Unhung and Unemployed

Leo Leavitt is the kind of promoter who gives U.S. promoters a bad name. Stocky, brash and 53, Leo blew into Australia proclaiming: "I am the world's greatest promoter." Representing Western Promotions of San Francisco, he promptly made headlines by offering Aussie Miler Herb Elliott a fantastic $250,000 to turn pro. Elliott considered for five weeks, then refused. Leavitt turned truculent. He hinted darkly that he had a tape of a telephone conversation with Miler Elliott that could ruin his amateur standing. Trumpeted Leavitt: "I have one question to ask Elliott. If he doesn't give the right answer, he will never run again as an amateur. Nobody pushes people like Leo Leavitt around."

At a series of raucous cocktail-lounge press conferences in Sydney. Leo downed double Scotches, tickled giggling waitresses, and made wildly conflicting statements about Elliott ("He's a sonofabitch . . . I love the guy"). He pursued Elliott to Melbourne, on arrival handed newsmen a classically misspelled statement. It attacked the "imberciles" who had pictured him as a "charlton," whined: "Am I to be sacrificed on the alter of prejudice?'' By this time Australians were increasingly suspicious that Leavitt's antics were chiefly designed to publicize another Western Promotions venture--the tour of "Goose" Tatum's basketball team, the Harlem Trotters. But the first Trotter game drew only 1,200 fans to Sydney's White City Stadium (capacity: 7,000). Leo bawled into the microphone: "If what I've done is a crime, then hang me!" Fans hooted back: "Take your checkbook and go home to America!" Western Promotions forthwith announced that they had had enough of Leo.

Leo scarcely broke stride. "A dirty deal," he cried to one newsman, and threatened to back up his complaint by playing his much-publicized tape. "People may want to make a sacred cow out of this boy Elliott, but they'll want to hang him, yessir, hang him, when I tell the true story on this deal." But at week's end Leo made plans to leave Australia. The tape, he explained lamely, was in Tokyo, "so how could I play it here?"

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