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After getting out of reform school, he took up boxing at age 12; one of his early coaches was future screen star George Raft. He won the New York State heavyweight amateur title, then turned professional; for four years in the early '30s he held the light-heavyweight world championship. Damon Runyon, then a sportswriter, nicknamed him "Slapsie" on account of the slapping style of his punches. In the mid '30s he began appearing as a Runyonesque comedic character actor in Hollywood films, and was fairly busy onscreen for about a decade; after 1945 his film work was intermittent. He usually played dim-witted, punchdrunk characters with a tendency toward malapropisms.