Later Years
Willard parlayed his boxing fame into an acting career of a sort. He acted in a vaudeville show, had a role in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, and starred in a 1919 feature film The Challenge of Chance. In 1933, he appeared in a bit part in a boxing movie, The Prizefighter and the Lady, with Max Baer and Myrna Loy.
On his passing in 1968, Jess Willard was interred in the Forest Lawn, Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles, California.
In 2003, he was inducted posthumously into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.
Willard and a dispute he had with Harry Houdini is the topic of Andy Duncan's Nebula Award nominated novella "The Pottawatomie Giant."
Read more about this topic: Jess Willard
Famous quotes containing the word years:
“This is rather different from the receptions I used to get fifty years ago. They threw things at me then—but they were not roses.”
—Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)
“Go, and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me, where all past years are,
Or who cleft the devil’s foot,
Teach me to her mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy’s stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.”
—John Donne (c. 1572–1631)