A few months after the “Rumble in the Jungle”—Muhammad Ali vs. George Foreman in Zaire on October 30, 1974—Neil Leifer, who’d photographed the bout for Sports Illustrated, had a memorable encounter with Norman Mailer. It came at a party the writer George Plimpton held at his New York home for those who’d covered the fight.
Leifer spotted Mailer that night standing by the pool table. He was pleased to see him; after all, they’d soon be collaborating on a book of photographs of Ali that Leifer’s pal Lawrence Schiller was putting together, one promising to do for the heavyweight champion what Schiller and Mailer had done the year before in their fabulously successful book about Marilyn Monroe. How thrilled he was, Leifer told Mailer, to be a part of his new book with Larry Schiller!
