Art Lasky hung around with Jack Demsey and Max Baer whenever they ran into one another, had bit parts in several Hollywood films, was rumored to have dallied with May West, worked as a camera man and a photographer for some of Tinsel Town’s studios, built his own home in the California desert and became a physical therapist.
He was a man of many talents and undertakings, but the question looms large what parts of his life would have transpired had he not first been a professional fighter during a time when the heavyweight champion of the world was an American version of royalty.
He was part of an age in which Hollywood films produced tough guys who addressed women as toots, smoked one cigarette after another and the word contender carried some weight.
Like many popular stories of the time, Lasky came from a hardscrabble background in which men ground out a living by whatever means available, and Lasky, for what it was worth, looked the Hollywood part, tall, dark and handsome.
Born in Evansville, Minnesota, in 1908, Lasky fought two heavyweight champions, losing by decision to Primo Carnera and to James J. Braddock, the Cinderella Man celebrated in a 2005 film by that name. None of that would have occurred had he and his brother Maurice not worked in a scrap metal yard where Art got his chin tested one cold Minnesota day.
The pulley on a crane crank broke and caught him in the chin. “It knocked him across the yard but didn’t break his jaw,’’ said Art’s son, Aron. “His brother said that he if could take that kind of a wallop he probably could be a boxer, which he did and Maurice became his manager.’’
Lasky’s professional career began on May 1, 1930 with a first-round knockout of Sam Baker and ended on January 9, 1939 when he was stopped in three rounds by Nathan Mann. He had 53 fights, won 40, 34 by knockout, lost seven times and had six draws.
His most notable fights were both losses, but against top-notch competition. He lost a 10-round newspaper decision to Primo Carnera on September 1, 1932 at the St. Paul Auditorium. Carnera knocked out Jack Sharkey the next year for the world heavyweight title. On March 22, 1935, Lasky took a fight in Madison Square Garden against Jim Braddock, who won unanimously in his very next fight, on June 13 against Max Baer for the world heavyweight title. Thus, Lasky had fights against two men who won world titles shortly thereafter.
Art Lasky was 52 years old and living in California when his son, Aron, was born in 1960. “I came along after his third or fourth marriage, I want to say fourth, to my mother, Irma, ‘’ Aron said. “I remember stories he told when I was young about his friendships with Dempsey and Baer. And about his eye getting damaged against Johnny Pacek.’’
That fight took place on Jun 30, 1936 and Lasky fought only three more times thereafter, and with good reason. “He told me that Pacek thumbed him in the eye,’’ Aron recalled. “And the auditorium suddenly went black. He thought that the lights in the place had gone out but he kept getting hit,’’ Aron added.
Then, Lasky felt something wet on his cheek. It turned out to be his right eyeball which had been dislodged from the socket. Somehow Lasky managed to push it back in place with his glove and he finished off Pachek in five rounds. Lasky underwent at least one and perhaps more surgeries in later life to retain at least partial vision in the damaged eye.
Lasky probably wound up in California after retiring from the ring because of the time he spent there during his career. He fought more than 20 times in California, increasingly so in the final years of his career. Art Lasky’s family came to the United States from Russia where “his family were harness makers for the Czar,’’ Aron said. The original family name was Lakofsky and was either changed upon landing at Ellis Island or at some later date.
Lasky was adept at carpentry, masonry and as a surveyor, his son said. “My mother and father bought some property in the desert when I was four or five and some of my earliest memories are of sitting in diapers on a pile of rocks on a wooden sled that he pulled across the desert to use in the walls and fireplace of the house.’’
Lasky’s personality began to change when Aron was 10 or 11 years of age. “He started to unravel,’’ Aron said. “He began to pay less and less attention to personal matters and ended up losing everything, the family house and property. “Ever since, I’ve been looking for video or other paraphernalia about his boxing days,’’ Aron added. Eventually, Lasky was placed in a home where his increasing needs could be addressed. It was there that he died on April 2, 1980. A brief newspaper article shortly thereafter attested to a prominent part of his life in addition to his death.
The first paragraph simply stated: Funeral services have been held in Norwalk for Art Lasky, 71, probably the most prominent heavyweight boxer ever to reside in San Bernadino.
Another notation can be added now: Art Lasky, who fought two eventual world champions and won 40 professional fights, has a permanent home in the Minnesota Boxing Hall of Fame.
