Second of two-part column
Last week’s column took a look at San Antonio’s early wrestling scene, thanks to questions from readers Jesse Arredondo and Ernest Lavin, who asked about the Wrestlethon arena, a midcentury mainstay at 405 E. Josephine St.
The arena was the first space in San Antonio built just for wrestling, with occasional boxing matches hosted on off nights, after decades when the professional sport shifted uneasily from fairgrounds by torchlight to dicey indoor venues and as a despised presence in Municipal Auditorium.
Husband-and-wife promoters Frank Brown and Dorathy Livengood — who retained her birth name — ran the Wrestlethon for nearly 20 years, sticking with a successful formula of weekly wrestling nights with a few holiday specials, featuring a range of performer/athletes in timed bouts (so that none of them went on too long).
Livengood, who started as a wrestling promoter’s secretary, rarely saw a match, since she sold the tickets (usually starting at $2) and handled the cash. Brown, an ex-wrestler, planned the pairings of wrestlers at every level — local favorites, up-and-coming names on the national circuit, female wrestlers (popular since the 1930s) and the heavyweight champions or contenders. Increasingly, this last group were special draws because they were among the stars of nationally syndicated TV shows.
Wrestlethon’s years of operation (1948-1967) corresponded with a revolution in entertainment, as television progressed from an intriguing novelty to a commonplace in nearly every home. Wrestling shows were cheap to produce — the local promoters made the matches and secured the venues, pulled in the fans to cheer from ringside and paid the wrestlers — and the syndicated shows filled the gaps for local stations at a modest cost. Because the top wrestlers worked a national circuit, they were known to fans all over the country, while the local, undercard wrestlers didn’t make the TV cut.
Playing to the cameras, wrestlers increasingly took on character names, costumes and personas. In a San Antonio Light profile, published July 2, 1972, Livengood, reminisced about earlier days when the couple had booked “black-haired George Wagner” in the late 1940s and again a few years later when he returned as “Gorgeous George,” a national sensation with long, blond ringlets. Wagner arrived one night without his valet — part of his act and responsible for spraying the wrestler’s corner with perfume — and asked Livengood to do his hair.
“We tried but we couldn’t find a hairdresser at that time of night,” the city’s first female fight promoter recalled. “So it was up to me. His curls had to be set, rolled up, brushed out — the works. Well, he seemed pleased, and he gave me one of his gold-plated bobby pins with his name on it. That was a nerve-wracker. And it was probably the longest I was ever out of the box office on any one night.”
His “Gorgeous” character kept Wagner’s wrestling career going and thanks to television made him famous even to people who didn’t follow the sport. The Browns — as Wrestlehon’s owners were known, although she kept her name when referred to separately — chose early on to share TV revenues with their wrestlers, after “Wild” Red Berry, Texas state champion and chief negotiator for the wrestlers’ TV rights issued a Dec. 11, 1952, ultimatum: No television or no wrestling. Cameras were set up for taping, but with the threat of a strike, the Browns called it off. Going forward, they shared TV receipts with their wrestlers and began to tailor their cards to the medium’s demands.
As the next two decades progressed, Brown had to tinker with the evening’s programs. While undercard wrestlers still maxed out at 20 minutes or one fall, the heavyweight headliners whose names were known to viewers performed in tag teams, tapping in and out, and went for two out of three falls, giving all of them more screen time. Characters and storylines became more flamboyant and more fixed.
Reader Lavin asked if a wrestler known as “The Destroyer” ever appeared at Wrestlethon, and indeed he did. Richard “The Destroyer” Beyer was here about a dozen times from 1966 to 1968, when he morphed into “Doctor X” on the advice of Vern Gagne, a well-known wrestler turned promoter.
When Beyer, who had earned a master’s degree in education from Syracuse University and had wrestled as an undergraduate there, first turned pro in 1954, he was billed as “The Intelligent Sensational Dick Beyer,” playing on his educational attainment, “scientific” wrestling style and clean-cut looks. He was a “baby-face” cast as a good guy…until the early 1960s, when he put on a red-trimmed, white elastic hood and reinvented himself as a masked wrestler and a “heel.”
As “The Destroyer,” Beyer enjoyed a thriving career here and in Japan, whose top wrestlers often toured the U.S. circuit and vice versa. His Wrestlethon appearances, every few months, followed the same pattern: The promoter would declare that if his opponent could pin him, he would win the right to unmask this man of mystery.
Invariably, “The Destroyer” either won the match, caused a foul that brought it to an end (he lost but wasn’t pinned) or jumped out of the ring to run to the dressing room for a forfeit (still not pinned). In one 1965 tag-team match, he and “The Golden Terror” went up against “Killer” Karl Kox and “The Mummy,” and no one was unmasked.
The popular Wrestlethon seemed as if it might go on indefinitely, but it was taken down by expressway construction. Its farewell program was held Dec. 27, 1967, and the Browns moved their operation back into the Auditorium, where there would be wrestling on Wednesdays “whenever those nights aren’t taken by some other event, either sports or cultural,” reported the San Antonio Express, Dec. 13, 1967.
The Browns continued as wrestling promoters until his death in 1977, after which Livengood seems to have retired. As the Express story said, “Not everything can be spared when progress is at stake….But there are always fond memories when a well-known spot has to get up and go.”
HISTORIC ENDING: The Admiral Nimitz Foundation and the National Museum of the Pacific War will hold the 33rd Annual Symposium, “Home Alive in ’45: Pivotal Decisions to End the War,” online, Sept. 18-19. Marking the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II, the forum will focus on events of its final days and lasting impact. For a schedule of speakers and to register, visit the museum’s website at www.pacificwarmuseum.org.
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