The item in Walter Winchell’s column one day last June sounded genuinely solicitous. “Sugar Ray Robinson and gambler-shylocks are at war,” it read. “Buddies rushed out of Harlem bars and saved him from planned mayhem. This man may be slain, Mr. Police Commissioner . . .” But for at least one Winchell reader the solicitude was less than welcome. Last week onetime World Welterweight and Middleweight Champion Robinson, now a slow-motion 44, sued Columnist Winchell and his employers, Hearst Consolidated Publications, for $1,000.000.
Sugar Ray claimed the large round sum on the ground that Winchell’s pufflicity implied “intimate dealings with gamblers, that plaintiff had been engaged in gambling orgies and that he was heavily indebted to various gamblers, shady characters and persons of ill repute.” The item, he said, had caused him “great pain and mental anguish,” and had held him up “to contempt and reproach.”
The suit revived rumors that Robin son has been aching to square off with Winchell ever since the columnist declined to take him to the Stork Club, a favorite Winchell haunt, some years ago on the ground that Negroes weren’t welcome there. But Sugar Ray insisted he was not nursing an old grudge; he was only defending his honor. As for Columnist Winchell, he kept unprofessionally mute. And the Hearst organization struck a public posture of unconcern. “If Robinson’s going to tangle with our lawyers,” said National Editor Frank Conniff, “then he’s got more money than we think he has.”
More Must-Reads from TIME
- Inside Elon Musk’s War on Washington
- Why Do More Young Adults Have Cancer?
- Colman Domingo Leads With Radical Love
- 11 New Books to Read in February
- How to Get Better at Doing Things Alone
- Cecily Strong on Goober the Clown
- Column: The Rise of America’s Broligarchy
- Introducing the 2025 Closers
Contact us at letters@time.com