Jake LaMotta dead: A night in New York with the Raging Bull

Steve Bunce recalls his memorable evening spent with the boxing icon in La Maganette on New York's 3rd Avenue

Jake LaMotta was the inspiration behind Martin Scorsese's 1980 film 'Raging Bull' (Getty)

It was 2001, it was an Italian restaurant called La Maganette on New York’s 3rd Avenue and Jake LaMotta, with me and his seventh wife, sat down at the same table he had dined at for over twenty years. There was, I swear, a red rope surrounding the table and every single Friday Jake took up position, ordered tuna, drank red wine and at exactly the same time each week he dinged his fork against a glass, coughed and stood up. There was utter silence.

On that night he wore a cowboy hat and a smile, he winked at me as he stood and delivered the opening from Raging Bull. He is LaMotta, playing Robert De Niro playing LaMotta playing Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront. He delivers the lines perfectly, every word, every action. He sits and gets a standing ovation.

“You know I made a good fighter out of De Niro, he could have been a pro,” LaMotta told me about six hours later as we stood shivering in the cold outside his apartment on 57th Street. “They made a good movie out of me, they did.”

There was an awful lot to make a movie out of, in all fairness and not all of it was very pleasant. Two days after the meal and the long night with LaMotta I met with Budd Schulberg, who won an Oscar for writing the immortal words that Brando, De Niro and LaMotta so beautifully and famously uttered.

“Jake was a real pain, he upset a lot of people,” Schulberg told me. LaMotta also admitted taking a dive in a 1947 fight, served time for being a pimp, was in a chain gang in prison and performed his stand-up routine at the vilest strip joints, the only places that would have the nuisance, another flat-nosed, old fighter with loose fists. Hey, it might seem harsh, but it is the truth and he certainly polished up his act as he became the ageing bull.

After we left the restaurant we took a cab to Elaine’s, one of LaMotta’s haunts back then. He started to relax - he loved a drink and was a mere slip of a lad of 80 - and let me have the full routine. “Let me tell you about my wives,” he started and then bang, bang, bang the gags came.

LaMotta in his later days (Getty)

Denise, his wife, looked away bored, but Jake would stand and between gags would show me the hook that hurt Sugar Ray Robinson, the way he staggered when caught by Robinson in the famous brawl, how he finished Laurent Dauthhuille in the 15th and last round of a defence with just 13 seconds left when he was losing. It was wonderful, packed with “hot dames”, “bums”, “murderous bums”, “ungrateful bums” and men from the black and white Fifties that were real men when they had to fight. The waterbed, wife and Dead Sea gag made me laugh then and still does, sorry.

LaMotta was a great fighter, tough and hard in the ring. The first man to beat Sugar Ray Robinson, arguably the greatest boxer in history, he finally he won the middleweight world title in 1949 after 88 fights; in 1951 in a fight known as the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre he lost the championship to Robinson in one of the ugliest fights ever seen.

LaMotta in action against Robert Villemain during their famous encounter (Getty)

LaMotta took a fearsome beating on that night, remained upright, throwing punches and covering up desperately. “In the movie, Bobby speaks to the guy playing Robinson and taunts him – never happened, I would never do that; Robinson was a class act,” LaMotta explains. The pair met six times, LaMotta won just the once and it is all part of LaMotta’s great story, part of the glorious legacy he so rightly enjoyed.

Just before we left Elaine’s - we left because Woody Allen was not there and he wanted to introduce me to Woody Allen - to go to another bar, one he called a “blind pig”, he started to tell me about his life in Miami, caught between pimping and telling jokes at strip joints. He told me: “I was the number one playboy in Miami – I had dates with Hedy Lamarr, Jane Russell, Ginger Rogers, Jayne Mansfield and others, but I never got laid by any of them, something always happened,” Denise looked over and finished the conversation with: “Yeah, your big mouth is what happened.”

LaMotta continued talking, throwing punches and telling extraordinary tales long into the dark night. He loved stories, loved the night and loved to fight: he finished with 106 fights and seven wives. He was 95.