Life After Boxing
After his retirement Maxim spent time as a stand-up comic, restaurateur, and taxi driver. He also served as a greeter at hotels and casinos located in Las Vegas.
He appeared in Herschell Gordon Lewis's 1963 nudie-cutie Goldilocks and the Three Bares as himself, playing a nightclub owner. The movie was billed as the "first nudist musical." He was prominently featured on the movie poster, with the blurb:
"It's me...Joey Maxim, the former world's light heavyweight champion! I'm one of the stars! My first screen appearance."
The role did not lead to any more motion picture work, though he did appear as an extra in the 1999 film Play It to the Bone.
He was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1994.
Maxim's wife Michelina, with whom he had two daughters, died in 1977.
In February 2001, Maxim suffered a stroke. He died in West Palm Beach, Florida on 2 June 2001. In addition to his daughters, he was survived by his mother, Henrietta Berardinelli, who was 97 years old, and six great-grandchildren.
Read more about this topic: Joey Maxim
Famous quotes containing the words life after, life and/or boxing:
“One can think of life after the fish is in the canoe.”
—Hawaiian saying no. 23, ‘lelo No’Eau, collected, translated, and annotated by Mary Kawena Pukui, Bishop Museum Press, Hawaii (1983)
“Their rebukes have never made me angry, because I have always wondered why they did not rebuke me more. They should have. Their friendly praise has been one of the sweetest, most warming things in my life in the theater. I do go on the stage unafraid of them and with love in my heart for them.”
—Minnie Maddern Fiske (1865–1932)
“I can entertain the proposition that life is a metaphor for boxing—for one of those bouts that go on and on, round following round, jabs, missed punches, clinches, nothing determined, again the bell and again and you and your opponent so evenly matched it’s impossible not to see that your opponent is you.... Life is like boxing in many unsettling respects. But boxing is only like boxing.”
—Joyce Carol Oates (b. 1938)