NEW YORK: Tough Guy

No matter what else was said about Brooklyn’s flat-nosed, puffy-lipped “Bum-my” Davis, no man could deny that he would fight anything on two feet.

Bummy, born Abraham Davidoff in the brick jungles of Brooklyn’s Brownsville, made his first impact on the world as a boy knish-peddler. In a short time he had all but eliminated competition, not through business acumen but by belting the brains out of other little knish peddlers.

Though he had two tough brothers, “Big Gangy” and “Little Gangy,” Bummy took care of his own problems. When his opponents were too big he clouted them with a fearsome weapon—one of his mother’s stockings with coal stuffed in the toe. For entertainment he dropped flower pots off fire escapes on passersby, and dodged the truant officer.

Up to the Bar. When he was 13 Bummy got a better job, as bartender in a speakeasy. A little later he became a prize fighter at Ridgewood Grove, a dingy club behind the Myrtle Avenue car barns. As in his earlier endeavors, he was an instant success. He would battle a buzz saw. Also, he was one of the dirtiest fighters the ring ever produced, and thousands came to see what he would try next.

Bummy moved to Madison Square Garden, fought Lou Ambers, Tony Can-zoneri, Henry Armstrong and the top welterweights of the late ’30s, made $60,000 in four years. As befitted his new social position, he began wearing banana-yellow sports shirts and stylish checkered slacks. But he still trained at Charlie Beecher’s smoke-filled poolroom in East New York.

Big Night at Charlie’s. Beechers’ gave an open house for him when he got famous. Hot pastrami was served, a trombone, guitar and saxophone trio played When I Grow Too Old to Dream, and in the back room Bummy obligingly ruined a couple of sparring partners for the entertainment of close friends.

As they might have guessed that night, success hadn’t changed Bummy any: he still got into trouble. A few months later he was arrested for beating up a Brooklyn clothing salesman. At Madison Square Garden, in 1940, he fouled Fritzie Zivic, no Galahad himself, with ten groin punches in one round, wound up by kicking the referee, all but started a riot.

After that he joined the Army. He went AWOL, had to be jerked back to the ranks by MPs, was soon discharged. This year he retired from the ring, busied himself in affairs—the saloon and racehorse business. At 3 o’clock one morning last week he was sitting in a Canarsie bar & grill named Dudy’s Tavern when four holdup men walked in, yanked out pistols, ordered the bartender to hand over his cash.

Last Fight. Enraged at this disturbance, Bummy roared, “Leave the guy alone!” When the gunmen showed no signs of following his advice he seized the nearest by a coat lapel, shoved him into position, then knocked him clear out of the joint with a murderous left. Unnerved, the other holdup men backed out, shooting at point-blank range. Bummy dived after them, swinging wildly and roaring horrible epithets. Bullets hit him in the spine, the lungs, the right arm. He kept swinging his left. He was outside, running for his automobile to give further chase, before he finally fell dead.

* A Yiddish leaden baked delicacy composed of a rich mixture, encased in dough. After the disappearance of Mobster “Bo” Weinberg, a Dutch Schultz henchman, Brooklyn wits cracked: “They didn’t put Bo in concrete—just put a knish in him and dropped him in the East River.”