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Then he got dressed, in a conservative blue suit, white shirt, black shoes, and turned to tidying up a few other details. He had to pose with a group of doctors to whom he had presented a $10,000 check in the name of the Damon Runyon Cancer Fund. There were some notes to get off to New York—to Runyon Fund Treasurer Walter Winchell, to Jim Farley, to Crooner Billy Eckstine. Soon after midnight he was yawning off to bed, thinking of his golf (middle 70s). "I got a date to play at St. Cloud [near Paris] tomorrow."
Celebrity in Residence. By last week Sugar Ray Robinson had gone through three fight days since he arrived in Europe last month for his second triumphal tour of the Continent. In the process he has handily polished off some of the best of Europe's middleweights: De Bruin, Kid Marcel, Jean Wanes. At week's end he made it four in a row by defeating France's ex-welterweight champion Jean Walzack. Far from resenting it, Europeans have made "Le Sucre Merveilleux" their newest, most clamorously idolized hero. As a combination boulevardier, Damon Runyon Fund frontman and one-man boxing stable, Robinson is Paris' No. 1 celebrity in residence.
Whenever Sugar's fuchsia Cadillac convertible pulls away from the Claridge and heads up the Champs Elysées, grinning gendarmes wave ordinary traffic to a stop. Bicyclists swarm behind him, like gulls after a liner, happily shouting his name, "Ehh-Ro-Bean-Song!" While Sugar Ray, once a skinny little kid growing up on the street corners of Harlem, grandly replies with his newly acquired French: "Yeah, cà marche"
Since he first stepped off the boat at Le Havre, invitations have been pouring in at such a rate that it takes two secretaries to sort them into categories—"yes," "no," and "maybe." Among the "yes" occasions recently was a white-tie benefit where Amateur Dancer Robinson's high-flying buck & wing stole the show from Edith Piaf and Louis Jouvet. Again, there was a plaque to be unveiled in honor of France's late Middleweight Champion Marcel Cerdan and Sugar Ray presided at the ceremony. Again, Boxer Robinson turned out to receive an Oscar from a French boxing magazine as the "best fighter of the year," and made a modest acceptance speech.
Business Comes First. Frankly reveling in all the acclaim, Sugar delightedly skims the Paris Page One stories reporting his progress. But Robinson is too good a businessman to forget his main purpose in life for long. "Boxing is my business," he likes to explain, "and I enjoy my business." With Sugar Ray Robinson, business has always come first.