Robert Goulet merely went down with the ship.
Had Muhammad Ali and Sonny Liston slugged each other silly for 15 rounds and strengthened Lewiston’s fistic legacy with one of the greatest heavyweight championship fights of all time on the night of May 25, 1965, nobody would have remembered that Goulet botched up his pre-fight rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
But that night’s paying patrons barely had time to sit down before their laughter was replaced by anger at a short, suspicious main event. Consequently, locals still remember Goulet’s gaffe in exaggerated, almost infuriated tones.
“The guy was three sheets to the wind,” said spectator David Bernier, who was a 15-year-old high school freshman at the time. “He finally managed to slur his way through it.”
“A couple of times I heard he went over to Jigg’s, which was a lunch counter across from the post office over near Park Street,” said Lewiston’s Henry Thibodeau. “I guess he had a good time there, because I remember him trying to sing the national anthem, which was a disaster.”
“He was in the bag,” Chuck Frechette said succinctly.
OK, so maybe there’s a seed of truth in every vicious rumor.
Tudi Feldman, who was a hostess at the Poland Spring Inn where Goulet stayed, says that Goulet did attend a cocktail party at dinner, four hours before the bout. But she said he was nervous, not inebriated, on the ride to Central Maine Youth Center.
“I take the blame for it,” Feldman said. “He was going over the words, and I jokingly started singing, O, beautiful, for spacious skies.’ I put the wrong tune in his head.”
Goulet didn’t butcher as many of the lyrics as urban legend would have us believe. Most newspaper stories at the time said he sang “dawn’s early night” and “gave proof through the fight.” His effort was described as off-key and out of synch with organ accompaniment.
In an interview with online boxing writer Barry Lindenman several years ago, Goulet, who moved to Canada when he was 13, took credit only for his mistake on the opening line.
“Even though I had never sung the national anthem, I said OK’ because I wanted to see the fight,” Goulet said. “So I went and had dinner with the Governor (John Reed) that night. I left the table three times to go to the porch and practice.”
Born in Massachusetts, Goulet had strong Lewiston ties. His mother, Jeannette Gauthier, was born and raised in the city.
“The fight lasted a minute and a half, and they blamed me,” Goulet lamented. “I walked into Lewiston, Maine, a hero because I had a French-Canadian background and I spoke their language. The fight lasted a minute and a half. They blamed me, and I walked out of town a bum.”
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