it was revealed that wrestling was fake in the 50s?

[fg]

I have an old I Love Lucy comic book that I got off of eBay entitled I Love Lucy: Lucy secretly follows Ricky to Florida. In the comic, there is a storyline where Lucy drags her friend Ethel to a job for a stage manager. They drive down to the address in the ad. They find out that the address is Joe’s Gym. They go inside and they see wrestlers practicing moves on each other. Lucy finds out that the ad is for managing a wrestler named Mop Hair Harry.

Mop Hair needed someone to tell him when to holler and groan. He says that actors and wrestlers are the same thing. Yes, this book says that pro wrestling is fake. Lucy says she wants to be in Show business. The wrestler says that he is in Show business and his matches are on national TV. When Ricky (Lucy’s husband) finds out about it at home, he won’t permit it. When Ricky sees Mop Hair Harry in person, he gets frightened and changes his mind.

Match time, Mop Hair is wrestling an unnamed opponent. Lucy from ringside says: “The script says you groan and then he gets you in a hammer lock. When the ref looks away, you pull your opponents hair. When the ref turns around, you act innocent. The next night at the matches, Mop Hair is getting his hair fixed by Lucy. Now it’s time for the match against an unnamed opponent. Lucy is telling Mop Hair to grunt and sell the pain. Ethel is watching the TV monitor at ringside and she asks Ethel how she is coming over. Ethel s says that she isn’t on screen. So Lucy leans to far into the ring and that is when Mop Hair’s opponent grabs her. The ref says: “Get the Dozzy Dame out of here.” Mop Hair takes exception to this and shoots on the ref and throws him out. The opponent attempts to shoots on Lucy which causes skinny Lucy to somehow throw the much bigger person out of the ring in one fell swoop.

Mop Hair takes exception to Lucy upstaging him. Lucy says that all she did was throw him out in one fell swoop and somehow she demonstrates it on Mop Hair Harry. In the final panel, Ricky tells Little Ricky (their son) that Lucy is retiring due to the aches and pains from being a wrestler.

I would post screen caps. But, here is a link.

www.sitcomsonline.com/boards/showthread.php?p=5815982#post5815982

[Spider2024]

I think it was revealed even before that, like the 1940s. While there was suspicion of scripting for a while, the 'big moment' came when one wrestling promoter was basically ostracized from the biz & then decided to sing like a canary to some newspapers, exposing the whole secret.

[rnrk supports BLM]

In the screwball comedy Nothing Sacred, from 1937, there's a scene where slick New York reporter Frederic March unsuccessfully tries to convince small town yokel Carol Lombard that the pro wrestling event they're at is fake. This isn't an extended bit, it's a 1-minute gag that takes for granted the audience already assumes anybody who actually thinks pro wrestling is real has to be incredibly gullible or naive.

To the best of my knowledge (not that I've made an extended study of it or anything), this is the earliest reference in film to pro wrestling being fake, and to the shorthand that anybody reasonably intelligent already knows pro wrestling is fake.

[Deleted]

Promoter Jack Pfefer first went to the press about wrestling being a work in the early 1930s. I would say that there has been doubts to its legitimacy as long as pro wrestling has existed.

[BlackoutCreature]

Former NY promoter Jack Pfefer revealed that pro wrestling was fake and gave away a lot of its tricks and secrets through the now defunct New York Daily Mirror way back in 1933. Supposedly did a lot of damage to pro wrestling in the New York area for the rest of the decade.

[The Thread Barbi]

It was fake in the 50s, but is real now, isn't it?

Am irite?!

[J. Hova]

The original book, "The Fall Guys" exposed the business as being worked and that was in the 1930s along with Jack Pfefer using the nuclear option with the newspapers. It all but destroyed the NYC market to the point that they got virtually no positive press until the 1950s (and gates bottomed out) when Rocca caught fire and started to sell out MSG. From Rocca to Sammartino to Morales back to Sammartino to Graham, etc. as far as huge draws for NYC/Capitol/WWWF/WWF, it would be really fun to see an alternative universe where the exposure doesn't happen, at least not then.

Coincidentally, one of the stories in the book outlines a screwjob in Montreal for the world championship. Sound familiar?

[A Platypus Rave]

Yeah... it's been pretty much an open secret since the 30's.

so anyone ranting about "exposing the business" there's really nothing to expose... and hasn't been to close to 100 years.

[Mozenrath]

Pfefer did it and would threaten to do it elsewhere when he'd promote shows in other territories, that any attempt to keep him out, he'd pull this stunt and kill the territory. It's not like the media would care it wasn't a real scoop, since, well, this was pre-internet. They'd run it in a heartbeat.

I forget if he was the one where Jeff Jarrett's grandmother told him when he took this scheme to Memphis that he was going to wind up getting killed.

[Deleted]

[Clash, Never a Meter Maid]

Well, yeah. I think a lot of younger generations aren’t aware of the history of kayfabe being broken. It was much more of an open secret in the Hulkamania era than we imagine today, even before John Stossel or Vince admitting it in the late 80s.

[Deleted]

I'm always shocked when I see those "when did you find out wrestling wasn't real" threads, because I always assumed everyone went into it knowing it was a form of theater.

Wrestling is a lot like watching a good magician perform. You aren't there because you really believe they have supernatural powers, you're there to appreciate the mastery of their skill while suspending disbelief for a while just for the sake of entertainment.

[XIII]

I always laugh at how Vince Sr. got mad at Hogan and fired him for being in Rocky III when he and the other promoters of the era had a small role in the Wrestler, which featured a bunch of wrestlers. Brother man basically got mad at Hulk for trying to make money outside of wrestling.

[BorneAgain]

Little known fact, Abraham Lincoln himself was blackballed from wrestling for attempting to expose the business in the early 1830s and thus had to settle for a career in politics. His saying about how you can't fool all the people all the time was actually him reusing a statement he'd said to Illinois promoters about how they couldn't hide wrestling's fixed nature forever.

And if someone tells you that's not the real history and what I just said bears little resemblance to Honest Abe's actual life, rest assured that's just the odd legacy of certain people trying to keep 19th century kayfabe to this day.

[Dr. Bolty, Disaster Enby]

Nov 2, 2020 10:41:40 GMT -5 @wvguitar said:

I'm always shocked when I see those "when did you find out wrestling wasn't real" threads, because I always assumed everyone went into it knowing it was a form of theater.

One of the really interesting things is showing indy wrestling or Japanese wrestling or otherwise non-WWE material to a non-fan nowadays. There's such an immediate perception that they're watching something different that the first question is often, "Is this wrestling real?"

The magic still exists in its way, it's amazing.

[The Thread Barbi]

Nov 2, 2020 1:59:15 GMT -5 mj0mn0m said:

Amazing! let's get it to the 100 likes club

[A Platypus Rave]

Nov 2, 2020 10:55:10 GMT -5 XIII said:

I always laugh at how Vince Sr. got mad at Hogan and fired him for being in Rocky III when he and the other promoters of the era had a small role in the Wrestler, which featured a bunch of wrestlers. Brother man basically got mad at Hulk for trying to make money outside of wrestling.

Vince Sr. was mad because he wasn't getting a cut.

[eJm]

Nov 2, 2020 14:14:47 GMT -5 A Platypus Rave said:

Nov 2, 2020 10:55:10 GMT -5 XIII said:

I always laugh at how Vince Sr. got mad at Hogan and fired him for being in Rocky III when he and the other promoters of the era had a small role in the Wrestler, which featured a bunch of wrestlers. Brother man basically got mad at Hulk for trying to make money outside of wrestling.

Vince Sr. was mad because he wasn't getting a cut.

Like Father like Son

[Toates Madhackrviper]

Nov 2, 2020 0:33:38 GMT -5 The Thread Barbi said:

It was fake in the 50s, but is real now, isn't it?

Am irite?!

Funny you should say that, but like a week ago I was watching a an old wrestling match on Youtube from the 50s. Someone in the comments *actually* claimed that wrestling wasn't fake until Vince (Kennedy) McMahon took over the WWF and destroyed the territories. So the match I was watching was actually real, lol. I wonder how many people believe that? It had like 16 likes or something.

[sungod2020]

Nov 2, 2020 11:03:36 GMT -5 BorneAgain said:

Little known fact, Abraham Lincoln himself was blackballed from wrestling for attempting to expose the business in the early 1830s and thus had to settle for a career in politics. His saying about how you can't fool all the people all the time was actually him reusing a statement he'd said to Illinois promoters about how they couldn't hide wrestling's fixed nature forever.

And if someone tells you that's not the real history and what I just said bears little resemblance to Honest Abe's actual life, rest assured that's just the odd legacy of certain people trying to keep 19th century kayfabe to this day.

Wasn't pro wrestling(or what later evolved into becoming that) more or less real at the time? The earliest recorded footage of a pro wrestling match was sometime in the 1910s(its on youtube). I think they started shortening the matches(on purpose) to make it less taxing on their bodies at the turn of the 20th century. I could be wrong though.