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A massive 59-year-old Alsatian, whose huge red, wide-eyed face looks as if it were being constantly pressed against an invisible pane of glass, Jack Curley was christened Jacques Armand Schuel, chose his present name because he has curly hair.
As a boy he ran away from home, became a mechanic, a waiter in an insane asylum and later trainer to Barney Oldfield in the days when Oldfield was a bicycle racer.
In 1899 he discovered his real vocation in Chicago. He began by promoting Wrestler Frank Gotch, progressed by promoting the Johnson-Willard fight, William Jennings Bryan, Caruso, bullfights, Annette Kellerman, Mrs. Pankhurst, Rudolph Valentino, the U. S. tour of the Vatican Choir, Georges Carpentier, William Tilden, several dance marathons and a flea circus.
After the War, when the famed "Masked Marvel" (Mort Henderson) was defeated by Strangler Lewis, wrestling became comparatively unprofitable. Promoter Curley restored the sport to favor in 1929 by the simple device of having his performers shriek, groan, wave their arms, grimace and plunge out of the ring, instead of squirming calmly on the floor as is the practice of wrestlers who are solely occupied with winning.
Amiable, cultured, incurably addicted to assisting at his own extravaganzas, Promoter Curley's two salient characteristics are good taste, which, because it is utterly anomalous in his profession, he rigorously confines to his private life; and the useful knack of knowing celebrities and being on hand at every sort of crisis. He is the only U. S. sporting personage whose reputation for being well-dressed is based on the excellence rather than the quantity of his clothes. His house at Great Neck. L. I., where his butler for many years was a retired fisticuffer named Bobby Dobbs, is a museum of superb old furniture. When he took a party of guests to the Sands Point Bath Club in 1933, it was characteristic of Promoter Curley that Senator Huey Long chose that evening to disgrace himself, by engaging in a brawl which Curley had to referee. Similar coincidences had caused Promoter Curley to become a crony of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, just before his assassination started the War; accidentally annoy Pancho Villa in 1915; act as pallbearer at Theodore Roosevelt's funeral and supply a night's free lodging to Edward of Wales. Promoter Curley drinks no alcohol, insists on driving his own car, married his secretary 15 years ago. His 22-year-old son by his first wife is now a newshawk on the New York American, which frequently derides the validity of Promoter Curley's exhibitions. Convinced by 40 years of experience that this is not a determining factor in their popularity, Promoter Curley says that he has never, to the best of his knowledge and belief, promoted anything dishonest.