John Capouya - Gorgeous George: The Outrageous Bad-Boy Wrestler Who Created American Pop Culture

There was time, the wrestler thought, for one last look in the mirror. It was a thought that came to him often; not just out of vanity, but due also to a lingering disbelief at what he saw there.

A few short years ago, he saw George Wagner. His hair was dark, nearly black. He was handsome with rugged features, a muscular athlete in his twenties with strongly defined biceps, a broad back, and imposing V-shaped thighs. In the late 1930s and early 1940s he looked earnest and uncomplicated, like an ambitious professional wrestlernot the biggest at five-foot-nine or -ten and 185 poundswhos trying hard but hasnt quite made it yet. His good looks and appealing mien made him a babyface, the wrestling term for the grappler who plays the good guy in the ring, as opposed to the villain, or heel. Like all wrestlers of that era, he wore plain dark trunks and black shoes.

On this night in 1949 he sees Gorgeous George. Standing before a full-length mirror in the locker room at the Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles, the man has been transformed. He still carries the same Wagner body, but now its covered, made practically irrelevant, by his shining, floor-length, quilted pink satin robe. The lining and lapels are a contrasting bright yellow silk; on the robes shoulders are epaulets of glimmering sequins. A writer here tonight to write a feature on George for Sport magazine declares that Any woman in town would give her teeth for it. Around his throat George has wrapped a scarf, also silk, shiny, and pink. Peeking out from under the robes bottom hem are his small, almost dainty, size-eight-and-a-half feet in white patent-leather wrestling boots.

His hair, too, is strikinglywildlydifferent. What was short, dark, and straight is now a shrieking platinum blond, long on the sides and in the back. Its set in a womans hairdo of myriad curls and waves known as the marcel. Every wrestling fan and practically anyone with a television set knows that this style was created for him by Frank and Joseph of Hollywood. George has a big head; as generations of actors and news anchors will go on to prove, this is an asset on the TV screen. With the halo of bright curls surrounding it, his head looks positively massive, floating above the bright pink expanse of his robe. Through oversight or intention his eyebrows are still dark, though that odd detail may be the least startling thing about him.

His demeanor, his affect, is jarringly different. Gone is the determined seriousness, the willingness and eagerness to please. Still watching himself in the mirror, George draws himself up higher, puffing out his chest and cocking his head upward in a parody of imperial haughtiness. Hes become some queenly brute, a pampered, pompous glamour puss with a world-class attitude. Gorgeous George now insists on being introduced in the arenas as the Toast of the Coast and the Sensation of the Nation; he also likes to be called the Human Orchid, a sobriquet meant to indicate that hes a flower of rare and delicate beauty. Fittingly, the prima donna of the mats will appear on the TV show Queen for a Day . Soon he will codify this transformation by legally changing his name from George Wagner to Gorgeous George. Between the black-haired nights of the past and tonights postWorld War II platinum spectacle, another change has taken place as well: Unlike his previous incarnation, the Gorgeous One is a rich and famous man.

Now thirty-five years old, George the sissified brute has become the ultimate wrestling villain, the (questionable) man the fans love to hate. When he parades slowly and regally to the ring a bit later, his bearing is disdainful amid the fans catcalls, whistles, and boos, that of an exalted personage who, through some misfortune, finds himself among the basest commoners. Peasants! he spits out. The mat addicts, as the sporting press likes to call them, hurl wadded-up programs, peanuts, coins, and even lit cigarettes at the heel. When he reaches the border around the ring, the apron, George turns and faces his tormentors. Youre all ignorant peasants! he informs them, waving his right arm away dismissively. For good measure he declares: Youre beneath contempt! This brings absolute roars from the crowd.

Back in the locker room, before Georges entrance, a taller, thinner, balding man appears in the mirror behind him, wearing a long black morning coat with tails. This mustachioed gentleman plays the role of manservant or valet, a dignified Jeeves-like character who goes by the name Jeffrey Jefferies. Over the years there will be many different valets, including several iterations of Jefferies, before George turns the helpmate role over to his second wife. He calls her his valette, pronounced val-et-tay, which he blithely tells everyone is the correct French way to say it. The valet helps settle the gleaming satin robe across the wrestlers broad shoulders. George tells reporters, who breathlessly relay this information to the public, that he has eighty-eight of these custom-made creations. Its the valets jobprivilege, reallyto keep a chart of which ones the master wears when, so he doesnt appear in the same finery twice in any one venue. One night its the silver lam and the next it might be the lace number, the one with apple blossoms sewn on its bodice, or the gown with the protruding bustle made of lavender turkey feathers. Or perhaps one of several gowns trimmed with ermine at the cuffs and collars. George recently held forth before a throng of reporters on just which furs might be adequate to grace the Gorgeous corpus. Mink is so mediocre, he declared. I will wear nothing less than ermine on my ring robes. He explained further that I owe it to my fans to wear nothing but the most costly and resplendent outfits money can buy.

Tonights action is being broadcast live on KTLA, the most-watched station in Los Angeles, and will later be distributed on kinescope, a sixteen-millimeter film of a television broadcast, to cities across the country. Television announcer Dick Lane tells the viewers at home that George pays as much as $1,900 for a single robe. Like the number of robes in his collection, this is a huge exaggeration, but no matter. An American audience still predisposed to believe what it hearsstill wanting to believe it, perhapsis mightily impressed. In 1949, a new car costs $1,650, and gasoline is twenty-six cents a gallon.

Now Jefferies begins to fix Georges curls, a blond Medusas mass, in place with what look like gold-colored bobby pins. However, His Gorgeousness insists these objets be called Georgie pinswho, pray tell, is Bobby? At his countless public appearances George will hand them out by way of inducting fans into the Gorgeous George Fan Club. But before relinquishing the trinket he makes the recipient raise his right hand and repeat this oath:

I solemnly swear and promise I will never confuse this gold Georgie pin with a common, ordinary bobby pin, so help me, Gorgeous George.

President Trumans wife, Bess, is reportedly among those who have taken the oath.