Gorgeous George

by John Capouya

  Grant was apprehensive, but when he got to the locker room, George Wagner was calm and professional. There was money to be made, after all, and George had a harder time holding a grudge against another worker, a member of his own tribe, than he did against promoters, the wrestlers’ historical enemies. “Hey, kid,” he said amicably to Grant, who was about ten years his junior, “what are we going to do tonight?”

  “Anything you want, George,” Grant replied hastily. (The promoter hadn’t predetermined this match’s outcome.) George Wagner was generous; he was leaving for Australia soon, so he didn’t mind losing, he told Grant. Neither man had brought his valet, so it was one-on-one. They both strutted to the ring in their Gorgeous robes as “Pomp and Circumstance” played. When the bell rang the two Georges with heads of blond curls approached each other in the same stance, both with their legs bent and their arms extended—the pair resembled Groucho Marx confronting himself in the mirror in Duck Soup.

  Not content with his Gorgeous frauds, Pfefer initiated another assault on George in the late 1940s, using a former policeman from New Jersey named Herman Rohde. Six years younger than George, he was both a weapon for Pfefer and, in his own right, the Gorgeous One’s greatest rival as a performer. First he was Dutch Rohde, then became Buddy Rogers, taking the name of a popular star of 1920s silent films. When Pfefer began booking him, Rogers peroxided his hair blond, though he kept his short, and took to wearing shiny capes and shorter jackets. He was the arrogant, sneering heel without George’s aristocratic airs and more complex grooming refinements. Rogers was also a terrific worker, a handsome hunk with the athleticism to pour on one “flying move,” or airborne stunt, after another. He couldn’t really wrestle at all, but he had the ineffable kinetic knack, as George did, for creating excitement. With Pfefer he took the nickname “Nature Boy,” after the song that was a huge hit in 1948 for Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra, who covered it the same year. (Wrestling wasn’t the only endeavor in which success bred imitation.)

  In June 1948 Pfefer wrote to Hugh Nichols, the promoter at the Hollywood Legion Stadium. “Here is what I want you to do: To make the gorgeous guy look like a lemon, and you can be sure after the first showing of the Nature Boy, Buddy Rogers, they will think nothing more but of Rogers.” A Newsweek story on the real Human Orchid clearly understood Pfefer’s intent. “Imitators are mushrooming all over the country,” it said of George. “A few miles away in Hollywood is a gladiator who has picked his act clean. He is billed as Nature Boy, Buddy Rogers, World’s Champion, a triple steal of misnomery.”

  George made his living fooling people, but he was usually honest with himself. He knew Rogers meant real trouble, and tried to strike back. He called Sam Muchnick in St. Louis, who was fighting with Lou Thesz’s rival outfit for control of that city’s wrestling promotions. George said he wouldn’t perform for the other bunch, and might come in for Muchnick—if the promoter didn’t use Buddy Rogers. In the end, Muchnick couldn’t pass up booking Nature Boy and he brought him his first sellout at Kiel Auditorium, drawing 10,651 fans. In retaliation George came to St. Louis and packed them in for Thesz.

  Like the scorpion who has to sting—it’s his nature—Pfefer was soon threatening to double-cross Muchnick. They patched it up and then, just as inevitably, Pfefer and Rogers had had their own falling-out. Nature Boy decamped without any notice in 1951. Furious, Pfefer had flyers printed up denouncing Rogers and paid to have them plastered up wherever he wrestled. Rogers continued to do well, and like George, he was imitated—or, more charitably, he inspired wrestling homage—for decades (he died in 1992). His most notable modern descendant is Nature Boy Ric Flair.

  George’s rendition of himself was too good. It’s also possible that the demand for Gorgeousness he and Betty created was so great it could sustain more than one supplier. In any case, Jack Pfefer’s sabotage could never derail George’s success in any satisfactory way, not with television giving him such an unprecedented push. Pfefer’s imitation Georges did make him a good deal of money, as did his Angels and troupes of lady wrestlers, and he continued to promote and to punch back at his enemies real and imagined until 1967. Pfefer did get one measure of revenge: He outlived George, dying in 1974 at age seventy-nine. His hatred never abated. The promoter kept fat files of clippings and correspondence on almost all the people he did business with. A few of these manila files bore the stenciled image of a black cat on the outside, meaning Pfefer wished those people ill—and the Gorgeous George file bore that curse mark. Inside it Pfefer kept something to help him gloat, a photograph that ran in Boxing Illustrated showing George slumped in defeat after his last match, awaiting the indignity that followed.

  Chapter 15

  “THEY LOVED ME IN NEW YORK”

  “If they don’t give this guy Gorgeous George an Oscar for the best supporting role of 1947, then Hollywood is rottener than Denmark ever was,” wrote Braven Dyer of the Los Angeles Times. “Gorgeous George is a wrestler. In fact, he’s THE Wrestler.

  “And if you don’t think he had the best supporting role of the year, ask [promoters] Cal Eaton of the Olympic; Mike Hirsch of Ocean Park and Hugh Nichols of Hollywood. Gorgeous George has supported them like nobody’s business.” Dyer also decided that Gorgeous George would be known from now on as G.G. “to save wear and tear on my typewriter.” Some of George’s friends had already begun to call him that, as would his second wife, Cherie. Betty always called him George.

  He’d conquered California, Texas, and most of the Midwest. To become the sensation of the nation as more than just a boastful nickname, though, George needed to extend his reach eastward. He’d already done well in Boston and Montreal and now, he told Betty, the showcase match he’d booked in New York’s Madison Square Garden would strengthen his hold: He’d be the toast of a second coast. This was in February 1949, and for the dozen years previous the Garden hadn’t hosted a single maim-and-maul event. The place held eighteen thousand and wrestling couldn’t fill that kind of space. Promoter Bill Johnston expected the Gorgeous One to change all that, counting on a crowd of twelve thousand for George’s main event with Ernie Dusek. The Ring magazine, which devoted a good many pages to “News of the Mat World” in addition to boxing, predicted a turnout of fifteen thousand. Ticket prices were scaled higher to meet the anticipated demand and ringside seats went for an unprecedented $7.50 a pop. George’s negotiated 13 percent of the gate would mean an enormous payoff.

  La Guardia was no longer the mayor but newly an airport, so when George’s flight landed, it was at La Guardia Field. He was met at the bottom of the plane’s exit steps by a bevy of models with their hair dyed champagne blond to match George’s, and as he made his way across the tarmac two lines of flower girls facing each other tossed rose petals in his path. Surprisingly, George declined to be interviewed upon his arrival but had his valet, Jackson Hunter on this trip, issue a statement to the assembled press. “I am overwhelmed by the tremendous reception,” came the uncharacteristically humble proclamation. “Please assure my fans that I will do my best not to let them down Tuesday evening at the Garden.” With that the two were whisked away by limousine to the Park Sheraton.

  Promoter Bill Johnston gave the match a big push, and the New York papers did their part as well. One preview showed a photo of George labeled “The Aromatic Kid Himself.” He was shown bent over deeply from the waist. “Bow…or Curtsy?” asked the caption. Dusek, a skilled worker and normally a good draw in his own right, was tersely identified as “the Omaha, Nebraska wildcat,” if at all. The match was scheduled for Tuesday night, February 22, Washington’s birthday, and George took this to be a good sign. He often invoked the other George in his exhortations to the press; if someone suggested that his long curly hairstyles were feminine, for instance, he’d explode in indignation. “That’s ridiculous! If you knew anything about history you would never say that. Why, the father of our country and 18 other presidents wore their hair long, and that’s why I do, too.” He’d first noticed this, he added,
when he was very young, while engaged in the intense scrutiny of a dollar bill. George also called one of his most lavish and striking robes “The George Washington.” Made of shimmering, bluish-purple satin, it bore lace trim and rows of hammered silver buttons on the front, mimicking a military tunic, but with a decidedly nonmilitary A-line swell at the bottom of the skirt.

  The day before the match, George was upbeat and confident. He went shopping on Fifth Avenue, strolling along with Jack, and he didn’t stint, buying himself some more gaudy threads. Reporters tagged along, naturally. He paid for his and Jack’s new finery by peeling bills off a fat roll that had recently made a home in his pocket. One observer noticed how few images of George Washington it contained. (Andrew Jackson and Benjamin Franklin wore their hair long, too.)

  In the Garden locker room, though, George’s confidence cratered. On this rainy Tuesday night, before one of the most important matches of his career, he was assailed by a rare failure of nerve. He’d gotten there early for once, and as he sat on a rough wooden bench in front of the metal lockers, his nerves were jangling. Doubt showed on his furrowed face, surrounded by the blond curls. He sat hunched over, forearms on top of his thighs, wearing his aqua-blue trunks, white wrestling shoes, and white bobby socks. Soon he’d put on the white silk robe festooned with lace and pink roses all the way around the hem. His hands, the ones Betty admired when they were courting, were clasped between his knees. Just a few years earlier, on the Northwest docks, they were the reddened, rough hands of a workingman. Later, as Gorgeous George did even more swishing and less actual grappling, they would become the soft, white paws of the pampered. Tonight they were somewhere in between and just now, he saw, they were trembling.

  At times George suffered from claustrophobia; it wasn’t just a word he’d used on the Oregon draft boards. There were seven preliminary bouts, many more than usual, on Johnston’s special card, all of them twenty minutes long. With so many boys working, the damp, sweaty locker room was much more crowded than usual and he began to feel short of air. It had been a long time since George thought of his father, and the warning Poppa Wagner had given him about wrestling, that the son would soon come home broken and poor. George had used that well-intended but fearful remark as motivation, but when it came to him now it brought not energizing anger but an enervating dread. The Gorgeous act was working great in L.A., but this wasn’t L.A. What if they don’t buy it here? George thought. What if they think I’m just some fairy?

  As the preliminary matches dragged on George reached out to another older gentleman with whom he’d have a long and complicated relationship: Jack Daniel’s. George gestured to one of the ring boys, or locker-room attendants, and gave him three dollars, telling him to run out and buy him a pint, and keep the fifty cents change. While the kid was away, George and Jackson finished getting dressed, the valet donning his Prince Albert coat, striped trousers, and a pea-green vest. His balding pate was shiny with sweat; Hunter had never performed in an arena remotely this size and he was as nervous as George. When the ring boy returned with their bourbon, they each took a few belts. Then they could hear that the match before theirs had ended; they were on. George was feeling better now, if not quite back to his usual cockiness. “Well, Jack, here goes nothing,” he said, standing up and looking at his Gorgeous self in the mirror. Then he grinned a quick grin and clapped those hands once in front of his chest. “Okay,” said the platinum ingenue of a wrestling man. “Let’s go to work.” With that he strode from the room.

  New York was not amused. At all. To begin with, hardly anyone showed up. WRESTLING FOLLIES PLAY TO ONLY 4,197, read the Times headline. Beyond that sufficiently disastrous fact, the New York fans, and especially the city’s sporting scribes, had a severe allergic reaction to the Gorgeous act. Jack Hunter conquered his nerves and acquitted himself well, getting the biggest laughs of the night on the way to the ring, though they quickly dissipated in the cavernous, mostly empty arena. Then “Pomp and Circumstance” rang out and soon George began his strut down the longest aisle he’d ever seen. He kept his arms folded across his chest and his nose imperiously high as he went, the light sparkling off his white satin robe.

  Nothing. Oh, there were a few derisive jeers, a few catcalls and “yoo-hoo” hoots. But this audience of first-timers—those who’d never seen George live before, usually the most reactive of fans—showed no shock and very little interest. George sneered his best sarcastic sneer, strutted a little harder, and flitted even more flittingly. Still nothing. When he got to the edge of the ring, he saw the ranks of fedora-wearing, note-taking writers along press row. Seated in his customary spot on the Forty-ninth Street side was Al Buck of the Post, whom George knew bore one of New York’s most influential bylines. A pudgy, balding, and sallow man in his mid forties—he had the “saloon tan,” as it was known—Buck was puffing on his ubiquitous cigarette and the smoke partially obscured his face. George could only get a quick impression, but from what the wrestler could glimpse, Buck wasn’t finding anything very funny.

  George won over exactly one person in the house: Hatpin Mary, a middle-aged scourge named for her habit of skewering wrestlers unwise enough to blunder into her area, Loge Section 36. George bowed in her direction when he got to the ring and she took it as tribute, waving her arms and cheering him in return. The rest of the paying customers booed in a desultory way all the way to the one-fall windup, when George threw Dusek with a series of headlocks he was calling Gorgeous George Specials. He didn’t get heat; they booed because they found the action and the denouement unconvincing. It was the worst possible reaction. The fans didn’t fall for him, and they didn’t hate him—the Garden crowd just found him ridiculous.

  In the most balanced of the next day’s accounts (there were no favorable ones), Times sportswriter James P. Dawson called the match “good, clean fun” and described George’s coiffeur as one “any damsel might envy.” However, he also noted the “guffaws, boos and jeers” from the onlookers. “Technically a succession of five headlocks and a body hold finished Dusek,” he informed readers, “but that was incidental, like the bout itself.”

  “Gorgeous George flopped,” Al Buck wrote in the Post. “The act wasn’t good theater, and what there was to it was stolen by Jackson, a bit player.” His conclusion: “It was the first wrestling show held at the Garden in 12 years. An equal period of time is likely to elapse before another one is attempted.” Even The Ring piled on in its next monthly issue, calling the match one of the biggest flops in the history of sports. “Ringsiders were disgusted,” wrote Stanley Weston, by “a dollar show being passed off as a $7.50 Madison Square Garden attraction.” The press coverage was so surprisingly vituperative that Newsweek told its national audience about those reactions, in a piece entitled “Garden Gorgonzola.” In it the New York Telegraph’s Alton Cook was quoted saying: “I made one mistake. I cleaned my glasses.”

  Why all the vitriol? Carelessly, George wasn’t in top shape and that showed. One New York scribe wrote that the removal of George’s robe “exposed a potbellied freak in aquamarine trunks.” (That must have hurt.) His lack of conditioning may have made some of the supposed mayhem look more feigned than usual. Other scribes resented that wrestling, with TV its accomplice, had become pure show business, no longer the noble, manly art they once thought it was. Arthur Daley, a well-known Times sports columnist, was the most strident. “Once upon a time there were real wrestlers like George Hackenschmidt and Frank Gotch,” he waxed, though whether or not he realized it, their matches were works as well. “But the buffoons and the clowns took over from them…” His conclusion: “If Gorgeous George has not killed wrestling in New York for good and for all, the sport is hardy enough to survive a direct hit by an atomic bomb. It was a most insufferable and obnoxious performance.”

  In this indictment and others there was also an element of regional rivalry. Horse racing’s eastern establishment and the attendant press had dismissed Seabiscuit and his California owner, Charles Howard, in m
uch the same way. New Yorkers were predisposed to reject the flamboyant West Coast phenomenon that was George. “The gorgeous one…is something of an idol in Hollywood’s film colony,” columnist Daley noted with disdain. “California, here he comes! You can have him.” Al Buck also noted in his screed that George was “made in Hollywood, where he is reported to be a tremendous success. He should return there without delay.”

  George was shaken. This setback was unsettling in itself, and worse, it also exposed the utter fragility of his wrestling success. Heat was not just elusive but frighteningly arbitrary—hadn’t he done as good a job as ever putting across the same act? In the extended print beating he administered, Daley described a point in the match when “the glamour, if any, had gone and the show had degenerated into just a tugging match between a couple of sweaty creatures.” But isn’t that what wrestling always is, at bottom? For a boy or an act to go over, the audience has to agree that it’s more than that, to become complicit in the farce and the ballyhoo. The fans’ and newspapers’ refusal, the way they suddenly withdrew their cooperation, was an alarming first that could not, for George’s sake, become a trend. If it did, all the success he’d had so far would dissolve, and he’d be back on the undercard.

  “It was kind of a rough go,” George told Betty over the phone. When he got home, he’d explain. In public, though, the Gorgeous One, his business manager, Johnny Doyle, and the L.A. promoters instinctively knew how to respond to this defeat. Their tactic, the big, blithe lie, has since proved its usefulness in many areas of American life. With no Internet watchdogs giving instant lie to its claims, the next edition of the Olympic Auditorium program trumpeted that “George is back after another great Eastern tour. He’s even more popular in New York today, [and] his recent tour of that section proved this statement. One thing George can always say: ‘They loved me in New York.’”