Jimmy Cannon
Jimmy Cannon was a prominent American sportswriter born in 1910 in New York's Greenwich Village. Growing up in a working-class family, he cultivated a deep respect for laborers, which influenced his writing style and subjects throughout his career. Cannon started his journalism journey at a young age, working for major New York newspapers including the New York Daily News and the New York Post, where he became the highest-paid sportswriter in the U.S. by 1959. His writing was known for its empathy and understanding, drawing comparisons to literary greats such as Ernest Hemingway. In addition to sports, Cannon covered significant events and issues, including World War II and political trials, reflecting his versatility as a journalist. His connections with notable figures of the era, like Joe DiMaggio and Frank Sinatra, further solidified his status in sports journalism. Cannon passed away in New York City on December 5, 1973, leaving a legacy of compassionate storytelling that resonated with both the sports community and the general public.
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Subject Terms
Jimmy Cannon
Writer
- Born: April 10, 1910
- Birthplace: New York, New York
- Died: December 5, 1973
- Place of death: New York, New York
Biography
Jimmy Cannon was a New Yorker through and through. Born in 1910 in New York’s Greenwich Village to a municipal clerk, Thomas J. Cannon, and his wife, Loretta Monahan Cannon, he was the first of three sons. His father was involved with the Tammany Hall political machine.
Early in life, Cannon developed the habit of wandering through city streets and observing the people he encountered there. He had an inherent respect for hard-working people who labored long for wages barely adequate to meet their basic needs. He felt a true identity with people like the deliverymen, who hauled ice and coal up narrow staircases to apartments on the fourth or fifth floor of the walk-up buildings they serviced. He consistently expressed the humanity he felt for such people in his later writing.
Cannon loved to read, and as an adolescent he haunted the public library near his home. He ended his formal education at age fourteen, when he went to work in the classified advertising department of the New York Evening World. By the time he was sixteen, he was working for the New York Daily News, first as a copy boy and then as a reporter. In 1930, he took a job at the New York World-Telegram, where he remained until 1934. While at this newspaper, he wrote a radio column that attracted the attention of famed journalistDamon Runyon, who admired Cannon’s ability to write with sympathy and understanding about society’s less favored members.
With Runyon’s help, Cannon next found a position as a sportswriter for the New York American, a newspaper published by William Randolph Hearst, where Cannon worked from 1936 until 1939. His next journalistic assignment was as a correspondent for the army newspaper, Stars and Stripes, from 1942 until 1945. A selection of his columns from that newspaper was published in a book, The Sergeant Says, in 1943.
Upon his return to New York in 1945, Cannon embarked on a job as a sports columnist for the New York Post, a position he held until 1959. By the time he left the Post, he was earning a thousand dollars a week, which made him the highest paid sportswriter in the United States. His literary style was often compared to that of Ernest Hemingway, who greatly admired Cannon’s writing.
Cannon came to know many notable figures of the 1950’s, including prize fighter Joe Louis, baseball legend Joe DiMaggio, and crooner Frank Sinatra. In 1957, he moved into a New York apartment formerly occupied by Leo Lindermann, owner of Lindy’s, one of New York’s most celebrated restaurants.
Although he was known primarily as a sportswriter, Cannon also covered sensational news events, like the trial of Bruno Richard Hauptmann for the kidnapping and murder of Charles A. Lindbergh’s baby. Cannon wrote about politics, World War II, and the Korean War. His chief journalistic virtue was his true empathy with the sports figures and other people about whom he wrote. Cannon died in New York City on December 5, 1973.