Rocky Graziano: Fists, Fame, and Fortune

Prolific boxing writer Sussman (Max Baer and Barnie Ross: Jewish Heroes of Boxing) relates in overwrought prose the rags-to-riches saga of a delinquent who slugged his way from the slums of Manhattan into America’s heart. Thomas Rocco “Rocky” Barbella was born in 1919 to a mentally ill mother and abusive, alcoholic father. He had to fight for everything: by the time he was three, his six-year-old brother was regularly thrashing him in sparring sessions ordered by their father, a failed boxer. Violent and hyperactive, Rocky took to gang life and street crime, a course that landed him in reform school and then prison. He joined the military but went AWOL after punching a captain (to elude the MPs, he took the name Graziano and fought four boxing matches until he was discovered). Fortunately for Rocky, boxing’s popularity turned his powerful right hand into a valuable commodity. A brutal trilogy of fights with Tony Zale made him a sports-page fixture; an unexpected talent for performing made him a sitcom star and pitchman for everything from Post Raisin Bran to Off-Track Betting. He wrote a bestselling memoir in 1955 called Somebody Up There Likes Me; Paul Newman played the boxer in the movie version. Graziano’s story scarcely requires exaggeration, yet Sussman inflates the account into melodrama, with cookie-cutter morality and a redemptive arc. That said, his more thoughtful sketches of the long-forgotten men who faced Graziano provide a moving reminder that a career in boxing is not a fairy tale for most. (Mar.)