Boxer Pete Herman: The French Quarter’s Own World Champ
Detail from 1921 promotional poster, Herman won back his title in this fight. Courtesy the Pete Herman family collection by permission from his Herman’s grandson, Fred Holley
April 2025In the early 1900s, a young New Orleans boxing prodigy blasts his way to a world championship and international fame, helping topple discrimination against Italian Americans.
- by Bethany Ewald Bultman
Unless otherwise attributed, images are © the Pete Herman family collection by permission from his Herman’s grandson, Fred HolleyOne of the highlights of the annual Italian American St. Joseph’s Day parade through the French Quarter is the float memorializing the legendary local boxer, Pete Herman (1896-1973), the legendary local boxer.
To the Gulotta family, Herman was their beloved blind father and grandfather. To others, he and his brother Gaspar Gulotta – “The Little Mayor of Bourbon Street” – were colorful nightclub owners.
And to generations of Italian Americans in New Orleans – and the rest of the country – Herman was a diminutive hero whose life began upending the deep-seated national discrimination against them all.
Peter Gulotta: The French Quarter’s Unlikely Champ
The Pete “Herman” Gulotta “float” in the annual Italian American St. Joseph’s Day parade, 2025, by Shawn Fink for French Quarter Journal. See the entire photo album here.
Click here to read Part One of this series, detailing the 1891 lynching.
To those thousands of Italian American children who grew up in the shadow of the savage 1891 Italian lynchings in New Orleans (detailed in Part One of this series), the name Gaspar Marchesi was paired with a warning about the bigotry they faced.
The French Quarter teen had been tried for being in the wrong place at the wrong time during the 1890 assassination of police chief David Hennesy. Marchesi had blown a whistle, and was accused of being a lookout for the murderers. Both he and his father were acquitted in the subsequent trial, yet Gaspar’s father was brutally lynched the next day, along with ten other Italians.
Peter Gulotta was born just five years later, in 1896. His parents, Calogero Gulotta and Fannie Cicero Gulotta, and their sons, Gaspar and Vincenzo had immigrated from Sambuca, Sicily to Convent, Louisiana to become farm laborers. After Peter’s birth in Convent, the Gulottas moved to Houma where they operated a grocery business.
In a leap of faith, Peter and his older brother, Gaspar, came to the French Quarter seeking work. By 1912, Peter was earning enough money shining shoes and hustling as a bellhop at the Monteleone Hotel that he helped his parents move to New Orleans. They established a vegetable stand on St. Claude and Ursuline.
Gulotta soaked up everything about boxing he could by reading copies of The Police Gazette. In those days, the ten dollars French Quarter pro fighters earned for a match seemed like a viable side hustle to Gulotta, who didn’t see a future in selling produce.
As he would later remind local sports writers, “Everything is relative. Remember a plate of red beans and rice cost a nickel back then.”
A portrait of Herman as a young man, courtesy the Pete Herman family collection by permission from his Herman’s grandson, Fred Holley
Then, Percy Henry (Red) Walsh – cigar seller and boxer “rubber” from the Royal Athletic Club (RAC, founded in 1908 in 100 block of Royal) – came into the Monteleone for a shoe shine. The boy spoke to him so passionately about boxing, by the time Walsh’s shoes were polished, he had agreed to train the kid after-hours.
By 1914, the boy of 18 – who had changed his name to Pete Herman to sidestep the virulent national prejudice against Italians – had won a match in Memphis. Weighing only 110 pounds, he fought as a bantam-weight. Thanks to Walsh’s training and his rapid-fire shoe buffing prowess, Pete Herman was transformed into a sports legend, one that Bruce Lee would later credit with helping him craft his East-West martial arts style.
For New Orleans’ Italian Americans, “their” Pete Herman grabbing sports headlines began to take the sting out of the anti-Italian-American propaganda churned out on the front pages of national papers.
Pete Herman Achieves the Impossible
Pete Herman was a meticulous strategic planner. On January 9, 1917, five days shy of his 20th birthday, in front of his hometown fans at the Louisiana Auditorium (Tulane Avenue), the self-taught New Orleans’ fighter got a shot at the World Bantamweight Championship.
The then-current world title holder was Kid Williams, (a Dane, born John Gutenko), a merciless aggressor at the peak of his power. The ‘New Orleans Times-Picayune’ promised local fight fans, “Williams is the 'fightingest' little piece of fighting machinery ever seen in the ring.”
Sportswriters all over the country reminded fight fans of the two fighters’ previous meetings. Even when Williams, “The Baltimore Tiger,” buried his wrist in “Kid” Herman’s stomach, “the plucky little Italian never flinched.” One thing even his detractors agreed on – Pete Herman refused to be knocked down.
To the French Quarter’s Italian American community, it was a David and Goliath struggle. Watching their hometown fighter climb into the ring with a seasoned champ was a metaphor for the perils they faced every day as Southern Italian immigrants in a hostile port city.
As it turned out, Pete Herman had a lot to say with his fists.
Even though the 20-round match ended in a draw, Pete Herman captured the World Bantamweight Title in front of an exuberant New Orleans crowd. He became the first Italian American and the first New Orleanian to hold a world boxing title.
Overnight Pete Herman became a household name across America.
Champ Marries Sweetie on Fight Day
Eleven months later, on November 15, 1917, American newspapers carried the headline “Fear of a Black Eye on his Wedding Day Caused Pete Herman to Wed before Fighting Frankie Burns.”
1917 fight day wedding photo, published in papers across the country
The Bantamweight Champion of the World wed his childhood sweetheart, Anna Le Blanc at St. Augustine Church in Treme. They were both 21.
The purse for Herman’s “honeymoon bout” would earn him $300 per round for 20-rounds. The paper concluded that $6000 would be a nice wedding present for his bride. In a twenty-round points decision, Herman defeated Frankie Burns at Louisiana Auditorium in New Orleans.
Gracious in Defeat
Fighting in Madison Square Garden on December 22, 1920, Herman would finally lose his fiercely held title. Twelve years later, in an interview, he called the loss a result of “hard luck.”
No one, not even the fighter’s wife, knew he’d gone blind in one eye. His manager typed his letters to her so she never knew he was barely able to read or write due to his failing eyesight.
Herman’s fight at the Garden was the last time the fans could smoke at a boxing match there. But that evening, the match drew 14,000 spectators – most of them puffing away.
“All of a sudden the smoke began to affect my good eye,” Herman recalled. “From then on I could hardly see Lynch.”
1921 New Orleans Fighter Wins British Title
Courtesy the Pete Herman family collection by permission from his Herman’s grandson, Fred Holley
But just a few weeks later, on January 13, 1921, Pete Herman fought Jimmy Wilde in London, at Royal Albert Hall. 10,000 fans were present, including Edward, Prince of Wales.
Wilde was favored to win. The legendary Welsh Flyweight Champion was known as the “Ghost with a Hammer in his Hand.” After the Herman’s victory, Wilde graciously conceded to reporters:
“I can sincerely say that Herman beat me because he was the better boxer.”
While Herman returned to the states as the winner, he later confided to several sports writers that he was never paid, because it was argued that he was one pound over the Bantam weight limit. He’d been promised $30,000 to win, but the promoter had skipped town with the gate receipts.
Beating the Odds Again
In just six months, Pete Herman made history again: He became the first boxer to regain his title. New Orleans’ sportswriter Pete Finney recounted later in Herman’s 1973 obituary, “Ebbetts Field (Brooklyn) was the former site of the 1920 World Series. Up until this fight, the Dodgers failed to fill the ballpark.
“When Herman fought Lynch, though, carpenters had to construct bleachers to accommodate the more than 20,000 fight fans. What they didn’t know was that “Kid” Herman was blind in one eye. He still won 13 of the 15 rounds.”
Lights Out in 1922
On April 24, 1922, “Kid” Herman’s career came to an abrupt end in Boston. The scrappy, twenty-six-year-old boxer went blind in the fourth round.
The refs had no idea. Herman continued the match by quietly talking to his opponent, Ray Moore, drawing him closer to deliver such fierce punches that the referee nearly stopped the fight. Pete Herman won by decision. But, he lost his sight due to permanently detached retinas.
By the time Herman retired after eleven years in the ring – with a 100-29-13 record – he was a two-time World Bantamweight Champion (1917-20).
Home is Where the Heart is
Pete Herman was twenty-six when he returned to New Orleans as a wealthy, international sports superstar. He was the father of two toddlers living in a shotgun double with his wife, Annie, uptown on Amelia Street.
Herman, wife Annie and their two children, Courtesy the Pete Herman family collection by permission from his Herman’s grandson, Fred Holley
While Herman had been earning his fame in the ring, his shorter, stouter older brother, Gaspar Gulotta, had thrived on Bourbon Street. Beginning as a young teen, he learned how to mix cocktails and suss-out information. As a big shot in the neighborhood, Gaspar resembled a Buddha in his signature white Stetson, chomping on a big, black Cuban stogie.
Gaspar and his wife, Mae Gassen Gulotta, and daughter, Leo, lived a respectable life uptown. His sister-in-law was a nun, Sister M. Perpetua. That, however, did not prevent Gaspar from becoming the reigning heavyweight of Bourbon Street burlesque, thanks to his younger brother’s financial backing.
Economic opportunities in the French Quarter abounded – in part because of Prohibition: the 18th Amendment outlawing the sale of liquor in the United States took effect in January, 1920. Within a year, New Orleans had become America’s undisputed liquor capital.
Elizabeth Prall Anderson – a friend of William Faulkner and the wife of writer Sherwood Anderson – said of their bohemian crowd in the French Quarter, “We all feel Prohibition is a personal affront and that we have a moral duty to undermine it.”
Ingenuity abounded in these moral duties. Waiters at one Vieux Carré restaurant wore special aprons with concealed bottles of booze. Resourceful local reporters even kept their beer chilled at the city morgue.
Meanwhile, for the Gulotta brothers, the domestic tranquility of uptown New Orleans lacked the infinite delights of the French Quarter.
Within the local Prohibition-era Italian American club owner community, Gaspar functioned as consigliere. Dubbed the “Little Mayor of Bourbon Street,” Gaspar calmed catfights between showgirls and showdowns between thugs. If he had a beef that could only be resolved with his fists, he invited folks to come watch as he settled the score.
In November 1923 – a little more than a year since his brother retired from boxing – Gaspar opened an exotic nightclub on Burgundy Street, La Vida King Tut Café. The décor, food and entertainment were an homage to the discovery of the Egyptian treasure trove tomb in 1922.
Gaspar and his brother became partners in two other clubs; Gaspar’s at 440 Bourbon and Club Plantation at 924 Conti (at Burgundy).
A painting of Pete Herman outside his Conti Street club, commissioned by Herman’s grandson, Fred Holley, painted by the late Deborah Crosby in 1994. Holley noted that the club’s sign was neon, animated so that the arms of the fighter alternated punching.
Beware of a Blue-eyed Man Toting a Golf Bag
Then in May, 1924, national papers ran a scintillating tidbit. Pete Herman’s wife, Anna, was suing the former champ for divorce. According to her petition, Herman rarely spent more than a few minutes at the couples’ Uptown home. Herman was accused of “cohabiting with Norma Wallace” in an apartment behind his Ringside Lounge.
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A few months after she and Herman were paired in the legal notices, the same “Miss Wallace” appeared in the local police reports after her arrest for running a “disorderly house.” Anna withdrew her petition for divorce, but Pete’s domestic bliss seemed to be concentrated on Conti Street.
Miss Wallace, occasionally mentioned in local gossip columns as “The Queen of Dauphine,” was born Norma Lenore Badon in McComb, Mississippi, circa 1900. In her early teens, she was “turned out on the game” in Memphis. By 1916, Wallace was trawling for tricks on the streets of New Orleans.
According to Wallace’s two June-July 1974 interviews (Times-Picayune), she was already well established as a madam when “Pete Herman and I became as chummy as a quarter to nine.”
Once Wallace began operating her house out of the apartment above the Ringside, she cultivated a loyal network of cab drivers and bellhops who received generous “‘house cuts’ for each trick turned.”
With her stable of “clean” girls and a handful of accommodating “gendarmes” who steered clear of Conti and Burgundy, The Queen of Dauphine cornered the French Quarter’s “hoity-toity” sex-for-hire market.
Clients of both sexes could enter via the walk-up entrance on Conti or around the corner on Burgundy. At the Ringside Lounge, patrons could enjoy the floor show, buy a drink or the girl – or both.
By the mid-1930s, Wallace and Herman had established a comfortable colleagues-with-benefits work/life balance, which comforted him through a series of difficult losses.
At that time, Herman’s parents lived at 1918 Dumaine in the Tremé, lovingly cared for by their sons and more than a dozen grandchildren. Calogero Gulotta died in January 1932 and Herman’s mother, Fannie Cicero Gulotta, died five months later. By October that year, a third tragedy struck. Herman spent the night at the bedside of the mother of his daughters, Annie, when she died after a minor surgery.
Wallace recalled (in the 1974 T-P interview) that she and Herman had listened as King Edward VIII abdicated the throne on December 10, 1936. It was of special interest to Pete since he’d met the king at the 1921 Wilde fight.
The couple discussed the implications of the royal sacrifice. Little did they suspect that within a year, their own relationship might lead them to sacrifice - this time with their lives.
The couple’s woes began when the polyamorous Wallace broke off an affair with one of her paramours – the Alabama-born, Sam “Golfbag” Hunt. After a spat, she received a menacing call from Hunt, “Say your prayers, Norma!”
After discovering that Hunt was Al “Scarface” Capone’s “enforcer,” Wallace confided her fears to Herman.
Herman insisted that she “officially” move in with him. He and Gaspar doubled the security at their clubs and alerted the former boxers in the vicinity to be “on the lookout for a guy toting a Tommy gun in a golf bag.”
Gaspar Becomes a Whistle-Blower
Gaspar Gulotta adhered to a strict code: “It is bad luck not to help someone in need.” Norma Wallace pushed that code to the breaking point.
In 1937, as dawn broke on a hot July morning, Herman and Wallace surprised their friends at Club Plantation with the news that they “had just gotten spliced” in a judge’s parlor in Arabi, Louisiana.
On July 27, 1937 papers across the country shared the photo of the adoring couple. The article was headlined “I Will Be His Eyes.” Readers learned that the “Idol of the Sports World” (aged 40) had married Wallace in St. Bernard Parish.
A wedding photo of Norma Wallace and Pete Herman. Herman’s grandson, Fred Holley, is in the background, looking through the family archives. Photo by Ellis Anderson
Mrs. Norma Wallace Badon Gulotta described herself to reporters as a successful 36-year-old businesswoman, marrying for the first time. Successful, but not without help. One of Herman’s grandchildren, Fred Holley, recalled that his grandfather assisted her out of some tax troubles and in return retained a 30% share of her business.
As weeks passed the newlyweds let their guard down in regards to Hunt’s death threats. That’s when a car raced at Wallace out of the dark night, narrowly missing the madam. At that point, Herman’s bodyguard drove the couple to a secluded hideout on the Pearl River.
Meanwhile, Hunt, newly arrived from Chicago, sat upstairs at Ms. Wallace’s bordello downing B&B cocktails, waiting for Wallace to come back so he could kill her. Wallace’s frantic housekeeper called her with the news “He’s flamin’ mad, he’s got a gun and keeps trying to burn your couch in the living room.”
Ms. Wallace later told the Times-Picayune, “I was flaming mad myself.”
Messing with her business was unpardonable, she said! As it turned out, Hunt – like Herman – was an investor in her “house.” He felt betrayed by her wedding.
As Wallace described, “Luckily, Pete’s bodyguard was handy with a rod when Hunt came into the Ringside Lounge, firing away. He barely missed Pete.”
The following day, Gaspar Gulotta called in the chief of New Orleans police detectives, who “had a heart-to-heart” with Hunt. They convinced the gangster to go back to Chicago “before someone’s feelings got hurt.” For years to come, Hunt’s bullets became an architectural feature of the green door on Burgundy Street.
Wallace and Herman’s professional relationship outlasted their marriage. “The trouble was, my husbands all considered themselves married, and I didn’t. Madams don’t make good wives,” mused Wallace in 1974.
The couple divorced on July 12, 1939, although public records indicate they bought property together in 1940.
Boxing remained Pete Herman’s passion. He was a ringside fixture at local boxing matches throughout his life.
In the 1955 movie, New Orleans Uncensored, Pete Herman has a short cameo filmed at St. Mary’s Gym on Chartres. The excerpt below starts at the scene. When Jimmy Anselmo was a kid growing up in French Quarter nightclubs, his dad, former boxing champ Jimmy King, told his son that even though Pete Herman had lost his sight, he still knew how to win a fight. When guys acted up in Herman’s club, he’d tell his doorman to lock them in the men’s room and turn the lights out. After Herman joined them - now on equal footing with the champ - the troublemaker would leave with his tails between his legs.
By the mid-1900s, the once-vilified Sicilian French Quarter, became an exotic paradise of delicious Italian food, nightclubs and jazz. Prosperity, new suburbs and educational opportunities soon allowed Sicilians to become integral components in the gumbo that is New Orleans.
Epilogue
Pete Herman, on his way to England for the fight with Jimmy Wilde. Grandson Fred Holley noted that his grandfather was always a snappy dresser. Courtesy the Pete Herman family collection by permission from his Herman’s grandson, Fred Holley
Norma Lenore Badon Wallace did a stint in jail in 1963 for “escort services.”Then she reinvented herself, pivoting from serving as New Orleans’ longest presiding madame to proprietress of a successful steak house in Jefferson Parish.
In April 1964 she opened Tchoupitoulas Plantation Restaurant in Westwego with her fifth and youngest, stud-muffin husband. Wallace was 65ish. He was 22.
Fred Holley, Herman’s grandson, recalls having dinner there with his family. Wallace even signed a copy of The Last Madam for him.
Her last lover’s departure from her life and her desire to remain 39 forever precipitated her dramatic exit. On December 16, 1974, soon after dictating her memories, Wallace died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Gaspar Gulotta, the leader of the Night Club Owners Association and former member of the mayor’s vice committee, died peacefully in his sleep on New Years Eve, 1957. Mayor Morrison was one of his pallbearers. Reporters noted the tragedy of watching Pete Herman weeping at Gaspar’s funeral at St. Mary’s Italian Church.
Pete Herman: In 1950 when the Duke and Duchess of Windsor came to New Orleans for Carnival, one of the former King of England’s requests was to see Pete Herman again. Herman, according to grandson Fred Holley, was more than happy to oblige as he still hoped to collect the $30,000 he was owed for his 1921 fight in London. Apparently, he did not.
Fred Holley was thrilled when his parents moved back to New Orleans in 1964 to the apartment above the Ringside. As a teen, he got the privilege of walking his grandfather to Tujague’s for lunch or around the French Quarter to chat with his many friends.
Holley’s only regret was that his grandfather passed away before he could accompany him on his annual “pilgrimage” to the Kentucky Derby.
Sports writer Peter Finney recalled his friend Pete Herman, “The way Pete accepted his blindness for 49 of his 77 years spoke well of the man’s courage.”
When Finney had asked the former boxer if he had any regrets, Herman replied, “None at all, I would be a fighter again.” Herman added that whatever he lost because of sight, he made up in friends.
“I’m a lucky man,” Herman said.
Courtesy the Pete Herman family collection by permission from his Herman’s grandson, Fred Holley
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