By Amy O’Hair
In 1930, San Francisco boxer Frankie Campbell died in a bout with Max Baer, who went on to great fame and wealth. The stark truth of that horrible death was subsequently twisted and buried. Author and fellow researcher Catherine Johnson has finally published her thoroughly documented account, Then The World Moved On: The Brutal Truth Behind the Max Baer-Frankie Campbell Fight.
Frankie Campbell had local ties, which is how I got to know Catherine during her research work. Campbell, born Frank Camilli, moved with his Italian-born parents to a little house in Sunnyside in 1910; subsequently the family lived on Diamond Street in Glen Park. Later in the century, Sunnyside barber (and local historian) Ron Davis would tell his patrons about Campbell, as a neighborhood legend, as well as about Frankie’s brother Dolph Camilli, a Major League Baseball player.
Catherine tells the origin story of the Camilli family, and how the two brothers finally escaped their abusive father’s house on Diamond Street. The boys had a rough-and-tumble childhood in a rough-and-tumble town. Each launched himself into a sports career, but Frankie’s highly promising life in boxing was cut short just as he was on the cusp of national greatness. I won’t give away the plot, but Catherine’s work upends the usual account of the tragic fight with Max Baer.
Along the way, this story gives a deep and detailed picture of the development of the sport in San Francisco, which was considered a goldmine of boxing talent in the early twentieth century. Frankie Campbell’s life is a real San Francisco story—from his immigrant roots and his upbringing in working-class neighborhoods, to his golden dreams for renown that were tempered by a surprising humility and an unshakeable integrity.
The book is well illustrated with photographs, many of which haven’t been published before. The foreword is by Ray Mancini, a boxer who made his name in the lightweight circuit in the 1980s and 1990s as a title holder and then went onto fame in many other pursuits.
Catherine’s research is exhaustive— she needed to put together all the buried facts in order to overturn the established take on the Campbell-Baer match, and face the ire of fans who are invested in that old story.
I’m not a sports fan at all, but I find this book an engaging story; the writing is brisk, the research impeccable, and the subject an attractive and honorable person, despite the tragedy at the heart of the tale.
The book is available at Amazon in both Kindle and paperback forms.
Below, the first Camilli family house in 1911 (foreground) with the Sunnyside Powerhouse behind, on Monterey Blvd near Circular Ave. The little house was subsequently demolished.
