ENTERTAINMENT
February 25, 2011 | By MARIA ZANKEY, mankeym@phillynews.com 215-854-5444
In February 1973, Elvis Presley gave Muhammad Ali a robe embroidered with the words, "The People's Champion. " In return, Ali presented Elvis with a set of boxing gloves inscribed "You're the Greatest. " It's been more than 33 years since "the King" passed away, but the two legends are reunited at the James A. Michener Art Museum in Doylestown, as part of "Elvis and Ali: American Icons," a dual documentary exhibition. The exhibits, "Elvis at 21: Photographs by Al Wertheimer," and "Muhammad Ali: The making of an icon," chronicle the stars' rise to fame through photography, essays and film.
NEWS
February 13, 2002 | By DAVID PLOTZ
MUHAMMAD ALI is the Dalai Lama of the post-Sept. 11 world - the beatific sweetheart we call on to sanctify every important moment. He is always available to symbolize, well, whatever the heck you want. The Champ, who may be the world's most famous Muslim and the world's most famous American, is certainly the world's most famous Muslim-American, and he has been using that status for the good. He made news recently by pleading, in Allah's name, for the release of kidnapped Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.
NEWS
May 19, 1999 | By Claude Lewis
Recently, I tuned in to a television program, Touched by an Angel, that I seldom watch. The attraction to the Sunday evening show was a cameo appearance by former world heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali. Ali's role was to convey a positive message to a confused youngster. But I was hardly prepared for how much Ali's physical condition had eroded. He has become a tragic figure. Though it wasn't meant to happen, he came off as an extremely depressed version of his former self.
NEWS
May 25, 2011 | By Michael Matza, Inquirer Staff Writer
WASHINGTON - With the silent but still imposing Muhammad Ali at their side, the mothers of American hikers Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer on Tuesday beseeched Iran to release their sons after 22 months in prison. Against a banner bearing the words "662 Days Without Freedom," Laura Fattal of Elkins Park and Bauer's mother, Cindy Hickey, of Minnesota, stood with the heavyweight boxing icon and U.S. Islamic leaders to stress the pair's innocence. They face trial on charges that they entered Iran illegally for espionage.
SPORTS
January 26, 2010
REMATCH IN A dinky hockey rink in Lewiston, Maine. Muhammad Ali knocks out Sonny Liston in the first round. Knocks him out with a short, swift punch that is so short, so swift, so lethal that the cynics looked at the slo-mo replay over and over and over, the way they scanned the Zapruder film frame-by-frame. And even then they weren't sure of what they hadn't seen. Ali told them the knockout right hand was an "anchor punch" and that he'd learned it from old-time movie comic Stepin Fetchit, who had learned it from the legendary heavyweight, Jack Johnson.
NEWS
January 9, 1998 | By Andy Wallace, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER Inquirer staff writer Rusty Pray contributed to this article
Jeremiah Shabazz, 70, former minister of Mosque No. 12 of the Philadelphia Nation of Islam and confidant and adviser to Muhammad Ali, died of congestive heart failure Wednesday. It was Mr. Shabazz, a family member said, who in 1960 persuaded boxer Cassius Clay to become a follower of Elijah Muhammad and to become Muhammad Ali. In the late 1970s, Mr. Shabazz joined Ali's entourage, and news accounts at the time refer to him as the boxer's "top aide," "administrative assistant" and "legal counsel," although he had no law degree.
NEWS
July 15, 2004
TO MADONNA: Thanks for a great time July Fourth. You always know how to put on a really great show. Next to Muhammad Ali, you're the greatest. Joe Bascio Fairless Hills
NEWS
April 16, 1991 | G. LOIE GROSSMANN/ DAILY NEWS
Former heavyweight champ Muhammad Ali poses with Democratic mayoral candidate Lucien Blackwell at The Gallery yesterday. Ali gave away sample bags of his potato chips to a crowd at the shopping mall and touted one-time Army boxer and former City Councilman Blackwell as a "good man. "
NEWS
January 21, 1987 | By JIM SMITH, Daily News Staff Writer
Roofers Union boss Steve Traitz had a really socko idea for getting out the black vote in 1985 for Democratic district attorney candidate Robert Williams, according to transcripts of secret FBI tape recordings made in his office. He would get disc jockey Jerry Blavat to imitate the voice of former heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali on a tape-recording supporting Williams and have it played from sound trucks in black neighborhoods. "I got Jerry Blavat . . . He talks like Muhammad Ali, better than Muhammad Ali," said Traitz, according to a transcript of his conversation on Oct. 17, 1985, shortly before the election.
NEWS
November 14, 2011 | INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
By Matt Breen He came from simple beginnings as the son of a sharecropper in North Carolina to achieve world-wide fame. And on Monday morning, the life of the humble and reserved Joe Frazier was remembered with elegance and passion in a two-hour ceremony at North Philadelphia's Enon Tabernacle Baptist Church. Mr. Frazier, who moved to Philadelphia as a teenager, died Monday of liver cancer. He was 67. Longterm adversary Muhammad Ali paid his respect to the former heavyweight champion, along with fellow boxers Bernard Hopkins, Larry Holmes and Michael Spinks, among other.