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About Medford mail tribune. (Medford, Or.) 1909-1989 | View Entire Issue (March 13, 1960)
c Family Weelcly March 13, 1960 it II II I 0 4 U Whether acting in his first film, "All The Young Men" (above), or romping with girl friend Birgit Lundgren (left), Ingo seems to have cornered the energy market. MAKES INGO BUN? Fighter, actor, businessman, lady-killer whichever heavyweight champion Johansson wants to be, he wants to have a good time doing it By ED FITZGERALD THE heavyweight champion of the world is a man who likes the good things in life so much that he's willing to fight for his share of them. Unlike his immediate predecessors, Floyd Patterson and Rocky Marciano, Ingemar Johansson doesn't enjoy in fact, positively hates the drudgery of training. But he gets into. the ring when he has to because he enjoys what he gets out of it. Ingo (as Amer icans have dubbed him) loves fine food and drink, expensive clothes, money in the bank, and the admiration of the public especially that part of the public which is between 21 and 25 years old, beautiful, and female. Not since the heyday of Madcap Maxie Baer has the heavyweight championship been held by a man so enamored of a good time. Back home in Goteborg, Sweden, Ingo has the repu tation of having been a wild youngster; he was a merchant-marine sailor with the sea faring man's traditional liking for a good glass of beer and a companionable girl, and a cheerful willingness to knock a few heads together in a street fight if somebody tried to beat his time with the girl. Ingo doesn't go in for fighting any more unless he's being paid for it, but otherwise he hasn't changed noticeably since he won the title with his electrifying third-round knock out of Floyd Patterson last June. He simply operates on a grander scale now. "I never think I would get this far," he says in his surprisingly good English. He has gotten very far indeed. A better businessman than even the vaunted Sugar Ray Robinson, Ingo treats boxing as a side line. He owns and manages a $250,000 construction firm, owns a $100,000 fishing trawler which operates with a crew of eight, is Sweden's leading male clothes model, performs in the movies and on television, sings professionally on records, endorses every conceivable product from tooth paste to sports cars, and, when he finds it absolutely necessary, he turns to boxing. "He's unbelievable," a young lady who had a few dates with him in New York says. "I simply can't believe he's the heavyweight champion. He looks and acts just like an American college boy. He's got the nicest smile. You can see from his pictures his mouth is a little crooked, and when he smiles, he looks like a little boy. And he's got the biggest dimple on his chin any man ever had. Some girl ought to have that dimple." WOMEN everywhere react this way to the good-looking 27-year-old Swede. They like the sporty blazers he wears, and the way he keeps humming and singing little snatches of Swedish songs, like the ones he sang on the Dinah Shore show this winter. They like his European manner of ignoring everyone else in the room when he's with a lady, and giving her his undivided attention. They like his frank interest in them and his ' Family Weekly, March 13, I960
