Author F.X. Toole’s acceptance notices finally are catching up with his rejection slips, thanks to seven Oscar nominations Tuesday for “Million Dollar Baby,” the movie culled from two of his short stories.
Toole’s book on the magic and pathos of boxing, “Rope Burns: Stories From the Corner,” was published to critical praise just four years ago. The film’s success has spurred a re-release of the collection under the “Million Dollar Baby” title.
But while Toole’s literary high life is in its infancy, the life of the man behind that pen name is over.
Jerry Boyd, a writer since he was in his 20s, a boxing trainer and cut man in his 50s and 60s and a fighter against rejection slips for most of those years, died two years ago of complications from heart surgery. He was 72.
“At least, he got a taste of success,” said his son Gannon Boyd, a California salesman. “He got to travel to England and Ireland and trace his ancestry, thanks to early publication of his book there.
“But that early success was nothing like what is happening now, this reward for all those years of work and no vindication. My dad started writing when he was in his 20s . . . novels, screenplays, children’s stories, poetry. . . . He had boxes and boxes of rejection notices. For a while, he resigned himself to not being a writer.
“But when he had a heart attack in the late 1980s, it galvanized his decision that he wanted to write again.”
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He wasn’t published until he was 69 years old.
New York literary agent Nat Sobel, the first person in the writing business to recognize Boyd/Toole’s talent, agreed the writer only got a whiff of the literary and celluloid celebrity heading his way.
After “Rope Burns” was published in England and the United States, Hollywood producer Al Ruddy “called me to say he loved the story `Million Dollar Baby,'” Sobel recalled.
As that and another, “Frozen Water,” were transformed slowly into film narration and dialogue, the author worked with screenwriter Paul Haggis.
“F.X. saw the script before he died,” Sobel said.
He still calls Boyd “F.X.” and “Toole” as he did for most of their years together before he learned the writer’s real name.
When Toole disclosed his true identity so he could cash his long-awaited paychecks as an author, Boyd’s background rivaled that of Hemingway. Born in Long Beach, Calif., to an Irish immigrant father and a mother from California, he pursued occupations from actor to bartender, cement truck driver to private investigator and from creamery vat cleaner to bullfighter. He was gored several times before he quit bullfighting in Mexico. When he opted for boxing, his nose was broken a few times in sparring before he decided to keep his pugilistic experience outside the ropes.
As a cut man, he worked with African-American trainer Dub Huntley in bouts all over the world. Theirs was a partnership as close as that of the Clint Eastwood and Morgan Freeman characters in the movie, said Dean Lohuis, executive officer of the California Athletic Commission.
“I saw them work fighters’ corners as a fine-tuned colorblind team,” Lohuis said. “Jerry chased a dream that finally came to him late in life. Almost too late.”
Huntley said Boyd first came to the gym looking for someone to train him.
“Just so he could learn how to box,” he recalled. “I saw this gray-haired man and thought I’d end up running him out of the gym.
“But it was the other way ’round. He was so patient, I think he became a better trainer than me,” said Huntley, 65, who has been associated with boxing since he was 12.
Toole dedicated “Rope Burns” to God “the eternal father” and Huntley, “my daddy in boxing.”
Two moments with his friend linger in Huntley’s memories.
“About a year before the book came out, he told me he was going to be a published writer. He said, `If the book goes well, we won’t be a trainer and a cut man anymore. We’ll be managers,'” Huntley said.
Then there was the day Boyd walked with Huntley toward the car they were going to drive from Los Angeles to Las Vegas for a bout.
“He asked me, `Will you always be my friend?’ and he started crying,” Huntley said. “He said he loved me and couldn’t make the trip.”
That was shortly before his hospitalization and death.
“I miss him every day and I wish he was here to see all this,” said Huntley, who has yet to see the movie. “I can’t believe what’s happening.”
Boyd did not reveal his alter ego to the boxing world for years.
“[But] I knew he was dabbling in writing,” Lohuis said. “He used to ask me how the commission did this-and-that, wanting to get the details right for a story.”
When Toole’s first published short story appeared in a San Francisco literary magazine, Sobel saw it, found the author and asked if he had more.
“He said he had been writing for a long time and sent stories to me,” Sobel said. “`Million Dollar Baby’ was in that group.”
Screenwriter Haggis, who was nominated for an Oscar along with Eastwood, Hilary Swank and Freeman, confirmed Boyd saw the first draft of the script before he died.
His main concerns were that the movie should retain the ambient essence of boxing and keep the ending.
“I told him the ending was so powerful that I wouldn’t think of changing it,” said Haggis, who kept his word.
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“He was such a fine observer of the world he lived in, an author who let you into his world,” Haggis said.
When they met, he said Boyd “was totally unlike what I expected of a man who was a trainer, cut man and ex-bullfighter.
“He had the eyes of a poet, a soft-spoken educated man.”
Haggis described himself as a casual boxing fan who occasionally attended bouts. He said he and Boyd planned to go to a fight together “but he died before we did.”
A week before the Academy Awards ceremony, Haggis, Huntley and thrice-divorced Boyd’s children, sons Gannon and Ethan and daughter Erin, will attend a gala at Southern California University to accept the university’s Scepter Award for best film adaptation from a book or short story.
And, agent Sobel said, Boyd/Toole was “working almost to the day he died on a novel. I have 850 pages of manuscript and an outline for the story, `Pound for Pound.’ I have a writer working to finish it.
“We may not have seen the last of F.X. Toole yet.”