Milwaukee’s Ned Day was America’s Best-Known Bowler of the 1930s and 1940s

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Photos courtesy Clayton Trutor

Ned Day - 1952 Collectible Wheaties Cards

Collectible Wheaties cards featuring bowling champion Ned Day from 1952.

Milwaukee’s Ned Day didn’t start bowling until he was 18 years old. It didn’t take him long to establish himself as one of the sport’s best performers. Between the mid-1930s and mid-1950s, Day was the country’s most accomplished professional bowler. In 2000, Bowling Magazine ranked him as the fifth-best bowler of the century. Day was inducted into the American Bowling Congress Hall of Fame in 1952. “Gentleman Ned” was known for his smooth delivery, the sweeping hook of his balls, and the dapper manner in which he presented himself. For a time, Day controlled a Milwaukee-area bowling empire that made him a wealthy man. It all disappeared in his final years.

Edward Gately Day was born in Los Angeles, California on November 11, 1911. His family moved to Milwaukee when he was six and later settled in West Allis. He attended West Allis High School, where he was a standout swimmer, football player, and track athlete. It turned out that bowling, which, by the 1930s had become one of Milwaukee’s favorite past times, would serve as Ned’s stairway to stardom. He learned to play at the alleys of Harry Ganzel, one of the era’s top professional players and the owner of several bowling establishments in Milwaukee County.

Ned bowled a 63 in his first game. He learned quickly and developed a methodical approach to the game, learning directly from Ganzel and refining his technique to the point of elegance. Within a year of his first frames, Day rolled the first of his 84 perfect “300” games.

Classic League

Initially, he starred in the Milwaukee Classic League, then the city’s top bowling league. By the mid-1930s, he was asserting himself as one of the country’s best players in head-to-head “match tournaments” which took place before large crowds at major venues across the United States. He competed in bowling matches at New York’s Madison Square Garden as well as the Chicago Auditorium, which was an opera house. Day combined these match games with bowling tutorials at local alleys, which he conducted free of charge. These high-profile events helped expand bowling’s reach. Between the mid-1930s and the mid-1950s, the number of Americans who bowled regularly quadrupled from approximately five million to more than 20 million.

When not bowling in “match tournaments,” Day played for traveling bowling teams such as Milwaukee’s Heil company team and the Buddy Bomar Falstaffs, a club based in Chicago.

In 1936, Day led a U.S. bowling team to an international meet in Berlin that preceded the Berlin Summer Olympics. Day was the standout on the American team that won the tournament.

National Champion

The following year, Day won his first national match bowling tournament championship. In total, he won the national match tournament six years running until World War II intervened. Day’s streak of six consecutive years as the national match bowling champion was never matched.

He served briefly in the Navy and received a medical discharge less than a year after enlisting.

Day returned to the professional ranks and continued his winning ways, earning the Bowling Writers Association of America’s “Bowler of the Year” Award in 1943 and 1944. Soon, Day developed a celebrity that extended beyond the bowling alley. He appeared in a series of “how to” film shorts that were shown before feature length movies during the 1940s and 1950s. During his time in Hollywood, Day mingled with the stars and developed friendships with a number of major players in the movie business.

Day counted silent film star Harold Lloyd among his close friends. Lloyd was a bowling aficionado and used Day as a ringer on his bowling team when Ned was in southern California.

White House Bowling

Day helped President Harry S. Truman break in the White House’s first bowling alley in 1947.  He had supper with the president and then enjoyed an evening of bowling with the leader of the free world.

Day was known to be a good public speaker and an excellent teacher of the game. He dressed in custom made suits and cut a striking presence away from the lanes. During the 1940s, the Chicago Tribune hired him to teach a series of weekend bowling schools. Later, Day wrote several “how to” guides on bowling.

Aside from winning bowling tournaments, Day made a substantial living for many years in the bowling business and by endorsing a wide range of products.

Day owned several bowling alleys and pro shops in Milwaukee County. By the time Day retired from the professional circuit in 1955, he owned a half-dozen establishments in Wisconsin and one in Southern California.  For a time, Day collected a royalty on all Brunswick bowling products sold in the state of Wisconsin.

Day’s endorsements extended beyond the lanes. He served as a pitch man for Camel cigarettes and Gulf motor oil during the 1940s. Nevertheless, Day resided in a relatively modest home on South 92nd Street. Apparently, he took an easy-come, easy-go approach to finances.

Despite his significant earnings, Ned Day ran into money problems during the ‘60s. He was known as a profligate spender and was an eager gambler. Many of his business closed abruptly. His remaining bowling pro shop was raided by federal agents in 1965. A substantial gambling operation emanated from his store. Day was never indicted in the large-scale federal inquiry but that was the end of his pro shop.

Final Years

Nearly broke, Day tried to earning a living by starting a used bookstore on South 16th street. The establishment was known as “Ned Day’s Bookstore” and sold second-hand paperbacks. He lived by himself in an apartment attached to the store.

In June 1970, Day was seriously injured in a late-night, one-car accident on Highway 74. He crashed into a home on Main Street in the village of Lannon. The Milwaukee Times article on the crash noted that police recovered a money roll that Day had in his passenger seat with more than $1,400 in cash. Day suffered a concussion but was soon released from the hospital.

Even with a diminished reputation, Day was a major draw in the Milwaukee area. A standing room only crowd of more than 1,000 packed West Allis’ Hickey’s Broadway Bowl to watch Day play a pair of April 1971 exhibition matches. Day suffered a stroke at his bookstore and died alone on Thanksgiving Day 1971. His body was discovered the next day. He had turned 60 two weeks earlier.

Day was married and divorced twice. He had three children—two daughters, who married and remained in Milwaukee, and a son, Ned Day Jr., who became well-known in his own right.

Ned Day Jr. tried to follow in his father’s footsteps but wasn’t quite a world-class bowler. Instead, he took up a career in investigative journalism. During the 1970s and 1980s, Day Jr. worked for a string of newspapers and television stations in Las Vegas. Day’s stock and trade was investigating corruption at Las Vegas casinos, namely their connections to organized crime. Day ruffled enough feathers among mobsters that someone fire-bombed his car in 1986. He survived the incident but died a year later in Hawaii while snorkeling. The coroner in Hawaii determined his cause of death to be a heart attack but his death less than a year after a car bombing led many in the press and the public to suspect that there was more to the story.

While neither Ned Day Sr. or Jr. are household names at this point in Milwaukee, both men earned unique forms of notoriety and lived as larger-than-life characters in their respective communities.