Heavyweight champ Max Baer, whose heyday was the 1930s, made appearances in late vaudeville as well as Hollywood films, including The Prizefighter and the Lady (1933) with Myrna Loy and Walter Huston, and (alongside his boxer brother Buddy) in the 1949 Abbott and Costello film Africa Screams. Half Jewish, he was much loved (along with Joe Louis) for being a foil to the Nazi boxer Max Schmeling. But his best remembered legacy today is probably his son Max Baer, Jr. who played “Jethro” on the Beverly Hillbillies with Buddy Ebsen. The elder Baer would not live long enough to see that come to pass. He passed away in 1959.
To find out more about the history of vaudeville, please consult my critically acclaimed book No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and many other fine establishments.
And don’t miss my new book Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube, just released by Bear Manor Media, also available from amazon.com etc etc etc
(Travalanche) 
[…] boxers did this: not only Sullivan and Corbett but Jack Johnson, Jack Dempsey, Gene Tunney, and Max Baer. Slapsie Maxie Rosenbloom was too late for vaud so he went straight into films and started his own […]
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ha, ha, ha, ha, ha….
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I think “My Brush with Jethro” is an awesome title for something. in fact, what a great fringe show that would make! Viz:
Act One, scene one:
(ring…)
Assistant: Hello, Max Baer, Jr’s office.
RL: Yeah, Hi this is Ralph Lewis. I represent Peculiar—
(dial tone)
RL: Drat, drat and double drat!
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Hollywood folks sometimes have their head up their butt. That project would have been great! Damn!
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My brush with Jethro – I was helping a friend produce a musical adaption of Ode to Billy Joe. Who would have guessed that Jr. held the rights to all of Bobby Gentry’s music? He was not at all interested in playing ball with us. A couple of phone calls with him and that project sank. Still, I’m a fan of Max and mad Max Jr. lol.
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