by John Capouya
The Labor Temple, a brick building on Fourth Street near Alder, was arranged inside like a theater, so the ring was set up in front, on a raised stage. It held about 1,500 in wooden seats, on the floor level and in the balcony above. On a Monday, there would probably be fewer than 800 paying fans. Portland’s armory, that city’s Friday-night venue, held twice that amount and drew a better-behaved crowd; the Temple was where the rowdies went. The seats rose steeply and the balcony loomed close, practically on top of the stage, so fans felt near the action, almost a part of it, and thus, entitled to participate. In these close quarters heat didn’t dissipate, it intensified.
The ratty dressing rooms were downstairs, reached by a narrow spiral staircase that was really more of a corkscrewed ladder. That stairway was so tight, especially for the broad-shouldered grapplers, that George clutched his precious new robe in front of him as he clambered up, lest he scrape it against the walls in passing. Then he put on the satin creation, which draped him down to his shins. He puffed out his chest and began his strut down the aisle. The fans responded with catcalls, hisses, and jeers. Some of the more beer-sodden marks threw things, but mostly paper; no Coke bottles. The beautiful blue prop was doing its inciteful job, but what drove the audience truly crazy that night had more to do with the wrestler’s art. The lessons he’d absorbed on timing and showmanship—about slowing down and selling his moves more fully—all came together in a flow of improvisations. George climbed through the ropes, hearing the mat addicts’ wrath, and in that moment he decided to bow to the crowd, turning and facing them in all four directions. The blue-collar audience understood this was no sincere homage, that they were being mocked. Men in denim work shirts and rough corduroy pants stood up and yelled insults, “Sissy!” and “Momma’s Boy!” prominent among them. “Who do you think you are?” they demanded.
After the introductions, and more lusty booing, it was time to take off the robe. “I folded it carefully, and placed it in my corner on the stool,” George said. Very carefully. And very slowly. And at that, the loggers, lumberjacks, truck drivers, fishermen, and their companions went completely berserk. “Did you see that, George?” Betty asked him excitedly later that night. He’d seen. It wasn’t just the robe, they marveled together; it was the folding of it, the meticulous care shown to his snobbish finery, that had the fans screaming their leathery lungs out.
“The more they yelled, the more time I took,” George continued, relishing the memory. He’d left the robe and moved to the center of the ring, but now he thought better of it. George went back to his corner and picked the robe up again, refolding it even more deliberately, as the crowd stomped their feet in anger, the referee gestured impatiently for him to wrestle, and his opponent fumed. (Tellingly, in later years no one was sure who George’s opponent was that night; as would happen often, George and his Gorgeousness made that person irrelevant.) In complete control now, he improvised further, coming up with more extemporaneous vamps. “I sneered,” he said, and then he added an inimitable and crucial fillip, a slight, silent head movement that powered his snobbish portrayal, and drove the cascading waves of boos even higher. He identified this signature move with one of his most felicitous phrases, too, saying: “I gave them the high nose.”
Some said Betty fueled the fires as well, that when the first catcalls directed at her husband rang out, she took exception at ringside and called a bellowing fan a few choice names. He returned the insults, or she thought he did, so she hauled off and slapped him right in the kisser. “No, no, that doesn’t sound like me,” was her nondenial denial.
The robe was silk dynamite; it got heat from the fans and ink from the press beyond their imaginings. Immediately Betty began to create more glittering objects of derision. Her vision was bright, to say the least: She saw and sewed in Technicolor. One night in 1944 George swaggered forth in Salem’s Ferry Street Gardens wearing a flaming red gown, lined with white satin, tied at the waist with a matching white sash, and topped off at the shoulders with white epaulets. “Georgie turned the joint on its ear with his usual and hilarious kimono-folding act,” the Salem Statesman reported. “How he did take care of folding that gem!”
Soon George sashayed forth in a green satin number, worn with matching green trunks. For a tiff with Buck Davidson, George was a vision in white brocaded satin, lined with baby-blue silk. To complete the ensemble he carried a baby-blue towel and wore blue shorts with white panels sewn on the sides. George also let it be known that he had insured his new “collection of priceless robes” for five thousand dollars. Working solo and at times with her mother’s help, Betty scissored and stitched furiously to keep him in new finery. When the two of them traveled together over the next few years, she’d pack five robes per trip along with a tiny black Singer sewing machine. After they checked in to a hotel, she’d run out to a drapery shop to find more satin or other materials, then she’d do alterations on the hotel-room floor—shortening a long robe into a midlength cape, changing linings, adding sparkles or sequins—so he’d never appear in the same outfit twice at any venue.
George’s white satin robe trimmed in silver, wrote Register Guard reporter Rolla J. Crick, “would put Caesar to shame.” Mr. Crick noted that this report would be his last before he reported to Uncle Sam’s army. After Wagner took that night’s first fall, Crick wrote, “Pompous George strutted about the ring like little Lord Fauntleroy as much as if to say, ‘Am I not a clever boy?’ The crowd evidently didn’t agree with his opinion judging from the amount of boos and jeers hurled at him.”
George was now taking up to ten full minutes to fold and refold his robe every time out, and the gimmick showed no sign of weakening. He was main-eventing now, packing crunch customers into the bicep bins. One showdown with Walter (Sneeze) Achiu had Ferry Street Garden customers standing in the aisles and another hundred were turned away. On his next match in Eugene the SRO sign was put out again. George issued forth in black velvet with a yellow silk lining and gold sequins on his shoulders. After beating Herb Parks he was escorted from the ring by four policemen while George crowed, “Clear the track for the great Wagner!”
Behind that SRO sign lay an unexpected push, a collateral advantage Betty and George hadn’t counted on. The male spectators were in compliance; they hated the heel with the fancy robes, just as they were supposed to. It was the women at the arenas who surprised the young impresarios. They loved the robes, loved George, and couldn’t wait to see what he’d be wearing next. To find out, many demanded to be taken to the matches, so when Georgie appeared, attendance soared. In the winter of 1944 the Register Guard remarked on how “the women go for that Wagner man.” This crossover appeal to the “soprano fans” would sustain him for the rest of his career. In 1948, after George drew the biggest wrestling crowd in years to San Francisco’s Coliseum Bowl, the next day’s paper declared that “Last night you could not have taken the little lady to see Hodiak [actor John Hodiak, who starred in several World War II pictures] or [Clark] Gable. You’re darn right, she wanted to see Gorgeous George.” Women turned out to see his wild outfits and sensitive-flower act, while men came to see his demise. At least those were the ostensible reasons; on another unspoken level, the male fans clearly enjoyed his outrageous drag act, too, and no doubt some of the ladies responded to the cathartic bloodletting in George’s matches as well.
Back from a trip to Hollywood, George now insisted on being called “The Toast of the Coast.” (A short time earlier he had proclaimed himself “The Body Beautiful.”) An earlier feud with Elton Owen was resumed, allowing that grappler to complain to reporters that “I’m getting tired of that Hollywood panty-waist. Every time he returns from California he acts like one of those big-shots of the films.” And as with many other bits of wrestling hyperbole, there was some truth to that, too. George’s momentum was building and he did not shy away from that fact.
His new costuming also gave George the opportunity for one of his better swerves. He was booked at the Portland Armory wi
th Danny McShain and Betty had spent all afternoon on an especially tricky robe renovation. She came to the arena that night, dressed for the dinner they’d have with Danny and his wife afterward. Betty was sitting ringside with Nola when the announcer called McShain’s name. Out came the handsome heel—wearing George’s shiny robe! As he came into the ring Danny twirled around, then opened up the robe, looking directly at Betty with a grin that only she understood, as if to say, “So, what do you think? How do I look?” Then George came strolling out, casually bare-chested with just a towel draped over his shoulder, and gave her a wink and a grin. Betty had to admit, they’d put one over on her. “I couldn’t really say anything with all the people around me,” she remembered. “I just said, ‘Oh!’ Really, I almost cried.”
“A swerve a day keeps the blues away,” George used to tell Jake Brown, his devoted friend and valet. Which blues he had or whence they came, he didn’t say.
Chapter 9
SOUL BROTHERS
It was the robes that made young James Brown a believer, and then a follower. Every time the younger man (born in 1933) saw Gorgeous George, the wrestler was draped in a different outer layer, another dazzling style in a new jazzy hue. The robes reminded the aspiring singer of the capes worn by superheroes in his beloved comic books. Overall, Brown was drawn to the strutting wrestler—physically, energetically, they seemed to come from the same foundry. Only skin color set them drastically apart. Like the man and entertainer Brown would become, George was not that big or tall, but a dynamo, a muscular athlete with fast, tiny feet, an oversize head, and a wild hairstyle that only he would dare to wear. Brown loved the titles George bestowed on himself, too; this man clearly knew he was special, and he let everyone else know it. The younger entertainer would create his own set of superlative nicknames—the Godfather of Soul, Mr. Dynamite, and the Hardest Working Man in Show Business—and what’s more, live up to them.
The late Brown, who passed away in 2006, had the same needful drive and ambition that young Wagner did. He came up hard, as he put it, so poor he was once sent home from school in North Carolina for being “insufficiently dressed.” Like George he lost his mother, but much earlier, and in an even more devastating way: He was abandoned by her at four years old. Brown had thick features and extremely dark skin in an era in which many whites and blacks saw those as ugly. On the side of Augusta, Georgia, he grew up on—Niggertown—Brown’s shade was known as a “low complexion.” Looking pretty and dressing sharp would be inordinately important to him as an adult, as it was to George.
Brown never finished seventh grade, and just like the lightly educated George, he was a tough businessman and great moneymaker, shrewd about publicity, and foolish when it came to holding on to a dollar. Before they found their callings and their ways out of poverty, both young men worked at menial jobs: Brown shined shoes for three or five cents a pair. “I never did get to a dime,” he said. He also delivered groceries, danced for tips on the street, and broke into cars, for which he went to prison at age sixteen.
In all likelihood, there was no television for inmates in Georgia prisons, circa 1949, but a good house of ill repute might well have had a set. Brown probably first caught sight of George some evening at his aunt Honey’s two-story bawdy house, a combination whorehouse and gambling den, where he was sent to live at about age seven. Or he may not have seen the celebrity wrestler perform until he got out of the jail on Fourth Street at age nineteen. When he did, Brown wasn’t just impressed, but analytical as well. He wanted to be a famous entertainer, a star like George, and he studied the Gorgeous act very carefully.
He began to develop his legendary live act—Brown called these performances “spectacles”—while he was singing in Bobby Byrd’s Gospel Starlighters, which became James Brown’s rhythm-and-blues group, the Famous Flames. His showmanship, he explained in his memoir, I Feel Good, came from three important influences. Only one was musical: Louis Jordan and his Tympany Five, whom Brown admired for their immaculate style as well as their musical technique. Second, growing up, he was entranced by the bold colors and action-packed panels of comic books, reading every one he could get his hands on.
The third element was “the rassler, Gorgeous George, one of the great early stars of live TV [who] added a special flamboyance to his matches.” George’s act was a riot of gaudy color as well, and after Brown saw the Gorgeous One twirl and curtsy in his fancy robes, he explained, he added a towel to his act. He used it like a preacher, to wipe away sweat and as a prop, to flourish and twirl. Soon, though, Brown had his own robes, mostly shorter capes, of red sequins, or shiny gold fabric with his name inscribed in rhinestones on the back. Brown claimed that Elvis Presley took to wearing capes after seeing his fine drapery; if his account is believed, then Gorgeous George indirectly influenced the King as well.
In 1956 Brown had his first big hit, “Please Please Please,” and for fifty years thereafter the climax of his live shows came during this song. In this defining moment there was another nod to George: The Godfather employed a valet, like Jefferies, to achieve what he called “maximum dramatic effect.”
“Ba-by, you did me wrong…You took my love, and now you’re gone…” As JB the despairing lover sings, he is suddenly overcome by loss, TKO’d by love gone wrong. He staggers away from the audience and drops to his knees, then collapses to the floor. He can’t go on—singing or, it seems, even living. From the wings comes a light-skinned black man in a white tuxedo and red bow tie. The “Cape Man,” Danny Ray, bears a lush covering that he drapes over the tormented singer’s back. As solicitous as Jefferies of his master’s well-being, the Cape Man puts a comforting arm across Brown’s shoulders. Suddenly the tortured singer stirs, as if to get back up and into the fray. The valet tries to hold him back, but no, JB can’t be held back—he’s got to go on! The performer struggles to his feet, shrugging the cape off his shoulders, and returns to face the audience at the front of the stage. Once again he sings, screams, shrieks, and shouts, pleading to the love of his life. “Please…please…please…please.”
Often this ritual was repeated two or three times with a different cape in each reprise; the song could go on for thirty-five to forty minutes. Brown was so identified with these showmanship techniques that, to honor the singer at the Grammy Awards ceremony following his death, the valet Ray walked out onstage and silently hung a glittering cape on a singerless microphone stand.
Brown used eye-catching props, broad gestures, and physical pantomime to tell his story, and it was as unsubtle and primal as a grappling narrative of good and evil. The emotions JB conveyed were as extreme as George’s exaggerated portrayals of arrogance and fear, and the soul singer’s melodrama, a cathartic arc of suffering and redemption, could have easily taken place in a wrestling ring. The two men’s images were skillfully crafted and the entertainment they produced was in many ways sophisticated, yet their work was fundamentally raw as well, based in sweat, phenomenal energy, and determination. Brown, a boxer, was as physical and athletic at his craft as Wagner; at times his knees would be bloody at the end of a show. They both shouted and declaimed, in victory and in loss, and their effort and intensity made them utterly compelling—they gave it up and turned it loose.
One specialized in tough truth telling (“a woman got to use what she got to get just what she wants”) and the other in fabulous lies, but both were fervid in getting their messages out: The Godfather and the Gorgeous One would be heard. As a consequence, perhaps, they both had trouble listening. Each adopted a highly sexual persona, though George put a confounding feminine cover on his muscled body, masculine boasts, and athletic prowess. The Godfather’s tight pants and chest-swelling ruffled shirts, as well as his shouted pronouncements about men, women, and love, were pure machismo. Vanity they shared, along with idiosyncratic ideas of male beauty—very few, if any, other men have spent as much time as these two in curlers and under the hair dryer.
When he spoke about George he emphasized showmanship, yet Brown
no doubt absorbed what Muhammad Ali would also take to heart: The way the Gorgeous One defied expectations and insisted on living on his own terms. George got up and did his thing, and he certainly didn’t take no mess. He said it loud; he was George and he was inordinately proud. Most likely James Brown would never have been denied or dictated to, whether he’d seen the rassler or not. But until black pride and anger exploded in the United States in the 1960s, that kind of assertiveness in African-Americans had to stay underground. Decades before James Brown became a man, for example, Jack Johnson the boxer was boastful and showy, including in his appreciation of white women. In his time such “unforgivable blackness,” as the title of a recent documentary about him termed it, would not go unpunished. (Convicted on trumped-up morals charges in 1913, he was jailed and went into exile.) Brown became an outspoken civil rights activist, a black capitalist, and, in a stand that made sense only to him, a supporter of Richard Nixon. His lifelong drive for self-determination, for self-definition, was necessarily different from George’s—his was that of a black man living in America. But the ethos and the images were similar. Before he became Super Bad, James Brown saw that quality brought to life by a man who had the essential, forgivable whiteness to get away with it, strutting in a Gorgeous robe.
This transference fits a pattern of mutual influencing, a racial give-and-take, that has always enriched American culture. Before George suggested flamboyant possibilities to Brown, he may have in turn been influenced by the extravagant black preachers who traveled the South in the 1920s and 1930s. Daddy Grace, also known as Sweet Daddy Grace, wore his fingernails long and painted in bright colors, flashed expensive rings, and drove fancy cars. He also made grandiose pronouncements such as, “I am the boyfriend of the world.” (Another African-American preacher from that era, Father Divine, did him one better by simply declaring that he was God.) Could young George Wagner, still developing his taste for what he thought of as the finer things, have seen one of these grandees drive by in loud, luxurious style one day while he stood on Fannin Street in Houston? Might he have heard any of them on the radio, exalting themselves as they praised God? If he did, George would have remembered.
