What My Grandfather, Sam Rosenthal, Really Left Me
By Rick Fishman / Oakland, Calif.
My grandfather, Sam Rosenthal, was born in 1897 and grew up in Pittsburgh before moving to Detroit, where he met and married my grandmother, Mary Levin. He came from genuine poverty and entered adulthood during the Great Depression, when "career planning" often meant figuring out how to eat that day. As a young boy, he sold apples and newspapers on the street, worked as a messenger in the post office. and did whatever else he could to make a buck.
Sam learned early how to hustle. In our family, that was not a negative concept; it was practically a job qualification. It meant recognizing an opportunity, working hard, and never waiting for someone else to rescue you. Sam's portfolio was whatever he could sell before dinner. He told me that his father had taught him only one thing: "Bringing home the money." That became Sam's North Star, which, as far as he was concerned, was permanently located somewhere over Detroit.
Sam joined the armed forces in 1917 and got married in 1921. He eventually entered the coin-operated machine business with his brother Harry, placing jukeboxes and pinball machines in bars and restaurants and collecting a share of the profit. It was a beautifully simple business: people put coins into machines, and Sam came around to collect them. No online banking, credit card disputes, or customers repeatedly asking for his "best price." Just piles of nickels, dimes, and quarters.
The Ringside: A Change of Management
During World War II, while Detroit was working around the clock to support the war effort, Sam operated a neighborhood bar that became the place to go after a long shift. Workers came in for a drink, conversation. and a little relief from the pressures of wartime life. Sam provided the drinks, but he was also building relationships, making connections, and learning -where the next opportunity might be. His street sense and natural instinct for business turned that neighborhood bar into far more than a place to have a beer. It became the launchpad for a period of real success for Sam.
Sam behind the bar with one of his waitresses; People enjoying a drink during the wartime effort.
Boxing, Wrestling, and Knowing the Right People
Sam's ambitions carried him beyond jukeboxes and coin-operated machines into boxing and professional wrestling. For a Jewish man of his generation, this was not as unusual as it might sound today. Between 1920 and 1940, Jewish Americans made up nearly one-third of all professional boxers and won 26 world titles. For many working-class Jewish men, boxing offered a path out of poverty and a powerful answer to the stereotype that Jewish men were physically weak. There were Jewish managers, promoters, trainers, journalists, and manufacturers, many building successful businesses around the sport. Ring Magazine was created in 1922 by Nat Fleischer, Everlast Boxing Equipment, founded by Jack Golomb. Sam recognized the opportunity and entered this world as a manager.
The Ringside Cocktail Bar: A Change of Management
In the 1940’s, Sam owned the Ringside Cocktail Bar, an establishment perfectly suited to a man who never kept his businesses in separate corners. The front was a neighborhood bar, while the back contained a boxing ring where fighters trained and worked out. Sam could serve a drink, watch a sparring session, or arrange a future fight without ever leaving the building. It was not merely a bar with a boxing theme; it was part of the working machinery of Detroit boxing.
According to the family story, representatives of the Italian Mafia arrived one day and informed Sam that they would be taking over the Ringside for their own network. Beginning the following morning, he would be operating the Willis Bar instead. This was not presented as an offer, and apparently nobody asked Sam whether the new location suited him. There was no meeting, no paperwork, and certainly no 30-day period for public comment. In that world, the phrase "effective tomorrow" seems to have been legally sufficient.
Sam may have lost the Ringside Bar, but he did not lose his place in boxing. The arrangement apparently allowed him to continue promoting fights under his own name while remaining on the correct side of the people who controlled most of the business. He went on to stage numerous events, including programs associated with Detroit’s Olympia Stadium, the city’s great arena for professional boxing. The Olympia hosted important fighters, including Joe Louis, Jake LaMotta, and Sugar Ray Robinson. Sam was not fighting in the ring himself, but he had learned how to survive in a business where many of the most consequential punches were never thrown in public.
Sam handled several fighters, but his most successful was Bennie Goldberg, a highly rated bantamweight whose professional career extended from 1937 to 1946. Goldberg remained a leading contender for the world title for approximately five years during the 1940’s. His success expanded Sam's reputation, connections, and income, eventually providing the means and confidence for Sam move his family to Miami to continue pursuing business opportunities.
Miami and a Very Expensive Decision
Like many Jewish families from the Midwest and East Coast, Sam saw opportunity in South Florida. He moved the family there, while keeping his house, his business and connections in Detroit, even though the family needed to commute back and forth for a while. In Florida he had capital, bought business opportunities and purchased land. He continued to operate in Detroit. He did not do any boxing promotions in Miami as the Ringside bosses seemed to have a hold on that territory.
My parents were married at the Shelborne Hotel in Miami Beach in June 1947, and honeymooned in Cuba, a popular and glamorous destination at the time. The mayor of Detroit traveled to Florida for their wedding, which demonstrated the extent of Sam's connections. Either Sam was very important, or the mayor really needed a vacation.
My family lived in one house on Harding Avenue in Surfside, Florida. I was born there in 1951.
Sam also owned land that would later become part of the Bal Harbour Shops, the luxury shopping center that became one of the world’s most successful retail destinations. Unfortunately, around 1953, Sam sold all his property in Florida and moved the family back to Detroit. Had he kept it, this story might have been written from a mansion or a yacht in the Caribbean.
Sam simply could not get Detroit out of his blood. Miami was developing, but Detroit was where he understood the streets, knew the people, and felt like somebody. He wound up owning the entire block at Willis and Third. Although Florida offered sunshine and land, Detroit offered established relationships and probably much better delicatessen.
The Willis Bar and Third Street
Sam was the landlord for the stores on Third Street. He operated the Willis Bar and opened Gurney's Chop House (an upscale steak house). My father even worked at the Willis as a bartender during the early years. Sam and Mary still had their home on Outer Drive in Detroit, and my parents bought one of those new construction homes in Oak Park. My dad, at 99 years old, still happily lives there today.
There was also Willis Pharmacy, complete with the kind of lunch counter and soda fountain that once served as the social center of a neighborhood. I ate there constantly while growing up.
Nutrition was apparently still waiting to be invented; if something came off the grill and was followed by an ice cream soda, it qualified as a balanced meal.
One of Sam's other tenants operated what was then called a "dry goods" store, where my brothers and I were outfitted for school each year. Between the drugstore lunches and the back-to-school clothing. Sam's block provided nearly everything a growing family needed.
The Willis Runs Again
The Willis Show Bar opened at the corner of Willis and Third, during Detroit's glamorous era of live entertainment and jazz. It quickly became one of the city's popular nightspots and continued operating until 1978.
After sitting vacant for nearly 40 years, the Art Moderne building was carefully restored and brought back to life in 2018. The Willis Show Bar celebrated seven years of presenting live music, entertainment, and first-rate cocktails in an atmosphere that transported guests back to another era. It was closed as of May 2025, having faced many of the difficulties that affected entertainment venues during the Covid pandemic, but hopefully this important piece of Detroit history will once again open its doors.
The Patriarch
Sam was the patriarch of our family. He survived poverty and built businesses through hard work, instinct, and force of personality. He was the boss, and people generally listened when he spoke. He could be tough, but he was also generous, loyal, and deeply committed to his family. My grandmother Mary was one of the few people who could change his mind, although she may have wisely allowed him to believe the new idea was his.
He used his success to support his children and help establish the next generation. His son, my uncle Herb, became a doctor, and Sam helped his daughters and their families. My parents bought their home in Oak Park in 1953 and were a part of the progress made by many postwar Jewish families. One generation struggled through poverty and discrimination so the next could become professionals, business owners, and homeowners.
As a child, I knew little about what Sam had endured. I only knew that he loved me and gave me an enormous amount of attention. He may have been the most important person in the early years of my life. I remember him constantly smoking Old Gold brand cigarettes. He would come to our house in Oak Park and take me to Rackham Drugs, our neighborhood drugstore or Hy Horenstein’s, his favorite delicatessen. He would bring my family boxes of candy and restaurant supplies he picked up wholesale. To my brothers and me, he appeared to have access to an unlimited warehouse of everything children wanted and parents usually refused to buy.
Sam made me feel important. His affection was not expressed through long conversations about feelings, which would have been unimaginable for a man of his generation. He showed love by making certain I knew I belonged to him.
What He Really Left Me
Sam's life eventually took a dramatic turn. After rising from poverty and achieving considerable success, he lost virtually everything and died in 1964 with very little. The properties, businesses, and fortune he might have built were gone. His willingness to take risks helped him escape poverty, but risk works in both directions. Sam never lived cautiously. He kept moving, investing, promoting, buying and selling.
Sam's fortunes were tied to Detroit, and the city itself was changing. Like many Detroit families of the period, ours became part of the great move to the suburbs. During the ‘50s and ‘60s, families were leaving Detroit in enormous numbers, drawn by new homes and suburban schools,
but also responding to the racial changes taking place in the city.
Neighborhoods shifted, commercial districts declined, and the personal connections that had helped men like Sam succeed were no longer enough to hold everything together. He had always relied on his instincts and knowledge of the streets, but even Sam Rosenthal could not outmaneuver the larger forces reshaping the city beneath him.
Money was not his legacy. He provided for his family, helped his children establish themselves, and gave me love, attention, and an example of what it meant to make my own way. Much of what I have become: a dealer, collector, negotiator, risk taker, and businessman constantly searching for things other people might overlook, came from both Sam and my mother Jeanne Fishman (and that's a story for another time).
Although Sam Rosenthal lost most of the tangible fortune he created, what he passed down instead was his drive, generosity and instinct for opportunity. The properties and businesses disappeared, but the hustle survived. l know it did, because I inherited it.
Rick Fishman of the Martini Brothers Swing Band and a former Royal Jammer, grew up in Oak Park, Mich. He has owned his own retail businesses for close to 50 years. After moving to California in 1976, he founded the LeSportsac franchise in 1978, Traveling Light Stores, and As Time Goes By collectibles stores. For more than 25 years, he has operated ArtDecoCollection.com, now supported by a 7000 square foot brick and mortar showroom by appointment, while currently producing the digital book, Art Deco Resource Guide. https://artdecocollection.com/art-deco-resource-guide/
Comments