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Jimmy Sharman

Green Machine

First Grade
Messages
5,844
A couple of days ago, an Australian icon, Jimmy Sharman passed away. Jimmy was well known for his boxing troupe that toured around country shows. A lot was not printed that he also captained Western Suburbs. I think he was also the oldest living former first grader:

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/jimmy-sharman-heir-to-the-boxing-tents-dies-at-94/2006/04/25/1145861349918.html

Jimmy Sharman, heir to the boxing tents, dies at 94

By Stephen Gibbs
April 26, 2006

FOR those who knew the man, the news today is Jimmy Sharman's dead. But for those who did step up and take a glove it may be news to hear how long the showman had outlived the boxing tent.
As a toddler, Sharman went to the pictures with the teenaged Les Darcy, the Maitland middleweight world champion. When he was an old man, Midnight Oil recorded Jimmy Sharman's Boxers, perpetuating the family's fame.
James Michael Sharman, who died at St Vincent's Hospice on Monday, aged 94, was born at Narrandera a year after his father first set up Jimmy Sharman's Boxing Troupe at the Royal Easter Show.
He spent a week working the box office for his father at the Easter Show as a teenager, but his future lay in rugby league; he captained Wests. As a fullback he played seven seasons (1934-40) for the Magpies.
He suffered ulcers and missed World War II as he was medically unfit. Another bout of illness in 1945 drew him to his father's tent. "Dad made me a pretty good offer," he said in 1996. "So I went off for a month's holiday and just kept going."
Jimmy Sharman's Boxing Troupe followed the show circuit through four states for six decades of working 11 months a year. In each town and city Sharman snr charged spectators to watch young black boxers teach half-cut local challengers to fight.
"Who'll take a glove?" and "A round or two for a pound or two" were famous Sharman catchcries.
Sharman jnr inherited what was "a bloody good business" a decade before his father died in 1965. He continued touring until 1971, when regulations barring boxers fighting more than once a week knocked the business out. In later years he reminisced about the show life. "They had so many freaks it wasn't funny," Sharman said. "There used to be Zimmy the Legless Wonder … Used to eat bananas under water … Zandau the Quarter Boy, Tam Tam the Leopard Man."
Like his father, Sharman had one son, called James. Jim Sharman went into showbusiness but not the boxing tent. The Sydney theatre producer won world acclaim when he co-wrote and directed The Rocky Horror Picture Show in 1975
 

braz

Juniors
Messages
450
The passing of Jimmy Sharman Thursday, 27 April 2006 James Michael Sharman, who died at St Vincent's Hospice on Monday, aged 94, was born at Narrandera in 1912.
Jimmy played 7 season for the magpies from 1934 - 1940. He not only captained his beloved Wests on the field, but was one of their biggest supporters even after his playing days ended.
Wests Football Club would like to thank their life time member Jimmy Sharman Jr for his dedication to the black and whites over the decades.


From www.westsmagpies.net
 

innsaneink

Referee
Messages
29,362
I hadnt heard this news. Condolences to the Sharman family.

boxing.jpg

Jim Sharman breaks clear against Richmond (NZ)
on Wests visit to Auckland in 1934


sharman1971_wideweb__470x319,2.jpg

Jim Sharman with members of his tent boxing troupe in 1971.
 

Green Machine

First Grade
Messages
5,844
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/06/04/1086203632094.html?from=storylhs



Jim Sharman, the name's got a real ring to it

June 5, 2004

Living legend, just ask him: Jim Sharman, aged 92 and son of the famous Jimmy Sharman, at his home in Randwick. Photo: Steve Christo
Jim Sharman is a showman by name and by nature, writes Roy Masters.
'I'm the oldest living premiership footballer," proudly pronounces Jim Sharman, aged 91, Western Suburbs fullback in their 1934 trophy-winning team, sounding like a man who doesn't intend surrendering his record any time soon.
In March, the Magpies awarded him life membership, 64 years after he last played for the club.
Life membership is bestowed after 10 years' service and Jim played from 1934-40, although he was captain in his final year, but what the heck, if a bloke makes it to 91, what's a miserable three years?
He never misses a Wests reunion and clearly overlooks the fact the club's modern reincarnation is a joint venture with Balmain and named Tigers.
"I've got my eyes on the young Magpies," he said of the team that plays the Storm in Melbourne tonight.
"They're coming good."
Jim is the only child of Jim Sharman I, the man who started tent boxing in Australia in 1911, challenging the locals at agricultural shows from Cairns all the way to Mt Gambier.
Young Jim lived with his grandmother in a Narrandera boarding house before accepting an offer from a wealthy Ashfield publican to play for Wests.
The residential rule applied and he was required to front the formidable NSWRL secretary, Harold Mathews.
Mathews: "State your full name."
Answer: "James Michael Sharman."
Mathews: "Where do you live?"
Answer: "I don't know."
Mathews: "Where does your father live?"
Answer: "He doesn't live anywhere."
Mathews: "And your mother?"
Answer: "She lives with my father."
Insofar as Jimmy's parents lived in a caravan, his answers were entirely truthful.
Jimmy snr, steeped in lower gymnasia, had earlier tried to push his son to higher education, boarding him for two years at St Joseph's College, Hunters Hill but, according to Jim: "I was a f.....g log of wood in class."
He succeeded only in playing fullback for the college, proudly pointing to a giant photograph of the 1931 team where he sits at the feet of the masterful coach, Brother Henry.
"Greatest coach who ever lived," Jim says, leaving no room for debate.
In 1946, Jim joined his father on the boxing troupe and travelled Australia until government medical regulations banned tent boxing in 1971.
"It's the longest a footballer has ever been on holidays," he says of his quarter century following the shows, expressing it with such conviction it didn't seem wise raising the matter of today's talented 17-year-old footballers, who can still be on vacation 17 years later.
Jim inherited the family business in 1955, attending 60 shows a year, banging a big drum, challenging likely lads in the crowd to "take a glove", parading a troupe of skinny young Aboriginals clad in dressing gowns, each with the whack of a horseshoe in their gloves.
Jim turned a blind eye to kids who snuck under the tent but it was hard to get his money off him, the bell always seeming to ring when one of his troupe was in trouble.
"We had a permit for 60 years and not one complaint in four states," he says.
Asked to name boxers who got their start at the shows, he says: "There were so many, you couldn't print them all in The Sydney Morning Herald. We got George Bracken at 16 and Jack Hassen, both of them from Charters Towers."
Conversations with boxers who knew the Sharmans can be exercises in canonisation. Because some of the eulogies are expressed by men who fought for them, the testimony carries unique conviction in a sport where exploitation is a cheerful tradition.
"Dad was a hard taskmaster," Jim says.
"He was crooked on fighters who drank grog. I had to sneak away to have a beer."
Good father-son boxing stories are rare - the relationships of Joe and Marvis Frazier, Bill and Buster Douglas, Bob and Tony Tucker are tales of recklessness and over-caution and the jury is still out on Tony and Anthony Mundine.
A great father often must feel he is the maker, not the made.
But nearly 30 years after his father died, aged 79, on November 18, 1965, Jim says: "I'm a fortunate son. My old man was a great old bloke."
Jim's wife, Christina, died on Melbourne Cup night last year after 65 years of marriage. Their only child is also named Jim, another theatrical entrepreneur who directed commercial blockbusters such as Jesus Christ Superstar and The Rocky Horror Show, as well as Mozart's Don Giovanni and Shakespeare's The Tempest.
The third Jim has also set one of these records the Sharmans accumulate.
"He's the only bloke to turn down a Churchill scholarship. He was in Japan and came back to Australia produce Hair."
After a near century of promoting shows from tent boxing to opera, it's amazing that the Sharman name should be so close to the words "showman" and "shaman", the itinerant spiritual healers so common in South America.
Almost to validate this, he points to a framed certificate from the Royal Agricultural Society of NSW, given to him last year for his contribution to the Easter Show: "I'm the only legend in show business."
Other framed mementos decorate his Randwick unit, such as autographed photos of Jack Dempsey and Rocky Marciano and his scrapbooks are full of memories like wrestler Big Chief Little Wolf and sideshow freaks such as Zimmy the legless man, Little Mae West and Little Ubangi, a pygmy.
Asked to identify a grainy old black-and-white photo of two very small boxers either side of his father, he says: "Just midget boxers who used to fight in the tent."
The ring in those days was an amusing subsidiary, a playground in which the Sharmans exercised their already fully developed roguishness.
Pertinacious and peppery, Jim blames political correctness for bringing all those good times to an end.
Yet look at the heavyweight division of boxing today with Mike Tyson, a man who long ago made his sport a lurid show business, biting into ears, as if his chronic inability to exist in normal society has been all the entertainment value we need from the sport.
It was a thought best left unexpressed.
 

parra pete

Referee
Messages
20,534
Who could forget the "Boom boomm booommmm booommmm..... hold it, hold it, holdit....git up the ladder..." Great entertainer..Great times at the Easter Show...definitely the attraction. RIP Jimmy. An icon of another era....
 

OVP

Coach
Messages
11,623
RIP Jimmy Sharman. Im now listening to the Midnight Oil song in your honour.
From Jimmy Sharman's Boxers by Midnight Oil on the Red Sails in the Sunset album.


From the red dust north of Dalmore Downs
Sharman's tents roll into town
Twelve will face the auctioneer
Sharman's Boxers stand their ground
Their days are darker than your nights
But they won't be the first to fall
Children broken from their dreams
But they won't be the first to fall

Fighting in the spotlight
Eye's turn blacker than their skin
For Jimmy Sharman's boxers
It's no better if you win
Standing in the darkness
Lined up waiting for the bell
The days are wasted drinking
At the first and last hotel

Why are we fighting for this?
Why are you paying for this?
You pay to see me fall like shrapnel
To the floor
What is the reason for this?
There is a reason for this?
What is the reason they keep coming back for more?

The blows now bring him to his knees
But still the crowd calls out for more
The drums are burning in his ears
The man keeps counting out the score

(Hirst/Moginie)
 

ozzie

Bench
Messages
4,704
Jimmy Sharman used to travel to all the shows and it was great fun to watch the locals take on members of the troupe.

I recall as a youngster - many years ago sneaking into the tent under the back canvass and was only there two minutes when an all in brawl occurred everyone was blueing and the tent was bulging at the sides..talk about funny to watch.
 

Stagger eel

Moderator
Staff member
Messages
65,417
I'm not sure whether this is true or not but someone did mention that he was the oldest living former first grade footballer before his passing.
 

Stagger eel

Moderator
Staff member
Messages
65,417
gunnamatta bay said:
They should bring back the boxing tents. They would be a big hit.

yeah, it would be an absolute boom for insurence companies in the stock exchange.
 

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