Joe E. Brown Defeats Man Mountain

Northern Advocate, 29 July 1939, Page 3 (Supplement)

Joe E. Brown Defeats Man Mountain

Cnee upon a time the popular phrase was “mere fun than a barrel of monkeys.” To-day it's become: “more fun than a ringful of wrestlers!” Not that there ever arc more than two wrestlers in any one ring, where the sport is taken “seriously.” But those two grapplers can provide more fun and more excitement than ever the circus. Their grunts and groans, their laboured muscular efforts and equally laboured facial contortions all add up to entertainment of the righest possible merit. Blindfolded wrestling in which eight or ten persons grope for each other in the ring while a gentleman with a padded pole prods them from the ringside, wrestling in mud, or lady “rasslers” are all modern refinements of an age-old sport. But it is the “big” match between two grapplers which hasj made wrestling a nation-wide entertainment form. Such a match is pictured in “The Gladiator,” Columbia comedy, which stars Joe E. Brown as a scientificallycreated superman. The usual wrestling match—as in “The Gladiator” —is for the “champeenship of the World,” since there are about sixty claimants to the title, each .with his devoted following. Brown is the challenger in “The Gladiator,” and Man Mountain • Dean appears as the world champion, a title which, incidentally, he claims in real as well as reel life.

The bouts go three falls to a finish, and it is very rare indeed when a bout ends after the second fall. The customer must get his money’s worth, and the wrestlers cater to the customer. The trick holds and histrionics created for audience excitement include the “airplane” spin,” in which one grappler is lifted overhead, spun around until he is presumably dizzy, and then cither slammed to the ring floor or tossed into the lap of some innocent newspaperman; the “running dive,” in Iwhich a grappler takes off from the centre of the ring, hoping to butt his opponent in the stomach; the “lynch act,” in which the ropes are twisted around the opponent’s neck in an attempt to strangle him into submission; the “back-flip,” in which a man is smacked in the chin, so that he turns a back-flip, arises unsteadily to his feet to be clipped again, etc.