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Family Weelcly
March 13, 1960
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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