James Brown, John Waters, Bob Dylan, Muhammad Ali.
What do these four men have in common?
Penises, presumably.
Skin, hair, nipples. Other mammalian traits.
I bet they all liked Cheers.
But most importantly – what I’m getting at, the topic of this episode – is Gorgeous George, an old timey wrestler who also had a penis and was a mammal and probably would have liked Cheers, had he lived to see it.
Sadly, he did not.
Each of these men, Brown, Waters, Dylan, and Ali – world changing cultural figures all, their contributions to our modern world incalculable – were inspired by Gorgeous George nee George Wagner, a flamboyant, hulking, blond bombshell of a man who fancied ornate, lacy robes, liquor, and prostitutes, and made his bones faux-grappling with various and sundry half-nude, oil soaked brutes to the delight of shrieking rubes in stadiums and on unaccountably massive early televisions.
He probably inspired others too. They were probably mostly nameless violent lunkheads and drag queens or both, I suppose, which is impressive in itself. Most people, if they inspire anyone at all, only inspire violent lunkheads or drag queens. Rarely is this a significantly intersecting Venn Diagram.
So who was this man who inspired the men who inspired the world, in addition to violet lunkheads and drag queens and violent drag queen lunkheads?
I told you. He was a wrestler. In the 1940’s and 50’s. Now I’ll tell you more.
A pair of anecdotes, to begin: 1929. Just outside of Houston. George Wagner is fourteen years old, living with his parents. He’s dropped out of school and is working odd jobs to support the family because his mother’s sick and his father’s kind of a hapless house painter at a time when nobody can afford to have their house painted. They certainly weren’t going to get their rickety Hooverville shacks painted. What would be the point? I guess personal pride and a desperate grasp for individual expression in a pretty hopeless time, which, when you think about it, is pretty noble and understandable and really the only reason anyone does anything beyond the ruthless necessities of survival. Why do I pay to have my house painted? Why do I wear a sports coat? Why do I speak, for that matter, beyond obtaining sustenance and shelter?
It’s all pretty pointless.
Anyway. Times were tough. Even tougher than normal. But George was a robust young man with not a little innate personal magnetism, and that quality, as it often does, soon opened up a few more opportunities beyond the usual shoveling of coal or bailing of hay or whatever it is that poor schlubs do for money.
I wouldn’t know. I have a fancy desk job and am very well to do.
Specifically, it opened up some opportunities at the traveling carnivals that were so popular at the time. These roving curiosities would often feature – in addition to the freak shows and palm readers and such – strongmen- different from just strong men in that they were employed based on their strongness – and sometimes the strongmen would grapple with each other on a stage, and sometimes when they were done grappling each other they’d challenge folks in the audience to step up and do some grappling as well. Brave, dumb folks’d pony up two bits for the privilege, and, if they won, could pridefully swagger home with twenty times that amount jangling in the pockets of their worn overalls or clasped in their calloused fists if the worn overalls were so worn as to have unfunctional pockets. Often as not, though, the gristly brute that would raise his hand to step up to the challenge was a plant, who would hop up on the stage and handily win, thereby duping the rubes into believing these matches were winnable and taking a shot of their own at taking home the desperately needed winnings. Why, a man could feed his whole family for a week on a crisp fin! Even a crumpled or soggy fin would do the trick. But, invariably, the poor rube would be no match at all for the glistening man ogre who made his living tossing suckers from their backs and lying atop them, chests heaving, for a count of three.
It was a swell time for all involved.
Well, as the story goes, George was in the audience of one of these events, under a canvas tent with 74 other sweaty patrons of the low arts.
He’d already done some rastlin’ by this point. He and his boyhood chums were known locally as the Harrisburg Rats. They’d fight each other privately on a small river island, practicing their moves, and publicly on a sawdust pile next to a fruit cart, which earned them a few nickels from passersby but couldn’t have done much for fruit sales. He’d also done some traditional, excruciatingly dull, two guys on all fours on a mat type wrestling at the YMCA.
As a side note, I myself briefly participated in this deeply unpleasant type of wrestling and won exactly 1 of my 9 matches, because the other guy didn’t show up for that one. The eight other matches were very brief because I didn’t want to be there and would let myself be pinned immediately. There are few things I can imagine worse than the feeling of anxiety brought about by having an excitable, smelly jock kid lying atop you as you wait for an adult in a ridiculous black and white striped shirt to very intensely count to three while several other adults yell at you. Even the smell of those sweat and bacteria soaked foam wrestling mats makes my stomach turn to this day.
Back to George.
OK. So he’s in the tent. It’s hot. Everybody is dressed in wool suits and hats because that’s just how it worked back then. It stinks to high heaven. Not like today where your typical wrestling fan is considered dressed up if there’s a fancy pattern embroidered on the pocket of his jeans and he’s wearing a shirt. Wrestling events still generally stink to high heaven, though.
George is a burly, good looking kid. Kind of a tougher, stouter Jimmy Cagney type. He’s street smart. He’s confident. He’s got the general idea of how this grift works, but he raises his hand anyway, confident that he can flip and pin a drunken carny, strongman or not.
He’s called to the ring, pops off his shirt, submits his quarter, approaches the smirking strongman – bigger than him by four inches and fifty pounds – and surprises the behemoth with his clear knowledge of the ring. He gets the upper hand right away, and the crowd goes wild for the hometown boy – the one they’ve seen getting sweat and sawdust all over their apples, whose pops maybe painted their shed.
The strongman doesn’t like having a brash young yokel getting over on him – the five bones the boy would get for winning come out of his pocket – and he has some go to extra-legal maneuvers to lean on in just this kind of situation. Eye gouging or nut punches, or, if he can get behind the challenger, a sleeper hold that will put him out long enough to end the thing.
This particular strongman goes for the eye gouge. He gets George in a headlock and crams his middle knuckle into the kid’s eye socket. It hurts. George puts up his hands to his face. The strongman uses this opening to flip him onto the mat – just wood with a canvas cover. That hurts too, but George still has his wits and he’s shockingly nimble, almost immediately kicks himself back to standing. He gets the strongman in a headlock of his own, throws him to the mat, jumps on top like a fat kid belly flopping from the high dive at a public pool in a vain attempt to shroud his insecurity in bravado, and holds the bested brute there for a three count. The crowd goes bananas.
The whole thing lasts seven minutes.
George pockets the five dollars, but more importantly, there are wrestling promoters in the audience, and they’re impressed.
George Wagner’s wrestling career has begun.
The second anecdote: 1950. Los Angeles, California. The Pan-Pacific Auditorium. 10,000 in attendance. It’s a night of stars . . . Hollywood stars! An event to raise money for a children’s hospital.
Basically the Ringling Circus but with famous folks standing in for the carnies. Back to the carnies, but fancier now. Do you see what I’m doing here? I’m kind of mirroring the previous anecdote but, like, a ritzy version to show how far George has come. Ok, here goes.
Gregory Peck is there, dressed as a clown. Bing Crosby’s a clown too. Ronald Reagan, in his role as a terrible actor as opposed to a terrible President, is the ringmaster. Buster Keaton does a strongman routine. Harpo Marx dances. It’s quite a scene and sounds like it would have been a real thrill to see in person until you find out that it lasted a full four hours. I’m assuming several audience members died of exhaustion.
So, there are innumerable celebrities on hand to do whatever it is they do. Bing Crosby’s around, for Christ sake. But the top billing goes to our man George Wagner, now universally known as Gorgeous George. He’s famous. Famouser than Bing Crosby famous.
It’s three and one half hours into this cavalcade of egos when Gorgeous George – he’s legally changed his name by now – gets his cue. The remaining, conscious members of the audience muster their last remnants of strength to scoot to the edge of their seats in beleaguered anticipation.
But George doesn’t come out. Bob Hope does, dressed up like a butler, carrying an oversized spritzer of perfume – Chanel #10, according to the label – and a mink rug on a silver serving tray.
Bob Hope? A butler? Why, he’s a very famous comedian! What a farce!
He’s playing the role of Jeffrey, and everyone there knows it. They know George’s whole routine from watching him on television.
Here’s how it goes, basically every time:
His man servant, Jeffrey Jeffries – usually played by a friend – comes out with the tray. He spritzes the ring with the perfume, making it suitable for George, a man of delicate sensibilities who demands fineries, despite his coarse vocation. He places the rug in George’s corner. He stands at attention, waiting for the boss.
Pomp and Circumstance plays over the loudspeaker. Maybe a little on the nose, but effective. Sometimes on the nose is right where things need to be. And then Gorgeous George enters, draped in an elegant robe – one of eighty in his wardrobe – made of lavender silk, trimmed with ermine, dusted with magic, the back embroidered with a diamond accented orchid. He’s waving a huge ostrich feather fan. Looks like one of them fruity French nobles or something.
He’s fabulous and he knows it. His chin is pointed up. His dyed blond hair is done up like a wealthy dowager’s. He sneers. He offers his hand to be kissed, but it is more often than not spat upon. He is horrified by this, but not surprised. These people are peasants, after all.
He arrives at the ring and Jeffries is there to help him in. He strides about, pulling the golden hair pins from his hair and daintily tossing them into the audience, who are booing, but also scrambling to get his discarded hair pins.
Jeffries removes the robe and folds it carefully. George checks his work, makes him do it again. Jeffrey removes several bobby pins from George’s hair – he calls them Georgie Pins and they’re plated with gold. Or spray painted gold, more likely. They hold up his famous blonde hair, done up in what was known as a marcel, long locks pinned against the head in tight waves. Think, Zelda Fitzgerald meets your great grandma but dyed blond. Very elegant.
The crowd is literally booing and hissing at this point. My impression is that this era was almost exactly like a Bugs Bunny cartoon.
How dare he delight us with his homosexual minstrelsy!? Does he think he’s better than us just because we’re a smelly horde too dumb to understand that this is fake and he’s a well-paid professional and self-made millionaire who has, against all odds, clawed his way to the top of an absurd profession and smells much, much better than we do and is incalculably smarter than us?!
Finally George approaches the referee, whose job it is to pat him down and make sure he’s not hiding any knives in his very tiny wrestling underpants, I guess. But George will not deign to be touched by a filthy peasant until that filthy peasant’s hands are properly perfumed, so Jeffries gives the guy a couple squirts of the Chanel #10.
And then it’s time to address the opponent, who has been waiting unnoticed in the corner through this whole interminable charade.
In this case that opponent happens to be Gary Cooper.
He taunts his burly opposition. Or Gary Cooper. The match with Cooper isn’t anything special except that it ends in a kind of hoe down instead of a pin. You know, like a Bugs Bunny cartoon, with Bob Hope and everything.
The opponents circle. He jukes and jives. As a wrestler, George is still surprisingly nimble. The effeminate routine falls away as soon as the bell rings. His falls are convincing and the ability to jump from prostrate to standing hasn’t waned. The crowd goes wild. And then, more often than not, George gets manhandled. The crowd gets a real kick out of seeing his hair get messed up.
He’s not here to win in the ring. He’s here to entertain. The winning comes from the fat paycheck he receives for doing this, and those paychecks are theoretically big enough to keep him in ermine and a lilac Rolls Royce for the rest of his life.
But they don’t, of course.
Gorgeous George had a long career – longer than most. But its end was predictable, if unusually sad.
He drank too much. Whored around. Got divorced a couple of times. Made some bad investments.
He opened a bar that was pretty popular for a while and then wasn’t. He slept on a cot in a shitty apartment.
He tried to make some cash by getting back in the ring, but the results were upsetting. The match they set up for him meant that, if he lost, his opponent would shave his head in the ring. He lost, of course, because that’s how the script was written. And those famous curls were shorn.
There are pictures. They are hard to look at.
Gorgeous George’s body has gone soft. His face is swollen with drink. And the head shaving is clearly causing him real anguish.
And then he died. Not, right there, that would have been incredible. Samson but better. He died alone in his sad apartment, on his cot. The 12th saddest way to go.
Here’s a quick list of the other 11 saddest ways to go, just for kicks:
- Cut down in your prime.
- Hoisted by your own petard.
- Suicide.
- Alone in a nursing home, gazing longingly at a picture of the family that hasn’t visited you in months.
- On a city bus and no one notices until the last stop.
- Losing a courageous battle with cancer right before ever hearing this podcast.
- From a fire while trying and failing to save others from the fire.
- Anne Frank.
- Freezing to death on a park bench.
- Freezing to death on a park bench, holding crying a baby.
- SIDS
Anyway, he died and it was sad. And now, not many folks remember him – directly.
But everybody in the Western world with even a passing familiarity with pop culture feels his impact.
Just about every professional wrestler since has stolen some of his act. Rick Flair took most of it.
James Brown liked the butler and robe shtick so much he got himself a cape man.
Ali actually met George a few times. George saw something in him and invited him to a couple matches. Ali realized that the best way to get people to love you was to get them to hate you first and it made him into a legend.
Dylan said George once shouted something at him in a hotel lobby and it gave him the confidence he needed to pursue his dreams – or something of that nature. Dylan might have just made that up.
John Waters fell in love with drag and the subversion of masculinity because of George. At the time, his old opponent Gary Cooper was the definition of a man. Sullen and strong. Stoic. Dignified. Gorgeous George was something else entirely, but still virulent and aggressively heterosexual, even when running his homoerotic act and taking part in the further, inherent homoeroticism of wrestling. and it went a long way toward the co-creation of Devine, who herself pioneered somehow being fabulous while eating dog shit.
Most importantly, though, Gorgeous George came along at exactly the same time as television and was instrumental in making the new media mainstream. TV stations needed content. Just like the internet does now. I’ve set it before and I’ll say it again: Content providers are the single most important people ever and people that call themselves content providers are heroes.
Anyway – TV needed content and professional wrestling footage was easy to get. It was cheap. And people seemed to enjoy watching little, ridiculous and blurry black and white man get tangled up in each other. It couldn’t be any worse than Dexter, and people inexplicably love that show. George’s character was big enough to be successfully conveyed on the small screen – to stand out from the other grey blobs. He’s probably the only one they could make out, if only because of the hair and robes. So they tuned in, and they kept tuning in and now we have the cultural cesspool that we all love today!
Thanks, Gorgeous George!
