Gorgeous George Read online

  Gorgeous George

  The Outrageous Bad-Boy Wrestler Who Created American Pop Culture

  John Capouya

  To my mother and father

  ON THE GORGEOUS ONE:

  “A mighty spirit. Crossing paths with Gorgeous George was all the recognition and encouragement I would need for years to come.”

  —BOB DYLAN

  “The capes I wear? That came from the rassler, Gorgeous George. Seeing him on TV helped to create the James Brown you see onstage.”

  —JAMES BROWN, THE LATE GODFATHER OF SOUL

  “I saw fifteen thousand people comin’ to see this man get beat. And his talking did it. I said this is a gooood idea!”

  —MUHAMMAD ALI

  “I don’t know if I was made for television, or television was made for me.”

  —GORGEOUS GEORGE

  Contents

  Epigraph

  Prelude

  Act One

  1 “The Biggest Thing on TV”

  2 Harrisburg Rats

  3 On the Carny Game

  4 Possums and Hook Scissors

  5 A Hurting Business

  6 His Gorgeous Muse

  7 Swerves and Curves

  Act Two

  8 Mean Old George

  9 Soul Brothers

  10 A “Home Man”

  11 The Blond Bombshell

  12 The Wrestling Set

  13 Ring Rats and Cadillacs

  14 George vs. George

  15 “They Loved Me in New York”

  16 Packing Them in Like Marshmallows…

  17 King Strut

  Photographic Insert

  18 The Toast of Hollywood

  19 Purple Majesty

  Act Three

  20 “You’ve Changed Enough”

  21 What Bob Dylan Saw

  22 The Copper-Haired Cutie-Pie

  23 Between a Flit and a Mince

  24 Into the Drink

  25 The Orchid and the Butterfly

  26 Shorn by the Destroyer

  27 “The Sports World is Saddened”

  28 A Gorgeous Legacy

  29 The Showman’s Farewell

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  PRELUDE

  There was time, the wrestler thought, for one last look in the mirror. It was a thought that came to him often; not just out of vanity, but due also to a lingering disbelief at what he saw there.

  A few short years ago, he saw George Wagner. His hair was dark, nearly black. He was handsome with rugged features, a muscular athlete in his twenties with strongly defined biceps, a broad back, and imposing V-shaped thighs. In the late 1930s and early 1940s he looked earnest and uncomplicated, like an ambitious professional wrestler—not the biggest at five-foot-nine or -ten and 185 pounds—who’s trying hard but hasn’t quite made it yet. His good looks and appealing mien made him a “babyface,” the wrestling term for the grappler who plays the good guy in the ring, as opposed to the villain, or “heel.” Like all wrestlers of that era, he wore plain dark trunks and black shoes.

  On this night in 1949 he sees Gorgeous George. Standing before a full-length mirror in the locker room at the Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles, the man has been transformed. He still carries the same Wagner body, but now it’s covered, made practically irrelevant, by his shining, floor-length, quilted pink satin robe. The lining and lapels are a contrasting bright yellow silk; on the robe’s shoulders are epaulets of glimmering sequins. A writer here tonight to write a feature on George for Sport magazine declares that “Any woman in town would give her teeth for it.” Around his throat George has wrapped a scarf, also silk, shiny, and pink. Peeking out from under the robe’s bottom hem are his small, almost dainty, size-eight-and-a-half feet in white patent-leather wrestling boots.

  His hair, too, is strikingly—wildly—different. What was short, dark, and straight is now a shrieking platinum blond, long on the sides and in the back. It’s set in a woman’s hairdo of myriad curls and waves known as the “marcel.” Every wrestling fan and practically anyone with a television set knows that this style was created for him by Frank and Joseph of Hollywood. George has a big head; as generations of actors and news anchors will go on to prove, this is an asset on the TV screen. With the halo of bright curls surrounding it, his head looks positively massive, floating above the bright pink expanse of his robe. Through oversight or intention his eyebrows are still dark, though that odd detail may be the least startling thing about him.

  His demeanor, his affect, is jarringly different. Gone is the determined seriousness, the willingness and eagerness to please. Still watching himself in the mirror, George draws himself up higher, puffing out his chest and cocking his head upward in a parody of imperial haughtiness. He’s become some queenly brute, a pampered, pompous glamour puss with a world-class attitude. Gorgeous George now insists on being introduced in the arenas as the Toast of the Coast and the Sensation of the Nation; he also likes to be called the Human Orchid, a sobriquet meant to indicate that he’s a flower of rare and delicate beauty. Fittingly, the prima donna of the mats will appear on the TV show Queen for a Day. Soon he will codify this transformation by legally changing his name from George Wagner to Gorgeous George. Between the black-haired nights of the past and tonight’s post–World War II platinum spectacle, another change has taken place as well: Unlike his previous incarnation, the Gorgeous One is a rich and famous man.

  Now thirty-five years old, George the sissified brute has become the ultimate wrestling villain, the (questionable) man the fans love to hate. When he parades slowly and regally to the ring a bit later, his bearing is disdainful amid the fans’ catcalls, whistles, and boos, that of an exalted personage who, through some misfortune, finds himself among the basest commoners. “Peasants!” he spits out. The “mat addicts,” as the sporting press likes to call them, hurl wadded-up programs, peanuts, coins, and even lit cigarettes at the heel. When he reaches the border around the ring, the apron, George turns and faces his tormentors. “You’re all ignorant peasants!” he informs them, waving his right arm away dismissively. For good measure he declares: “You’re beneath contempt!” This brings absolute roars from the crowd.

  Back in the locker room, before George’s entrance, a taller, thinner, balding man appears in the mirror behind him, wearing a long black morning coat with tails. This mustachioed gentleman plays the role of manservant or valet, a dignified Jeeves-like character who goes by the name Jeffrey Jefferies. Over the years there will be many different valets, including several iterations of Jefferies, before George turns the helpmate role over to his second wife. He calls her his “valette,” pronounced val-et-tay, which he blithely tells everyone is the “correct French way to say it.” The valet helps settle the gleaming satin robe across the wrestler’s broad shoulders. George tells reporters, who breathlessly relay this information to the public, that he has eighty-eight of these custom-made creations. It’s the valet’s job—privilege, really—to keep a chart of which ones the master wears when, so he doesn’t appear in the same finery twice in any one venue. One night it’s the silver lamé and the next it might be the lace number, the one with apple blossoms sewn on its bodice, or the gown with the protruding bustle made of lavender turkey feathers. Or perhaps one of several gowns trimmed with ermine at the cuffs and collars. George recently held forth before a throng of reporters on just which furs might be adequate to grace the Gorgeous corpus. “Mink is so mediocre,” he declared. “I will wear nothing less than ermine on my ring robes.” He explained further that “I owe it to my fans to wear nothing but the most costly and resplendent outfits money can buy.”

  Tonight’s action
is being broadcast live on KTLA, the most-watched station in Los Angeles, and will later be distributed on kinescope, a sixteen-millimeter film of a television broadcast, to cities across the country. Television announcer Dick Lane tells the viewers at home that George pays as much as $1,900 for a single robe. Like the number of robes in his collection, this is a huge exaggeration, but no matter. An American audience still predisposed to believe what it hears—still wanting to believe it, perhaps—is mightily impressed. In 1949, a new car costs $1,650, and gasoline is twenty-six cents a gallon.

  Now Jefferies begins to fix George’s curls, a blond Medusa’s mass, in place with what look like gold-colored bobby pins. However, His Gorgeousness insists these objets be called Georgie pins—who, pray tell, is Bobby? At his countless public appearances George will hand them out by way of inducting fans into the Gorgeous George Fan Club. But before relinquishing the trinket he makes the recipient raise his right hand and repeat this oath:

  I solemnly swear and promise I will never confuse this gold Georgie pin with a common, ordinary bobby pin, so help me, Gorgeous George.

  President Truman’s wife, Bess, is reportedly among those who have taken the oath.

  Catching the valet’s eye in the mirror, George grins at his boyhood friend Jacob Brown, aka Jefferies. “Okay, Jake,” he says, “let’s go to work.” His voice isn’t high or thin, exactly, just more than the resonating chamber formed by his barrel chest would indicate. “Time to give the people what they want.” The Olympic, built on L.A.’s Grand Avenue for the 1932 Olympic Games, is already full to its 10,500 capacity. Because Gorgeous George is headlining tonight, the crowd contains many more women than usual, and in the clamor for the Georgie pins they are the most vocal. George’s vain posturing makes the male “crunch customers” furious, but women, especially older women, are his biggest fans—to them he’s an extremely sensitive, misunderstood lad the other brutes should stop picking on.

  An announcement rings out over the PA system: “Ladies and gentlemen, Gorgeous George is coming!” The fans, men and women both formally dressed to today’s eyes, stir excitedly; they’ve already waited through the undercard, four or five preliminary matches, and they’re primed for the main event. They want George. However, the next thing the audience will see is not George—not yet—but rather Jefferies walking stiffly erect down the long center aisle toward the ring. His expression is completely deadpan, his movements slow and dignified. Not so the crowd, which erupts in laughter at his progress. In front of him Jefferies carries a big silver tray; on it rests a whisk broom, along with some other accoutrements his master might need, including perfume and smelling salts. Between falls the valet will serve tea from it.

  George’s opponent is already in the ring, waiting, wearing some nondescript outfit, the kind George used to wear. When the wrestling begins—when Gorgeous George finally deigns to wrestle—the heel will turn impressively athletic, startlingly fast as he moves from one side of the ring to another. Though it’s not entirely called for in these rigged contests, he does know how to wrestle. Tonight’s script calls for George to play the cowardly heel, and he is ready to answer with kidney punches and eye gouges and other dastardly tricks. George will win, but even more than usual in these fixed bouts, the outcome isn’t really the point, and George’s opponent could be anyone. The main event, what the people paid to see, is Gorgeous George, the strutting star of TV they’re thrilled to watch on their new home screens. Tonight the Olympic fans get to experience him live and in the flesh, to take in his grand entrance and outrageous appearance, his over-the-top flamboyance—his Gorgeosity.

  The next announcement booms out through the speakers: “Ladies and gentlemen, Gorgeous George is here!” But the top of the main aisle is still empty; the headliner hasn’t come just yet. He’s still ensconced in front of the locker-room mirror. At times, and this is one of them, even the Gorgeous One is taken aback. He can’t help but marvel at all that’s happened to him—what he’s made happen, rather. “We’ve come a long way, Sweetie,” he’ll say to his wife Betty.

  Now he looks a little closer into the Olympic glass, scrutinizing this new image, his created second self. The vanity he exudes as Gorgeous George is not entirely an act; throughout his life George Wagner will let few reflective surfaces pass by unexamined. Gazing at his reflection, this transformed man, now a “Human Orchid,” tries to bring back to his mind’s eye what he used to see there. But he can’t, really; George Wagner is gone. Besides, Gorgeous George likes what he sees, likes it very much. He gives up the search and the moment is quickly past. In the mirror the wrestling diva smiles.

  G.G.

  ACT ONE

  “I don’t know if I was made for television, or television was made for me.”

  —GORGEOUS GEORGE

  Chapter 1

  “THE BIGGEST THING ON TV”

  More than a half century later, Gorgeous George in all his vainglory remains a bizarre sight. The combination of those feminine robes and ornate hairdo with his masculine features—including a somewhat bulbous nose, broken several times in the ring—is confounding and, perhaps because of that, strangely compelling. Not to mention hilarious. Back in the 1940s, however, for any man, let alone an athlete, to willingly present himself as a loud, perfumed dandy crossbred with a dowager, and a sissified coward to boot, was stranger still; nearly unthinkable. To Americans of that era, George and his Gorgeous ways were truly outrageous—just the reaction the wrestler wanted.

  In his heyday the strutting wrestler would be chauffeured around the country in long Cadillac and Packard limousines painted orchid, a shade of lavender, to match his namesake flower. In the early, struggling years before, however, he and his young wife, Betty Hanson, careened around the country in a secondhand sedan, as excited as they were flat broke. George Wagner the handsome babyface wasn’t enough of a drawing card, so as they raced to make it to the next arena they improvised on the fly, Betty pushing for more provocative stunts and George putting them all inimitably across. A tiny woman, less than five feet tall, she was his orchid muse and impish co-conspirator. Betty made his first luxurious robes, dyed his hair that champagne-tinted blond, and she may even have coined that fateful nickname, Gorgeous George. Together they created George’s outrageous identity out of thin air, instinct, and imagination.

  To make himself sublimely ridiculous took courage, and what’s more, he and Betty did it all on their own. Unlike the Hollywood movie stars Gorgeous George would later rub egos with, he had no studios supplying him with scripts and directors, or choosing his parts. A feisty “usherette” at a Eugene, Oregon, movie theater, and a cocky roughneck who barely made it to high school in Houston, they became the writers, directors, publicity agents, wardrobe supervisors, and key grips of their own feature presentation, auteurs in orchid.

  After World War II, America was adjusting, re-forming and reassembling itself into what exactly no one knew. But it clearly was going to be different, something new. Then television came and took hold, and Gorgeous George did as much as any single person to ensure that new device became a fixture. He, along with Milton Berle and the lovable Kukla, Fran, and Ollie, were the first true stars of the medium that would change American life, and in that transformation the transformed George became a national celebrity. Just as legions perched eagerly near their radios during the 1930s to follow Seabiscuit’s epic races, millions of postwar Americans gathered—as families, everyone from grandparents to newborns—in front of their massive TV consoles and tiny screens, laughing, hooting, and shaking their heads in disbelief at the Gorgeous One, entranced by the new technology that brought him and their living rooms so vividly to life.

  With television showcasing George’s antics, his wacky confreres, and numerous imitators, professional wrestling became hugely popular, an improbably successful industry. In this, the grunt-and-groan game’s golden age, matches aired every night of the week in what is now called prime time. After all the war’s mortal damage, it seemed the country wa
s ready for a cathartic release and a harmless good time. Television, that amazing new appliance, delivered them, with wrestling supplying many of the belly laughs. “The boys,” as the wrestling promoters called their workers, became well-paid entertainers, and George became the Sensation of the Nation. In 1949 the Washington Post declared NO DOUBT OF IT: GEE GEE’S THE BIGGEST THING IN TV.

  In the dozen or so years that followed World War II, he was ubiquitous: Everyone knew Gorgeous George. The Los Angeles Times reported that many women there were having their hair done in a Gorgeous homage. Popular comedians of the day, including Red Skelton, Jack Benny, and Bob Hope, told Gorgeous jokes. Songs were written about him, including one (lyrics by Borget, music by Joseph Furio) with this chorus: