What I watched: Three early 1950 pro wrestling matches featuring one of the era’s biggest stars, Gorgeous George. All three appear to be from the Chicago territory, and are available on YouTube.
Gorgeous George vs. Frank Talaber (April 14, 1950)
Former boxing champion Jack Dempsey is present as referee. Gorgeous George enters with a red carpet and music, the latter of which is unusual enough to comment on. The announcer describes this as “pallderall and frumpery.” George stalls for a while, and Talaber steps in to mess up his hair, much to his fury. Talaber applies a nice combination body-scissors/chinlock.
George starts getting into it with Dempsey, whining that he was hit by a closed fist. Apparently the two of them had an altercation the last time George was in Chicago. After another twenty minutes or so of this, George starts going for the eyes, and eventually wins the first fall off a headlock takeover.
In the second fall, George stats using his teeth. Maybe Dempsey isn’t a great ref after all. George calls the audience “filthy Chicagoans”, which I may have to use in the future. He puts Talaber in a headlock, but gets rammed into the turnbuckle and hit with a piledriver (!) for the second fall. The match ends with Talaber going for the piledriver again, but George gets out of, and the bell rings to signal that it’s gone to a time limit draw. That’s right, this match went on for an hour. I’ll admit to losing focus at some points.
Gorgeous George vs. Cyclone Anaya (May 23, 1950)
(This match seems to have been removed from YouTube since I watched it, but it’s available on a certain classic-wrestling torrent tracker if you’re really interested.)
George comes out looking positively Roman, with a finely-pressed robe and curled blonde locks. The commentator stresses that he’s a tough guy under everything. Anaya gets control early with a wristlock, and the two trade leg holds. George gets his first heeling in when he tries to pin Anaya with a foot on the ropes. This is repeated about seven times to make sure everyone in the audience gets it.
After Anaya almost catches him with a cradle, George starts using a chokehold. Anaya seemingly knocks George out with a monkey flip (called a “monkey whip”, preposterously), but the heel gets up and pins him with a headlock takeover for the first fall. Anaya does a spinning neckbreaker that George sells like he’s had his neck snapped, then quickly submits George with an abdomnial stretch, called here “the Cobra Twist”. They then both tumble through the ropes and fight in the front row, getting counted out, so the match of course ends in a draw. George gets a handkerchief over his head and celebrates victory anyway.
Gorgeous George vs. Don Eagle (May 26, 1950)
Eagle is working a Native American gimmick, accompanied to the ring by “his pappy Chief War Eagle.” He has a mohawk, possibly because he is a Mohawk. George comes to the ring and disdainfully tosses his hair pins into the crowd. Eagle takes him down with what the announcer calls “the Aboriginee version of the monkey rip.” George starts pulling on his cool hair and Eagle understandably gets upset. He applies a really cool standing Indian deathlock, and George taps out — the first time we’ve seen him lose the first fall
George protests that he couldn’t have lost before getting back to the grappling. He lures Eagles out of the ring and gets him counted out, giving George the second fall. A furious Eagles lays into him with forearm shots, but George ties him up with a kind of one-legged jackknife pin.He has a shoulder up, but the ref counts anyway. The crowd is pissed, throwing things into the ring, and so is Eagles, who decks the referee afterwards. Well, it’s almost a clean finish!
What I thought: Pro wrestling had been around for half a century, and had its share of traveling stars, but Gorgeous George was its first television star. What made him unique was not what he did in ring, but his flamboyant persona — complete with robes, perfume, valet, and that beautiful hair. Wrestling had heels before, mostly foreigners, but no one was really a character like George was. Out of all the early wrestling I’ve seen, he’s the only one who would fit in with the live-action cartoon of 1980s WWF.
What was also notable about George was that he was the biggest star in wrestling, and he was a heel (a villain.) Heels were supposed to be counterparts to the local hero, but although the crowd booed him, George was the one they came to see. He was perhaps the first to embody the push-pull of a great wrestling heel: as much as people hate him, they also love seeing the act.
It was perhaps the way George flaunted the rigid gender roles of 1950s America that made him both infuriating and attractive to TV viewers. With his obvious attention to his appearance, George fit stereotypes of the gay man (although this had to be by implication.) The commentator on these matches does everything to reinforce this impression, with lines like “Don’t tear up the sheets, George”, comments on how he wears make-ups, and repeatedly referring to him as “boy.”
This act’s power certainly came from cultural homophobia, but it also tapped into the erotic discomfort of professional wrestling. George wears light trunks in two of these videos, so that he appears nude on black and white television. If the viewer might feel self-conscious about watching mostly-naked men hug each other on television, they could project their own attraction onto George: they weren’t gay, he was gay, and they hated him.
As wrestling, these matches probably aren’t appealing to a modern fan. The long match lengths mostly consist of slow holds, with falls that kind of come out of nowhere. George was a solid wrestler, but his offense isn’t memorable. On the other hand, his selling (pretending to be hurt) was fantastic. George bumps around the ring like a prime Shawn Michaels (his prettyboy heel descendant), and his long hair accentuates every movement. The crowd came to see him get beat up, and he was going to give them at least a spectacular taste of it.
But enough about George. Let’s talk about Don Eagles. Eagles immediately comes off as the coolest guy on these tapes, with his mohawk haircut and ahead-of-its-time moveset. A guy with his look and crisp striking, who does piledrivers and stands on his head for submissions, could still get over on the indies today.
The George/Eagles match also has a very interesting backstory. Eagles held a version of the AWA championship, although it wasn’t mentioned on the broadcast. The Chicago promoter wanted to hurt his drawing power (and probably his asking rate), so he had the referee give a fast-count to give Eagles a seemingly definitive lost to George. This helps to explain Eagles’ and the crowd’s anger after the match. George is still acknowledged as having been an AWA champion (the biggest title he would hold in his career), although some promotions still recognized Eagles as the champion..
This was part of the appeal of wrestling in the territorial era: every once in a while, things didn’t go according to script. But for television networks, Gorgeous George provided a stable, predictable act that looked great on the small screen.
Coming up next: Studio One has just discovered that politicians are corrupt, and it’s OUTRAGED.
The Eternal Couch Potato 