"Molumby's Million' by Iron Age Theatre

I grew up watching the Friday night fights on TV, not to mention old film clips of a lean and mean Jack Dempsey slugging his way to fame in 1919. The first time my parents took me to New York City, I insisted on walking into Dempsey's Times Square restaurant to see the ex-champ in person.

So if you're presenting a play about boxing, count me in. But it takes a much wider range of content to attract audiences in this day and age.

Happily, Molumby's Million provides that range. DW Gregory's drama, in its world premiere, tells of the managers, promoters and fortune hunters who swarmed around Dempsey. It's relevant for this era of big businessmen risking other people's money on shaky ventures. The play centers on an oil magnate named Molumby who promised a million-dollar gate to induce Dempsey to defend his title on the Fourth of July in the tiny town of Shelby, Montana in 1923.

When Dempsey's manager, Jack "Doc" Kearns, denigrates Shelby's potential, Molumby speaks optimistically of hope, trying to tap into the idealism that accompanied America's victory in World War I. Hope, says Molumby, made Shelby an emblem of America's emerging Western states.

Exploiting Dempsey

To be sure, one synonym for hope is speculation, and that is a more accurate description of what was going on. Molumby speculated when he drilled for oil, and he speculated in a big way when he guaranteed Dempsey as well as Shelby's civic leaders a huge profit from the heavyweight championship fight.

When Dempsey said he wouldn't fight if he weren't paid, Molumby ironically decried that attitude as poor sportsmanship. He expected athletes to entertain the public even though he, as a businessman, would never do anything except for money. Oil speculation, stock speculation, real estate speculation were OK "“ but athletes should abide by a different set of rules.

The playwright, DW Gregory, has written other plays that draw on her own working-class roots near Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Much of the information in Molumby's Million comes from the writings of Damon Runyon, who covered Dempsey as a young journalist. Luke Moyer's excellent portrayal of Runyon eschews the Guys-and-Dolls Broadwayese that later became Runyon's trademark. (Runyon actually grew up in Colorado, as did Dempsey.)

No stock villains

When he was young, Dempsey was reputed to be a cheater, a draft dodger and a womanizer. All of that is dramatized here, but the man is portrayed sympathetically by Howie Brown. Similarly, Gregory's Molumby is no stock tycoon villain. Anthony M. Giampetro plays him with complexity, giving the production nuance. Ray Saraceni is colorful as Doc Kearns.

John Doyle directed briskly. Dave Mason designed the fight choreography and also played the role of Dempsey's opponent, Tommy Gibbons.

Gibbons emerges as an honorable family man. Dempsey becomes one of the most popular athletes of the Roaring '20s. The big losers are the investors from Shelby. Only 7,700 fans paid to see the fight. The First State Bank of Shelby, whose president was the town's mayor, went bankrupt. So did the town's other two financial institutions. Today Shelby is not much larger than it was before the big fight.