Walsh’s continued success on the track and the basketball court kept her name in the sports sections of the Los Angeles press. In December 1953, the Cocoanut Grove hosted the annual Los Angeles Times Sports Awards. Walsh was given a special award for “particularly meritorious performances during 1953.” According to the newspaper, Walsh “stole the show” with her acceptance speech:
My Glendale neighbor, [famed New York Yankee manager] Casey Stengel, asked me the other day, “Stella, what’s the secret of your ability to stay on top?” I looked at ol’ Casey, who hasn’t done so bad himself, and told him, “It’s this way, Case: I don’t smoke. I don’t drink. And—I didn’t go out with boys till I was twelve!” . . . People keep asking me why I never married. I tell them that I’ve been running all my life—and where men are concerned, I’m just too fast for ’em! . . . I’m starting to take up golf seriously this spring, and you tell that Didrikson to watch out. I’ll catch her in two years!15
Walsh was even a minor celebrity in Tinseltown, appearing on Groucho Marx’s television quiz show You Bet Your Life. The show was as much Groucho’s vehicle to crack jokes at the expense of the contestants as it was a real quiz show, but Walsh loved the publicity and was proud to recount her remarkable career. The exchange went as follows:
Groucho: Stella Walsh, eh? One of the greatest women athletes of our time. The female Bob Mathias.16 It’s a great honor to have you here, Stell. Stella, where are you from?
Stella: Well, I come from a little village in Poland called Wieś Wierzchownia.17
Groucho: And your name is Stella Walsh? That isn’t a Polish name.
Stella: My name is really Stanisława Walasiewiczowna.18
Groucho: What was your name again?
Stella: Stanisława Walasiewiczowna.
Groucho: That’s good with a heavy cream sauce, isn’t it? Well, Stella, I know you’ve been a headliner in the sports pages for a good many years, and this is kind of a delicate question, but how old are you?
Stella: I’m forty-three.
Groucho: Well, you don’t look it. What are some of the titles you hold?
Stella: Forty United States championships, twenty-two Polish national titles. Of course the Olympic title, and a number of world titles. . . . I won the greatest woman athlete of the half-century award, in a poll.
Groucho: Who did the voting?
Stella: It was a newspaper poll.
Groucho: One “poll” would naturally vote for another “Pole.” How many records do you hold, Stella?
Stella: I hold over one hundred records in various countries.
Groucho: Now that you are too old for competition do you keep in condition?
Stella: Oh, I’m not too old for competition. Last year I won the overall pentathlon title. And of course I expect to defend it this year. And the interesting part about my competitors, most of the contestants weren’t even born when I was winning my first championship twenty-five years ago.
Groucho: Stella, I must say I admire your athletic achievements. I can say that because I’m an old sport myself. There’s an old joke . . . the guy says to the girl: “Do you like indoor sports? Yes, if they go home early.”
Stella: If they go home early it’s no sport.
Groucho: Well, I just thought I’d throw that in . . . a joke.
Stella: I thought I’d just throw mine in too.
Groucho: Would you mind picking me up and throwing me out?19
Groucho then moved on to the quiz part of the segment. Walsh had moved to California in part to train for the 1952 and 1956 Olympic Games. She was well aware of where the Olympics were held. Groucho asked, “What is the proposed site of the 1956 Olympic Games?” Walsh quickly answered, “Melbourne, Australia.” Groucho then tossed another softball question: “The last Olympic Games were held in 1952. In what city were they held?” Walsh blurted out, “In Helsinki, Finland.” Now confident, Walsh and her fellow contestant risked half of their money on the last question, which, of course, had little to do with the Olympics. “In fencing,” Groucho asked, “What do you call the protective pad on the end of a foil.” Neither Walsh nor her partner had a clue that “button” was the right answer.20
In the mid-1950s, the IOC again took up cases like Walsh’s—athletes who had competed for one country in the Olympics but had changed citizenship. The IOC also considered athletes who had married a foreigner and taken the citizenship of the spouse. Walsh kept abreast of these developments with the hope of trying for one more Olympics, although she would be forty-five years old in 1956. She was still dominating Southern California track meets, and in May 1955, she ran in the Command Performance track meet in East Los Angeles to raise money for the 1956 U.S. Olympic team. Walsh was pessimistic about the U.S. women’s chances of beating the Soviets at Melbourne, “but we’ll give them a good run for their rubles,” she said. On January 31, 1956, Los Angeles Times columnist Jeanne Hoffman joked, “Yankee hanky-carriers would stand a still better chance if stellar Stella, 44-year-old ‘jumping bean’ who refuses to be a jumping has-been, were eligible.”21
The Olympic Charter of 1955 still prohibited competitors from competing for two different countries, stating, “It is not permissible for a competitor having once worn the colours of a country in the Olympic Games to wear those of another country on a future occasion except where his former country or place of birth has been incorporated in another state.”22 Walsh petitioned the IOC on the basis that the Communist People’s Republic of Poland was an illegitimate successor to the interwar Republic: “The government which I represented [in 1932 and 1936] does not exist,” she argued. “The Russians are opposed to it, but I believe it will pass if it comes to a vote.”23 In the fall of 1955, Walsh decided that if she was not allowed to compete for the U.S. Olympic team in Melbourne, she would quit running.
In early 1956, Walsh wrote John Jewett Garland, the U.S. delegate on the IOC, saying, “If I were now to represent Poland in the Olympic Games, I would have to accept the Communist faith, which I do not want to do; and, of course, I will not do.”24 Brundage, who was a strict constructionist of the Olympic Charter, would not budge. Walsh’s exhortations fell on deaf ears.25
The IOC met shortly before the start of the 1956 Winter Games in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, and proposed adding the wording that a “woman competitor having once worn the colours of her native country in the Olympic Games is granted the right to wear also the colours of her country through marriage.”26 The resolution was adopted, and as Ned Cronin of the Los Angeles Times wrote, “Stella could take a crack at the 1956 Olympics if she corners an American husband between now and the tryouts this summer.”27 He doubted that Walsh could find love in such a short time.
Walsh had to find an American spouse quickly, with or without love. One possibility was Harry Olson, an old acquaintance from Cleveland now living in the Los Angeles area. The arranged marriage happened fast. On August 15, 1956, Walsh and Olson drove from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, Nevada, where they were married in a quick ceremony at one of the many wedding chapels in the gambling mecca. There are no known witnesses or photos of the ceremony.
Little is known about Olson, an aviation company draftsman from Northridge, California, about twenty-five miles northwest of Los Angeles. Some reports claimed that he was a former prizefighter. This fact would have suited Walsh fine, because Babe Didrikson had been able to tamp down criticism of her masculine mien by marrying professional wrestler George Zaharias, whose bad-guy act earned him the ring moniker the “Greek Hyena.” Didrikson could look positively demure and feminine next to her muscle-bound spouse, and she knew it. A Los Angeles newsman once asked her, “Tell me, Mrs. Zaharias, of all the records you’ve broken and all the events you’ve won, what was the single most thrilling experience of your life?” Without a pause Babe replied, “The first night I slept with George.”28
Walsh’s marriage to Olson is a mystery. Walsh t
old the Los Angeles Times on August 16, that she had met the thirty-three-year-old Olson six years earlier in Cleveland and that they had reconnected in Los Angeles: “She said they had been going together for the last year and a half, and had been planning marriage.” If it is true that they had discussed marriage, it was connected to Walsh’s hope to become eligible to run for the United States at Melbourne.
Walsh used her husband’s last name on and off for the rest of her life, either Stella Walsh Olson or Stella Walasiewiczowna Olson. “Olson” at the end of her name helped mute the whispering about Walsh’s sexuality, which had only increased as Walsh, now in her forties, continued to dominate the U.S. Track and Field Championships. Although she was married for only a short time, the name Walsh Olson confirmed her status as a married woman for the rest of her life. She kept the name until she died in 1980, although the Plain Dealer’s obituary did not call her Walsh Olson and “Olson” does not appear on her gravestone.
Walsh was desperate to compete in another Olympics, and this was clearly a marriage of convenience. The Los Angeles Times headline on August 16 read, “Stella Walsh Marries; Eligible for the Olympics.” She even told the press that “her marriage would assure her eligibility for the Olympic team if she is successful in the [Olympic] trials.” The New York Times announced, “Stella Walsh, the forty-five-year-old track star, was married last night in Las Vegas to Harry Olson. . . . The bride hopes to compete for the United States in the Olympic Games at Melbourne, Australia, this year.”29
Four years later, on March 3, 1960, Plain Dealer columnist Hal Lebowitz confirmed that “at age 45, in an effort to become eligible for the ’56 Olympics, Stella married a U.S. citizen.” Lebowitz added that “at last reports she is still happily married.” There is no evidence that Walsh and Olson ever lived together or that they ever divorced. Curiously, many of Walsh’s biographical references list the date of her marriage as 1947, the same year she received U.S. citizenship. If Walsh had married nine years earlier, it would inoculate her from accusations that she married simply to be eligible for the 1956 U.S. Olympic team.
Immediately after the wedding, Walsh flew to Philadelphia for the AAU Championships, while Olson stayed behind in Los Angeles. She intended to go on to the U.S. Olympic Trials later that summer in Washington, D.C. Walsh was confident that she would qualify for the Olympics in the 200 meters at the trials at American University. She was still dominating that event at AAU meets in California. As the Los Angeles Times put it on April 27, 1956, she was the “ageless wonder of the spike-and-girdle set.”
Competing for the Southern Pacific Athletic Association, Walsh finished third in her heat in the 200 meters and was not among the top three in her 100-meter heat. She failed to qualify for the finals in either event. She finished a distant sixth in the long jump. Walsh had set a world record at 19 feet, 9¾ inches in 1938, which would have beat the trial’s winning mark of 19 feet, 9¼ inches, but in her mid-forties Walsh could no longer jump that far. Once again she said that her track and field career was over.30 A month later, Babe Didrikson died of cancer at the young age of forty-five.
Walsh’s failure at the 1956 Olympic Trials seemed to be the end of her dream to compete again in the Olympics. She would be nearly fifty years old by the time of the 1960 Rome Olympics, too old to contend. In the fall of 1956, she said she would run in a few more local meets and then hang up her spikes. “I’ve had my share. After all, this is my thirtieth season. . . . For years I’ve wanted to take up golf but never had the time. From now on I’m going to concentrate on just two things: being a good housewife and a fair golfer.”31
Walsh could not stay away from the thrill of competition on the track. Hoffman called her the “Eternal One.” Sport was her claim to fame, her life’s work. Unlike music, art, writing, or other more sedentary endeavors, athletes face an early end to pursuing their passion, and Walsh kept postponing her retirement. In 1957, she took a train from Los Angeles to Cleveland to run again at the AAU Championships in Shaker Heights, a suburb only about six miles from her family home. Hampered by a pulled thigh muscle, she failed to qualify for the finals in the broad jump, discus, and the 220 yards. After the meet, Walsh again pledged that she was done with the track and said she was taking a position with the U.S. Olympic Women’s Track and Field Committee, which was headed by her neighbor and former discus champion Frances Kaszubski. “It has been my life’s dream to get to the Olympics as a representative of the United States,” Walsh told the Plain Dealer. “And this [job] may be it. Track has been very good to me, and I hope I can pass on some of my knowledge to the upcoming young prospects.”32
In 1958, the AAU added the 440 and 880 yards to the women’s track program, and the IOC resurrected the 800 meters for women after a thirty-two-year hiatus. Walsh had broken through class, ethnic, and gender barriers to compete in sports, and now she tried to push the limits imposed on her by nature. She no longer had the explosiveness to win the sprints or the broad jump, so she concentrated on the middle distances. The 1958 AAU Indoor Championships happened to be in Akron, Ohio, and an exhibition 880-yard run was on the program. Walsh and three teammates from the Southern Pacific Athletic Club went to the meet. Walsh also wanted to qualify for a nineteen-woman team that was scheduled to go to Moscow in July. There was still opposition to the 800 meters on the Olympic program, so Kaszubski addressed the competitors before the race: “Ladies, please don’t collapse and embarrass me. Run under control and with a smile on your face.”33
Grace Butcher, now running for the Cleveland Magyar Athletic Club, was surprised to see the forty-seven-year-old Walsh, her old mentor, warming up for the half-mile. “I can’t picture myself beating the incomparable Stella Walsh,” Butcher thought, “but I will do my darndest to stick with her.” Butcher’s diary entry recalled her winning effort: “I found myself setting pace, having started on the pole. So I settled into an easy tempo and held it, waiting for two things: First, when was I going to get tired . . . and second, when was somebody going to challenge me? And there was nobody.”34
Walsh came in third and was gracious in defeat. “Nice going, Grace,” she said. Walsh was still the biggest name in women’s track, and the Plain Dealer did not even mention Butcher in the headline, which read, “Walsh Finishes Third.”35 The two met again at the outdoor championships in Morristown, New Jersey, in May. Butcher came in second, and Walsh finished fifth. Butcher went on to win the 800 meters in the 1959 AAU Outdoor Championships, but a foot injury hampered her in the 1960 U.S. Olympic Trials and she did not go to the Rome Olympics. Back in California, Walsh won the 440 and 880 yards in two meets before heading to the Soviet Union in 1958, for the first of a series of groundbreaking dual meets.
In the last years of Stalin’s life, relations between the Soviet Union and the United States reached their nadir. After he died in 1953, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev opened a new era in relations with the West. Recognizing that a nuclear war with the United States was suicidal, he called for “peaceful coexistence.” In 1955, Khrushchev met U.S. president Dwight Eisenhower in Geneva, the first summit between Soviet and American leaders in a decade.
Khrushchev’s exposé of Stalin’s crimes at the Twentieth Party Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in early 1956 emboldened Poles and Hungarians to challenge their Stalinist regimes. The Polish Communists resolved their political crisis by putting an anti-Stalinist at the head of the PZPR, but Hungary’s rebels called for an end to the Communist regime altogether. The Hungarian revolution in the fall of 1956 was a serious threat to Soviet bloc solidarity, and Khrushchev was not about to give up the security belt in Eastern Europe that the Soviet Union had won in World War II. He called in the Red Army to end the revolt. More than two thousand Hungarians lost their lives. An estimated 200,000 Hungarians left the country after the failed revolution, among them stars from the celebrated national soccer team.
The lowlight of the 1956 Melbourne Olympics was the semifinal
water polo match between Hungary and the Soviet Union, when a Soviet player hit a Hungarian on the side of the head, opening a deep cut above his right eye, leaving the pool red with blood. Outraged Hungarian fans threatened to attack the Soviet players, and the referees ended the match with Hungary ahead, 4–0. Half of the one hundred athletes on the Hungarian Olympic team defected after the Melbourne Games.
During the 1952 presidential campaign, Eisenhower had promised to liberate Eastern Europe from the shackles of Communist rule. That was a hollow commitment; the West made no move to support the Hungarian rebels in 1956. When the Soviets successfully launched “Sputnik” into outer space in 1957, U.S. leaders panicked because the Soviet Union had achieved technological superiority. Still, cultural exchanges between the superpowers became commonplace. In 1959, Khrushchev visited the United States, going to a farm in Iowa and then to Los Angeles. The famed Ambassador Hotel, which had wined and dined Walsh and the other athletes at the 1932 Olympics, hosted a dinner for the Soviet premier. Khrushchev was disappointed when his scheduled trip to see Mickey Mouse at Disneyland, which had been built four years earlier, had to be cancelled because of security concerns.
In 1958, the Soviet Union and the United States began holding annual dual track and field meets. Walsh was selected for the team that went to Moscow in July. She was delighted at the opportunity to run against the country that had crushed Poland’s independence after World War II: “The Russians avoided me all during my prime,” Walsh declared. “Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to run them off their feet.”36 The Soviets had not ducked Walsh personally, of course, because the USSR did not participate in the Olympics until the 1952 Helsinki Games, when she was still ineligible to run for the United States.
The Forgotten Legacy of Stella Walsh Page 17
