rushed out and fired hard, sweep-

ing left hooks at McNeeley's panting stomach. McNeeley is

fast for a heavyweight and has a long, accurate left jab.

He kept his sparmate at bay, but the man never relented.

Johr

ohn Buckley Sr., once manager of former world heavy-

weight champion Jack Sharkey, proprietor of the gym

and a man 50 years in boxing, moved closer to the action.

"Why?" Buckley asked a bystander. "Why does the guy

do it? If I had one part of his money and background I'd

get as far away from boxing as I could. This guy could

pal around with all the money and society in the world.

So who does he meet around the fights? Bums, hoodlums,

tough guys, riff-raff!"

Buckley watched in disgust as McNeeley gently raked

the sparmate's face with a jab.

"What does he need that for?" Buckley snorted. "What

does he need boxing for?"

The sparmate that afternoon in the Boston gym was

Tom McNeeley's manager, Peter Fuller, a most unlikely, a

most colorful, a most dynamic and a most controversial

character.

Not long ago a visitor at the deserted New Garden gym

found Fuller and McNeeley thrashing around on the ring

floor. The manager was showing his protégé a few of the

holds that had made Fuller the only man ever to captain

both the Harvard and Dartmounth College wrestling

teams.

Peter Davenport Fuller is Harvard '46 (Hasty Pudding-

Institute of 1776; Owl Club; Class Athlete). He is also the

younger son of the late governor of the Commonwealth of

Massachusetts (1924-28), Alvan T. Fuller, who was in-

volved in the Sacco-Vanzetti case. In 1927, Governor

aller refused to stay the execution of the two men found

guilty of murder and was scorched by liberals and radicals

all over the world. He also owned the Cadillac-Oldsmobile

Automobile Company of Boston, the oldest Cadillac dis-

tributorship in the United States, a business so prosperous

that he left an estate of over $7.5 million when he died in

1958.

His son Peter inherited all stock in the company, and

has served as president and general manager since 1952.

He is also treasurer of the Fuller Foundation, a personal

charity that has bequeathed more than $20 million over

the years. He is a member of Boston's exclusive Algonquin

Club and the even more exclusíve Brookline Country

Club. He is the master of Runnymede, his 200-acre show-

case farm in North Hampion, New Hampshire; and owner

of the Peter Fuller Stable, which includes a breeding farm

in New Hampshire and over 80 thoroughbred race horses.

26

----------- 3 -----------

SAGA

FOR

MEN

THE

MAGAZz INE

OCTOBER/1961

Vol. 23, No. 1

C ONTENTS

NEWSMAKERS

EXPOSED! SECRET FORGERY PLANT.

"WE CAN BUILD A CRASH-PROOF CAR!" Representative Kenneth A. Roberts 16

. Annette Eberly 13

as told to Arlene and Howard Eisenberg

MEN IN WAR

Farley Mowat 22

THE TUG THAT FOUGHT A WAR.

Simon Poore 38

GEN. MCGARR'S JUNGLE TIGERS OF VIETNAM.

John Stephen Doherty 46

THE FIRST DOGFIGHT..

Jim Beach 52

EIGHT STARS FOR THE NINTH..

SPORT

THE ARTFUL MANEUVERS OF THE MILLIONAIRE MANAGER. .Tim Horgan 24

MEN IN ACTION

Ben Falke 41

WORLD'S NUTTIEST REPORTER.

MUSCLES IN HIS CORPUSCLES.

John Wesley Noble 58

JAZZ

ELEGY FOR BIG BILL.

Studs Terkel 36

CRIME AND CAPERS

THE TANGO MURDER CASE.

Alan Hynd 32

PHOTO FEATURES

DANISH DISH ON THE ROCKS.

.Photos by Burr Jerger

50

SAGA'S PHOTO CONTEST.

THE SAGA BOOK SPECIAL

CRAZY GRINGO DYNAMITER.

W. Douglas Lansford 6

AND ALSO

INSIDE SAGA

LETTERS

MY BIG ADVENTURE.

SAGA BOOKSHELF

SAGA'S RECORDS.

INTELLIGENCE & RECONNAISSANCE..

Cover Painting by Ed Valigursky

----------- 4 -----------

A secret ring of expert counterfeiters and forgers,

operating from East Germany, has given a new Red

twist to the old principle of war-"Divide and Conquer"

EXPOS ED!

SECRET FORGERY PLANT

BERLIN, GERMANY-This summer the U.S. Cen-

tral Intelligence Agency listed 32 cases where so-

called "leaked" documents have caused crucial

strains in countries vital to the Cold War.

We have known these documents are forgeries,

using signatures of our top officials, but we did not

know how or where they were done.

A few months ago, I was sent to Berlin by the

editors of SAGA Magazine on a tip that the answer

to the incredible forgeries is here. Now I can ex-

pose these forgeries for what they are-a new

weapon being used against us by the Reds. I know

where they are manufactured and who makes them.

That the forgeries are a menace to us no one

can deny.

In 1957, for instance, a letter appeared in a

Berlin newspaper from Nelson Rockefeller (now

By ANNETTE EBERLY

Illustrated by Gilbert Cohen

OCTOBER, 1961

----------- 5 -----------

"WE CAN BUILD

A CRASH-PROOF CAR!"

By Representative Kenneth A. Roberts

Chairman, House Subcommittee

on Health & Safety

as told to Arlene and Howard Eisenberg

"A miracle of chemistry, an engineering marvel and one device

in use now on aircraft can make our cars immune to accident,"

says the Congressman. And it could have happened years ago!

FOR YEARS, people have been saying, "It's horrible, this slaughter

on our highways, but there doesn't seem to be anything we can

do about it."

Well, there is something we can do about it. And I don't mean

return to the horse and buggy! The cars Detroit turns out are

mechanical marvels. Our whole way of life is built around them.

But if you and I can persuade Detroit in the months ahead to make

use of inventions already proven, already available, but almost

totally ignored, then the cars Detroit turns out next year and the

year after will be even more remarkable. For these cars will be just

as handsome, just as convenient-and they will be almost immune

17

----------- 6 -----------

How do you save a torpedoed ship

in stormy, sub-infested waters?

Here's how the stubby Franklin did it

WHILE the tugboat Franklin searched fu-

tilely for a freighter named Empire Celt, the

March gales of 1942 had been working up to-

ward their annual fury. The worst time of

the year for shipping in the North Atlantic

had come again; but that spring the assaults

of gales and seas were becoming secondary to

the murderous activities of men.

Germany's Admiral Doenitz had convinced

Hitler that the place to cut the arteries of the

Western Allies lay at their beginnings, in

the coastal waters off the American conti-

nent. And so in the early spring the U-boats

sailed westward-not in ones and twos but

in massive packs, until there were as many as

20 of them operating in Canadian coastal

waters at one time.

Convoy after convoy, inbound or outbound,

In St. John's and Halifax,

was attacked.

merchant seamen who had survived the un-

heralded explosions and the perishing waters

of the winter sea appeared in pathetic little

groups at seamen's homes and in the hospi-

tals. They were few in numbers, but they

represented many ships.

The Franklin's people saw them and heard

their tales, and the fear which no seaman

can escape grew in their hearts. They knew

a single (Continued

that

оп рaде 76)

ILLUSTRATED BY VICTOR MAYS

Ercerpt fron The Grey Seas Under, by Farley Mowat. Little, Brown

& Co.-Atlantie, Boston. Copyright e 1958 by Farley Mowat.

----------- 7 -----------

Danish

Dish

on the

Rocks

Poor Lilli Kardell, a Danish doll

who is new in our country, decid.

ed to carry out an old swimming

tradition of Scandanavia. Find-

ing a cave near Point Dune, Cali-

fornia, similar to those at home,

she innocently did what the Danes

think nothing of doing-disrobed

to soak

the

sun and sea spray.

To see what happened next, when

Saga photographer, Burr Jerger

came along, please turn the page.

up

----------- 8 -----------

Millie's lust for life started trouble from the time she

was 14

She was a set-up for the man who would finish it

HE SCREWBALL killer peered out of his cell window at the gal-

lows waiting for him. “This," he sang out in a voice throbbing

with religious fervor, "is the happiest hour of my life!"

"Just listen to the damned nut," said Ben Hecht, of the Chicago

Daily News, keeping the death watch at the county jail at Wheaton,

Illinois, that humid dawn of July 31, 1914.

"Yeah," chimed in Webb Miller of the Chicago American. "I won-

der what the supply of willing dames'll be where he's bound for?"

"Too bad, Webb," another reporter cut in, "that the warden

wouldn't let you close that deal for him to donate his body to science."

Illustrated by Norman Baer

----------- 9 -----------

Big Bill Broonzy sang at his own funeral. Even death could

not stop him. His voice was shouting out on tape as his long

body lay in the big chapel of Chicago's Metropolitan Funeral

Parlor on August 17, 1958. All the mourners gathered there

-friends and sudden-appearing strangers-knew a giant was

refusing to go gentle into that good night. He was raging.

As Big Bill had been larger than life, so he now loomed

larger than death. William Lee Conley Broonzy, the most

powerful blues singer of our time. Born: 1893, 1894, 1895, 1896,

or 1897. Take your choice. There appears to be no known

record of his birth. Died: August 15, 1958.

And how many in this country took note?

I remember a crazy, cockeyed fragment of conversation I

had several months before Big Bill's death with John Neville,

the distinguished British Old Vic actor. In answer to a ques-

tion Neville said, "Why, everyone knows Big Bill. Who

doesn't?"

I said, "Ninety-nine out of every hundred of his countrymen

have never heard of him." And Mr. Neville expressed amaze-

ment.

I guess it was a bitter thought. The irony of this prophet

with so little honor in his own land. (Continued on page 82)

----------- 10 -----------

AIN BEAT down on the exposed rocks in the stream-

bed as a 20-man army patrol toiled up a precipitous

hillside somewhere in central Vietnam. On both sides of

the trail, the vegetation flared from low scrub to towering

jungle trees.

patrol was alert, despite the men's exhaustion from fight-

ing their way through ankle-deep mud and climbing in the

90-degree heat.

his M-1 at port arms, the lead man's muzzle pointing to

the right, the second man's to the left, and so on in se-

quence to the end of the column, where three local police-

men brought up the rear.

through the column had grenade launchers on their rifles,

with white phosphorus smoke grenades ready to fire.

The patrol, under the command of a young lieutenant

who had just graduated from the special Ranger Training

School at the coastal town of Nhatrang, was part of a re-

taliatory operation directed against a Viet Cong (Com-

munist) force of 200 men, which had ambushed a South

Vietnamese army company in the area two days before,

killing 13 soldiers and wounding 30.

had stepped up their raids after last April's nationwide

It was perfect ambush country and the

Each of the lean little soldiers carried

Five infantrymen spaced

The Communists

----------- 11 -----------

"Crazy" Matti Jämsä will

do anything for a story. He has

fought a bear and charmed a

cobra, been buried alive, set a

diving record and even won

a beauty contest. Next feat:

He'll crash a plane!

HE HAD been buried alive for 21 hours. Four yards of

earth separated him from the sky, and a stout timber lay

between him and the man in the next coffin. Suddenly his

unseen companion began to cry hysterically. He

of seeing rats and pleaded to be dug out.

Remembering the doctor's warning-that if a person suffered

a severe shock while underground, his mind could be damaged

permanently unless he were freed within one or two minutes

"Matti Jämsä writhed silently for the agonizing half hour it

took to dig out the other man. Then, as the earth rattled back

creamed

41

----------- 13 -----------

STOOD on the sidewalk in front of a small apartment

house in a quiet corner of Paris. On the way there I

had passed the Ecole Militaire, France's War College,

whose buildings date back to the time of Napoleon. If

the "little corporal" were to hear a military lecture in

that school today, I thought, he would be stunned by the

changes in warfare and above all, by aerial combat.

Today's super-bombers, radar, ICBMS, atomic weapons

and the super-sonic speeds of the jet age make death in

ETOBER, 1961

----------- 13 -----------

12

the air an impersonal and sophisticated event. Yet the

man who started it all, Joseph Frantz, is alive today at

age. 71. Just 45 years ago this month, in aerial combat

above the city of Rheims, France, he shot down an enemy

plane for the first time in history and in doing so, opened

a new age.

I walked into the house, found the apartment of

Joseph Frantz and knocked on the door, wondering what

I would hear from the first warrior of the air.

47

----------- 14 -----------

"I was completely fascinated by flying, even as a boy,"

Joseph Frantz said, after we had introduced ourselves

and settled down in his modest, comfortable apartment.

"Aviation was in my blood. At that time, France had

contributed some of the great names to early flying." He

nodded reminiscently, as

and canvas crates

seeing again the wood, wire

the pre-World War I era. "One of

if

the really great ones was Gabriel Voisin, whose early

plane was named after him. I learned to be

1908-we had no licenses in those days, of course-and

spent several years flying in air shows at different cities."

t was not difficult to imagine the shows: festive crowds

gathered on flat grassland outside the city; women in

full-skirted, tight-bodiced dresses, carrying parasols and

wearing high-button shoes; men with high celluloid col-

lars, wearing derbies and the tight pants that are back

in vogue today; picnics on the grass; and overhead, the

daring aviators-as many as a half dozen in the air at

once-sputtering in lazy turns and sweeping dives; girls

screaming in genuine fright.

pilot in

These scenes,

carnival days of flying. Yet on October 5, 1914, Sergeant

Frantz and his mechanic, Corporal Quenault, were re-

turning

Aviatik on a reconnaissance flight over the French sector.

After maneuvering the German back to French territory,

Frantz fought the Aviatik from 6500 feet down to 600

feet. Quenault fired 47 rounds from the Hotchkiss ma-

chine gun before it jammed. And then, as the mechanic

feverishly tried to clear the gun, the Aviatik flipped over,

burst into flame and crashed into

sands of French soldiers, who had watched every second

of the first aerial fight, raised a cheer that echoed over

the war-shattered hills. When the news reached army

headquarters, high brass raced to the scene in vintage

automobiles and decorated the two men on the spot.

Of that historic moment-the world's first dogfight-

Frantz says, "I reacted in several ways. In the first place,

I was not surprised that aerial combat would work. I

had flown long enough to know that national borders

become meaningless when man can fly. I had hoped this

would mean the end of wars, not the beginning of a new

recalled by Joseph Frantz, painted the

from

bombing mission when they met a German

a

a small wood. Thou-

kind.

"Our first reaction when we landed, still shivering from

the cold October air we had been flying in, was shock.

We went over to the wreckage of the Aviatik and I

became really upset-the victims looked so helpless and

naked lying there in the woods.

"Many things had happened to bring me to that mo-

ment, events which ran back for several years. . .'

Barnstorming days ended abruptly when Frantz's class

was called up for military service. In France boys are

grouped together and registered by age. Each group is

called a "class" and enters the army as a group to fulfilL

its compulsory military service. As chief pilot for the

Savary Company, Joseph Frantz had set several records

-among them a world record for sustained flight (four

hours, 27 minutes) with two passengers, on November 17.

1911. His flying feats got him assigned to the fledgling

French Air Service, where he was breveted as a military

pilot in 1912 and assigned to the 151st Infantry Regiment

This was a time of innovation and invention in the AiT

48

----------- 16 -----------

Jumping off at mid-morning on November

26, 1944, King Company, 47th Infantry, 9th

Infantry Division, spearheaded a battalion at-

tack against the tactically important town of

Frenzenburg, Germany.

King Company's initial objective was Fren-

zenburg Castle, a medieval stronghold manned

by 70 German paratroopers who directed rifle,

burp gun, grenade and mortar fire down on

the advancing Americans from protected posi-

----------- 16 -----------

tions atop the castle's towering battlements.

At 1300 hours the Gls were stopped cold and

so badly mauled that only 35 of the 150 men

who had started out only 1000 yards back

were still on their feet fighting.

Frenzenburg Castle was solidly constructed

of stone and surrounded by a moat. its singie

entrance was over a drawbridge that spanned

the moat and through a gate barricaded with

a huge oaken door. The only rifle company

----------- 17 -----------

weapon powerful enough to blast open the door was a

bazooka.

PFC. Carl V. Sheridan, an 18-year-old replacement fresh

from basic training, took it upon himself to charge the

castle-alone.

Sheridan grabbed his bazooka and all the ammunition

he could carry.

He sprinted across an open area and

propped his weapon on a waist-high wall that bordered

the moat. Kneeling there, an easy target from the battle-

ments above him, and without an assistant gunner to

help, he loaded and fired two rounds that partly shat-

tered, but did not destroy the door.

Then Sheridan decided it had to be done by point-

blank fire. Exposing himself completely, he ran forward

to a place where he could aim squarely at the gate. As his

third and last shot exploded, he turned to the riflemen

covering him and shouted: "Come on! Let's get 'em."

Carl Sheridan tossed his bazooka aside, drew a pistol,

and firing from the hip, started forward. He was killed

by machine-gun fire seconds later. He was awarded,

posthumously, the Medal of Honor. In the opinion of a

war correspondent who reported many combat feats

performed by men of the 9th-in North Africa, Sicily,

France, Belgium and Germany-hundreds of other men

in the Division deserved the nation's highest tribute.

The 9th inherited a tradition of valor from its units that

fought-but not together-in World War I. The 39th and

47th Infantry Regiments were brigade partners in the

old (square) 4th Division. The 60th Infantry Regiment,

had been a part of the 5th Infantry Division in the old

AEF.

Between the fall of the Kaiser and the rise of Hitler the

----------- 18 -----------

MUSCLES CORPUSCIES

He swims from Alacatraz to San Francisco and does 1500

Dushups in half an hour-but most of Jack LaLanne's fame

from teaching ladies to wiggle off fat on television

соmes

SHORT, chesty little man, Jack LaLanne has taught just about every

kind of physical culture there is, even to getting women to screw up

their faces in the hope of relaxation, better skin and things like that. The

gals pay him money for leading them in these monkeyshines, and his class

has become so popular that he is now on nationwide television and will ap-

pear soon in a movie called Ladies' Man.

LaLanne is no stranger to the public eye. One night on the Groucho Marx

TV show, Groucho turned to him, saying, "So you're Jack LaLanne! What's

A

your racket, Jack?"

"Health," replied LaLanne confidently. “I sell health and vitality."

Groucho's leer at the studio audience seemed to say: "It takes all kinds-"

He asked LaLanne's age, but they never did settle that because LaLanne,

who is in his early 40s, deftly shifted the conversation to his birthday, Sep-

tember 26, and how he always observes it with feats of endurance. One year,

for instance, he stroked a paddleboard across 30 miles of open ocean from

the Farallon Islands to San Francisco. Another time, he told Groucho, he

swam handcuffed from Alcatraz to San Francisco.

Swam from “the Rock" handcuffed? Eyebrows archly awoggle, Groucho

asked: "What crime were you in for?" The audience whooped. LaLanne

grinned. He wasn't escaping, he explained amiably, but only proving it could

be done. “Just to show your health and vitality?" Groucho demanded with

mock scorn. “I'll bet the warden likes you!"

Afterward, friends asked Jack why he had exposed himself to the Marx

needle for so little reward. (He won $300 in the quiz game.) As they pointed

out, he owns a profitable muscle-building gym in Oakland, California, and

Photos by John R. Hamilton

ER, 1961

----------- 19 -----------

Grazy Gringo

Dупатiter

The Mexican rebels thought Oscar

Creighton's bravery under fire was

loco. But he had a past to forget

By W. DOUGLAS LANSFORD

Illustrated by Thomas Beecham

----------- 20 -----------

eu o and an idealist and the

HE camp lay on the sandy plain,

just outside the little town of

Zaragoza, 14 miles east of Juarez.

The men had chosen the site because

the Rio Grande was easily forded just

because the open ground

protect them from surprise attack. It

and Francisco

dunes

and sand

hem

Madero had

Madero er. Garibaldi, on it.

chief of staff,

They all sat around that morning

of November 10, 1910-84 of them-

eating cold tortillas, cold frijoles and

drinking hot, strong black coffee the

miners and vaqueros had made on

smokeless fires of desert brush. Most

of them were plainsmen and moun-

tainmen, happy and confident, despite

the odds they faced. There were a

few city fellows who were intellec-

tuals. Don Francisco Indalecio Ma-

dero, provisional Presidente-self-ap-

pointed-of the Republic of Mexico,

sat with his short, thin body slightly

over his plate. He was a

first of the revolucionarios, and he

was eating American canned beans

with salt crackers and water; at 37 the

tough game of Mexican politics had

already ruined his stomach, and a

small twitch frequently jerked his

chin toward his left shoulder,

Opposite him sat his brother, Raoul,

a young man of the same slender,

aristocratic type, but not so tempera-

mental. He was less the dreamer,

perhaps, and more the soldier, and

his cultured voice seldom reached

the shrill peak of excitement of Fran-

cisco's. Beside Raoul sat Giuseppe

Garibaldi, handsome, blond, polished

and very European. Where the Ma-

dero brothers had been educated in

Mexico City and Paris, the Italian

was a product of the world.

spoke English and a little Spanish

with an Oxford accent. War was

nothing new to him, the grandson of

the "Great Liberator" of Italy. He

was 31, yet he was in his fifth war.

He had given only one reason to

Madero when he had come to volun-

teer: "Senor, we Garibaldis do not

believe in tyranny." That seemed rea-

son enough.

A soft zephy blew warmly across

the desert. Young Eduardo Hay, a

civil engineer, graduate of Notre

Dame, born in Mexico of a Scotch

father and a native mother, turned

his smiling face to Giuseppe Gari-

baldi. "What would you give for a

bottle of champagne right now?"

The Italian smiled too. "With ice

--or without?"

Не

60