Half a century before Vince McMahon’s silicone-cushioned vixens packed arenas for the WWE, platinum blond grapplers with names like Gladys “Killem” Gillem, Diamond ‘Lil, and the Fabulous Moolah stripped down to their swimsuits and wrestled each other on the carnival circuit. It was the 1940s and ’50s and some states, including Illinois and Indiana, were so scandalized they passed ordinances banning men from audiences. The women’s fights, staged in venues such as Andersonville’s Rainbow Arena, were attended by old ladies in big church hats who stood on the sidelines screaming “Kick her! Hit her! Pull her hair!”
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Lipstick & Dynamite, Piss & Vinegar: The First Ladies of Wrestling, a locally produced documentary that has its midwest premiere Sunday at the Chicago International Film Festival, splices rare footage of these old bouts with present-day interviews with members of this first generation of female wrestlers. Now in their 70s and 80s, the women reflect on the glory days, when they crisscrossed the country with unscrupulous promoters, earning $20 a night under the table. Gillem laughs when she recalls the angry townspeople who’d yell “Kill her!” after she beat local boys during “all-comers” carnival matches. When Ella Waldek and Johnnie Mae Young talk about the death of a 17-year-old opponent, Janet Boyer Wolfe, in the ring during a 1954 tag-team match in Ohio, they don’t seem particularly sorry. (To be fair, Wolfe had been ill before the match began.)
“You’re a lady first. You dress like a lady,” Marie Laverne says in the movie. “When you get into the ring, you’re a wrestler.”
Making the movie, she says, has made her a fan. She’s even picked out her own wrestling name. “I’d just be Ruthless,” she says. “That’d be it.”
Price: $11
