Gene Schoor
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Eugene R. Schoor (July 26, 1914 – December 13, 2000) was a New York-based author, journalist, ghost-writer,"Rocky Loses Court Fight," ''The Miami News'', April 24, 1963, p. 3C. college boxing instructor (New York University, the University of Minnesota, and City College of New York), Florida state amateur boxing title holder,"Schoor Boxes Olsen to Draw in Amateur Feature," ''Miami News'', April 27, 1935, Sports section p. 4. Navy Public Information Officer,"Gene Schoor," by Marty Appel, ''Sports Collectors Digest'', January 2001, available at http://www.appelpr.com/ARTICLES/A-schoor.htm (accessed May 2011). public relations man, sports agent, boxing promoter, and restaurateur."The Pride Of Kid Galahad, Inc." by Jack Olsen, ''Sports Illustrated'', August 31, 1964. He is best known as the author of "juvenile" sports biographies.


Career


Early life (amateur boxer, PR man, radio producer)

Schoor attended the
University of Miami The University of Miami (UM, UMiami, Miami, U of M, and The U) is a private research university in Coral Gables, Florida. , the university enrolled 19,096 students in 12 colleges and schools across nearly 350 academic majors and programs, incl ...
in
Coral Gables, Florida Coral Gables, officially City of Coral Gables, is a city in Miami-Dade County, Florida. The city is located southwest of Downtown Miami. As of the 2020 U.S. census, it had a population of 49,248. Coral Gables is known globally as home to the ...
. He began boxing no later than April 1933, when he won a bout as a welterweight. While in college, he won the Florida state lightweight amateur boxing title (under the name "Eugene Schoor"). He also fought as a middleweight. After serving in the Navy in World War Two, Schoor began a PR business in New York. His clients included
Jayne Mansfield Jayne Mansfield (born Vera Jayne Palmer; April 19, 1933 – June 29, 1967) was an American actress, singer, nightclub entertainer, and ''Playboy'' Playmate. A sex symbol of the 1950s and early 1960s while under contract at 20th Century Fox, Man ...
,
Cindy Adams Cynthia "Cindy" Adams (née Heller) is an American gossip columnist and writer. She is the widow of comedian/humorist Joey Adams. Early life and education Adams was an only child raised by her mother after her parents divorced. Marriage to J ...
and
Bess Myerson Bess Myerson (July 16, 1924 – December 14, 2014) was an American politician, model and television actress who in 1945 became the first Miss America who was also Jewish. Her achievement, in the aftermath of the Holocaust, was seen as an af ...
. He expanded into radio, producing "Champ of the Week," "Sports Club of the Air," and "Hour of Champions," and using radio to promote client-athletes including
Joe DiMaggio Joseph Paul DiMaggio (November 25, 1914 – March 8, 1999), nicknamed "Joltin' Joe", "The Yankee Clipper" and "Joe D.", was an American baseball center fielder who played his entire 13-year career in Major League Baseball for the New York Yank ...
,
Jack Dempsey William Harrison "Jack" Dempsey (June 24, 1895 – May 31, 1983), nicknamed Kid Blackie and The Manassa Mauler, was an American professional boxer who competed from 1914 to 1927, and reigned as the world heavyweight champion from 1919 to 1926. ...
,
Tommy Henrich Thomas David Henrich (February 20, 1913 – December 1, 2009), nicknamed "The Clutch" and "Old Reliable", was an American professional baseball player of German descent. He played his entire Major League Baseball career as a right fielder and ...
and
Phil Rizzuto Philip Francis Rizzuto (September 25, 1917 – August 13, 2007), nicknamed "The Scooter", was an American Major League Baseball shortstop. He spent his entire 13-year baseball career with the New York Yankees (1941–1956), and was elected to th ...
.


Writer

A prolific author of more than fifty books during five decades, Gene Schoor specialized in "juvenile" sports biographies but also wrote a variety of other work, including a successful pre-assassination biography of John F. Kennedy. A representative list of Schoor's "juvenile" non-fiction, once found on the shelves of elementary school libraries across the United States, would include ''The Story of Ty Cobb: Baseball's Greatest Player'' (1952), ''The Ted Williams Story'', ''Christy Mathewson: Baseball's Greatest Pitcher'', ''Roy Campanella: Man of Courage'', ''The Story of Yogi Berra'', ''Mickey Mantle of the Yankees'', ''Willie Mays: Modest Champion'', ''Bob Feller: Hall of Fame Strikeout Star'', and ''The Stan Musial Story''. Gene Schoor also wrote the best-seller ''Young John Kennedy'' (June 1963), a book for adults which drew on extensive interviews with Kennedy intimates and letters from Kennedy to his family. (Schoor may have come to the attention of the Kennedys after sending
Robert F. Kennedy Robert Francis Kennedy (November 20, 1925June 6, 1968), also known by his initials RFK and by the nickname Bobby, was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 64th United States Attorney General from January 1961 to September 1964, ...
a number of his sports biographies; Kennedy thanked Schoor in a letter of March 1961, commenting on "our mutual interest" in sports.) After describing his childhood enthusiasm for Schoor's work—typical of his generation of school children—best-selling sports author and sports-PR executive
Marty Appel Martin E. Appel (born August 7, 1948), is an American public relations and sports management executive, television executive producer, and author. Appel's career has included sports public relations (including as Public Relations Director for t ...
wrote, "Give
choor The tsuur (Mongolian), choor (Kyrgyz) or chuur (Tuvan) is an end-blown flute of varying lengths that is common among Inner Asian pastoralists. It is similar to the sybyzgy (Kazakh) and kurai (Bashkir). In western Mongolia Mongolia; Mongo ...
the player’s year by year stats, throw in some good newspaper clips with some quotes about how the scout discovered him, create some locker room conversation between the star and his manager, sprinkle in some self-doubt after that .222 average in the first month of the rookie season, and bang, you had a 190-page book at $4.95 with a handful of some of the team’s best free publicity photos tucked in." Journalist Jeff Kallman adds: "If you are my age, and you became a baseball fan early enough in childhood, you probably know the name Gene Schoor. He wrote a library's worth of sports biographies for children in the 1950s and early 1960s.... Schoor's technique ... involved mulcting as many newspaper and/or magazine articles as he could find about his subject, using the creamier quotes, making sure they included tales of how his subject was scouted, a quote or three in which our hero had his doubts, and as much rah-rah in the triumph as could be tolerated short of a need for Tums.... e books were hits and they did give a lot of kids an entree into reading by way of their game." According to Appel, one-time sports biographer Milton Shapiro wrote Appel and claimed to have been a ghost-writer for Schoor: "Shapiro says he was actually the writer of the biographies of Leo Durocher, Joe DiMaggio and Pee Wee Reese. And when he asked Schoor for more money and a co-author credit on he biography of
Bob Feller Robert William Andrew Feller (November 3, 1918 – December 15, 2010), nicknamed "the Heater from Van Meter", "Bullet Bob", and "Rapid Robert", was an American baseball pitcher who played 18 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Clevel ...
, he was turned down and 'quit.'"


Restaurant owner and boxing promoter

In 1959, Schoor and three others (former boxers Bill Nicholson, Sy Krieg, and Phil Krupin, whom Schoor met in Paris after they all served in World War Two) financed the New York City Second Avenue restaurant Johnny Johnston's Steakhouse. Later, while interviewing President Kennedy, Schoor lamented the lack of opportunity given to American youth; Schoor claimed that the President replied, "We vegot millions of opportunities for kids. But they vegot to be shown, they vegot to be guided, they vegot to be helped. If you get the kids when they're young, why, hell, the kid walking down the street could be ... the next heavyweight champion of the world." Inspired, Schoor's restaurant group formed Kid Galahad Boxers to invest in and nurture the careers of young, unknown boxers. To attract talent, in January 1962 they bought an ad in the ''New York Times'' which began: "$10,000 A YEAR WHILE YOU LEARN. A newly formed syndicate of sportsmen and businessmen is anxious to sponsor the next heavyweight champion. This group of sportsmen will underwrite all expenses of the chosen candidates and will pay a salary of $10,000 a year for the full training period. If you are between 19 and 25 years of age—if you weigh upwards of 186 pounds—if you are at least 6 feet tall—then you qualify for an interview." Intrigued by the ad, the ''Times'' phoned Schoor. "I started to ad-lib right there," Schoor recalled; at the time (as ''Sports Illustrated'' later put it), his group "had little more than an idea, a restaurant and a shoeshine." Greatly exaggerating, Schoor told the ''Times'' he had "a syndicate and we've got $100,000." The ''Times'' ran a long Sunday article about the subject, and " e phones never stopped ringing for a week.... There were letters, phone calls, wires from all over the country, from Australia, Germany, every place. We were struggling to run a new restaurant, and we didn't know where the hell we'd get any kind of money. My partners said, 'Hey, what ... are we gonna do about all this?'" Without money, they did nothing. Three months later, however, "a wealthy New York construction man" offered to sponsor construction jobs at $158 a week (more than $1250 in 2017 dollars), which Schoor's group advertised as financial assistance to any suitable prospect "while he learns to be the next world champion." Six men were hired for such jobs, while more than forty others were trained and promoted in professional bouts. The group's first major prospect (but at least fiftieth client) was James J. Beattie; at 6 feet 8 3/4 inches and 240 pounds, he was said at the time to be "the biggest boxer to ever enter the ring." Beattie won his professional debut with a knockout only 24 seconds into the first round, and went on to win 41 fights. (He also appeared (billed as "Jim Beattie") in the Hollywood film
The Great White Hope ''The Great White Hope'' is a 1967 play written by Howard Sackler, later adapted in 1970 for a film of the same name. The play was first produced by Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. and debuted on Broadway at the Alvin Theatre in October 1968, ...
as the eponymous boxer.)


Litigation

In 1960, Schoor sued former heavyweight boxing champion
Rocky Marciano Rocco Francis Marchegiano (September 1, 1923 – August 31, 1969; ), better known as Rocky Marciano (, ), was an American professional boxer who competed from 1947 to 1955, and held the world heavyweight title from 1952 to 1956. He is the only ...
, claiming that Marciano had punched him during a dispute over Schoor's work as Marciano's ghost-writer. "I passed out," Schoor alleged in his court complaint; "Bells have been ringing in my head ever since and I had a fuzzy feeling for weeks." Although Marciano denied the claim, in April 1963 a New York court awarded Schoor $5000 damages (more than $30,000 in 2011 dollars). In 1975 Schoor was engaged in a dispute over the sale of letters from a young John Kennedy to his parents, which Schoor had used extensively in his work. In 1994, Schoor sued Kennedy biographer Nigel Hamilton and publisher
Random House Random House is an American book publisher and the largest general-interest paperback publisher in the world. The company has several independently managed subsidiaries around the world. It is part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by Germ ...
for $20 million, claiming that material in the defendants' best-selling book ''JFK: Reckless Youth'' had been appropriated, without payment or proper acknowledgment, from Schoor's research files (including extensive interview notes). Schoor was represented by "heavyweight lawyer" (the ''New York Times phrase)
Barry Slotnick Barry I. Slotnick (born 1939) is a New York City-based defense attorney. Slotnick is well-known for defending infamous Mafia crime boss, John Gotti and New York City subway shooter, Bernhard Goetz. Along with his son Stuart, he negotiated for ...
."Book Notes" (column), by Sarah Lyall, ''New York Times'', May 12, 1994, Arts section. ''The ubuqueTelegraph-Herald'', May 4, 1994, p. 6C.


Death

According to Appel, "The last two years of his life were spent at a home for the aged in Manhattan. His wife had died, he had no other family ote: Appel adds a postscript suggesting Schoor had an illegitimate son and the nursing home costs depleted all of his remaining money. Kind people at the home tried to sell his remaining author copies of his own books to get him some spending cash, but he was suffering from mild dementia and lacked memory recall." Schoor died on December 13, 2000.


Partial list of books (written, co-written, or edited)

* ''The Giant Book of Sports'', Garden City Publishing, 1948. * ''Picture Story of Franklin Delano Roosevelt'', Fell, 1950. * The Thrilling Story of Joe DiMaggio, Fell, 1950. * General Douglas MacArthur: A Pictorial Biography, Rudolph Field, 1951. * Sugar Ray Robinson, Greenburg, 1951. * The Jim Thorpe Story: America's Greatest Athlete, Messner, 1951. * Red Grange: Football's Greatest Halfback, Messner, 1952. * The Story of Ty Cobb: Baseball's Greatest Player, Messner, 1952. * Casey Stengel: Baseball's Greatest Manager, Messner, 1953. * Christy Mathewson: Baseball's Greatest Pitcher, Messner, 1953. * The Ted Williams Story, Messner, 1954. * The Stan Musial Story, Messner, 1955. * The Leo Durocher Story, Messner, 1955 ossibly ghost-written by Milton Shapiro * Joe DiMaggio: The Yankee Clipper, Messner, 1956 ossibly ghost-written by Milton Shapiro * The Pee Wee Reese Story, Messner, 1956 ossibly ghost-written by Milton Shapiro * The Jack Dempsey Story, Nicholas Kaye, 1956. * Jackie Robinson: Baseball Hero, Putnam, 1958. * Bob Turley: Fireball Pitcher, Putnam, 1959. * Mickey Mantle of the Yankees, Putnam, 1959. * Roy Campanella: Man of Courage, Putnam, 1959. * Lew Burdette of the Braves, Putnam, 1960. * Willy Mays: Modest Champion, Putnam, 1960. * The Red Schoendienst Story, Putnam, 1961. * Bob Feller: Hall of Fame Strikeout Star, Doubleday, 1962 ossibly ghost-written or co-written by Milton Shapiro * A Treasury of Notre Dame Football, Funk, 1962. * Young John Kennedy, Harcourt, 1963. * The Army-Navy Game: A Treasury of Football Classics, Dodd, 1967. * Courage Makes the Champion, Van Nostrand, 1967. * Young Robert Kennedy, McGraw, 1969. * Football's Greatest Coach: Vince Lombardi, Doubleday, 1974. * Track and Field for Young Champions, McGraw, 1974. * Lüchow's German Festival Cookbook, Doubleday, 1976 (with wife, Fran Schoor) ene Schoor did PR for Lüchow's, a restaurant * The Story of Yogi Berra, Doubleday, 1976. * Marilyn and Joe DiMaggio (by Robin Moore and Gene Schoor), Manor Books, 1977. *
Bart Starr Bryan Bartlett Starr (January 9, 1934 – May 26, 2019) was an American professional football quarterback and head coach for the Green Bay Packers of the National Football League (NFL). He played college football at the University of Alab ...
: A Biography, Doubleday, 1977. * Babe Didrikson, the World's Greatest Woman Athlete, Doubleday, 1978. * Joe DiMaggio: A Biography, Doubleday, 1980. * Billy Martin: The Story of Baseball's Unpredictable Genius, Doubleday, 1980. * The Scooter: The Phil Rizzuto Story, Scribner, 1982. * Dave Winfield: The 23 Million Dollar Man, Stein & Day, 1982. * The Complete Dodgers Record Book, Facts on File, 1984. * A Pictorial History of the Dodgers: Brooklyn to Los Angeles, Scribner, 1984. * Complete Yankees Record Book, Facts on File, 1985. * Complete Red Sox Record Book, Facts on File, 1985. * Yogi: A Fascinating Biography of One of Baseball's Most Illustrious Hall-of-Famers, Morrow, 1985. * Seaver: A Biography, Contemporary Books, 1986. * One Hundred Years of Notre Dame Football, Morrow, 1987. * 100 Years of Army-Navy Football, Henry Holt, 1989. * The History of the World Series: The Complete Chronology of America's Greatest Sports Tradition, W. Morrow, 1990. * 100 Years of Alabama Football: A Century of Champions, Alabama Football, 1892–1992, Longstreet Press, 1991. * 100 Years of Texas Longhorn Football, Taylor Pub. Co., 1993. * The Fightin' Texas Aggies: 100 Years of A & M Football, Taylor Pub. Co., 1994. * The Illustrated History of Mickey Mantle, Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1996.


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Schoor, Gene Writers from Passaic, New Jersey University of Miami alumni Writers from New York City 1914 births 2000 deaths United States Navy sailors United States Navy personnel of World War II 20th-century American non-fiction writers Sportswriters from New York (state)