7 Days
23 February 1972
is touted
by Cinerama executives as
“a dramatic and probing
motion picture view of the
aspirations, disappointments and
values of Middle America”. The
movie, billed as “A world where
men and women play by the same
rules”, started its London run at
the Cameo Victoria, last week. It
is a documentary, category X,
which depicts the maddening and
brutal spectacles of roller skate
marathons which are wheeling and
reeling
across
America,
as
unemployment
and economic
depression bite deeper and deeper.
R
oller derby”
Like the great dance orgies shown in,
“They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” the
roller spectaculars provide riches for the
producers, petty cash for all but the star
participants, and escape for the millions
done over by the system.
Roller Derby started with Leo
Seltzer. He was looking for a new twist
to his sordid spectacles of human
over-exertion when he discovered that
roller skating was the most popular
participatory sport in America. By
1935, he had persuaded 20,000 fans to
jam the Colisseum for the premier of
the Seltzer Transcontinental Roller
Derby.
Billy Bogash, one of Seltzer’s
originals, remembers those days, “We
skated for 12 hours, noon to midnight.
Six hours on and six hours off. It was a
partner thing, My mother, the immortal
Ma Bogash, and I were partners. There
was no blocking or anything, then. It
was just a case of speed, endurance, and
general savvy to stay in there for forty
odd days.”
Wayne Robins, a world expert on
Roller Derbys, has written “Skaters
would go up to 150 miles a night. After
a typical 40 day stint, they would have
skated a distance equivalent to going
from New York to California and back
again. The average pay was about a buck
a night —if you were good” .
There followed two years of rolling
boom, until a bus carrying 47 skaters
and trainers blew a tyre on a bridge near
Salem, Illinois, killing 44 of the
occupants. That put the dampers on the
sport, which practically died out during
the Second World War.
In 1949, Seltzer was back booking
the Derby into New York’s 69th
Regiment Armory for 17 nights. On the
first day, he only sold 150 seats. The
next night was TV debut day, so Seltzer
paid people to go. Still, only 400 came
along, but he jammed them altogether,
and got them to scream their heads off,
so it looked good on the cameras. The
next 15 days were a sell-out, and for
two years after, three games a week
were televised, and the first charismatic
heroes of the sport, like Toughie
Brashun and Ken Monte, really made
their names.
But over exposure killed roller Derby
during the middle and late fifties. It
didn’t mix with the stream-lined
bowling alleys and steel bars of the high
flowering of the Great American Dream.
Its current rebirth is a direct result of
the declining social and economic
circumstances of America, which are
pushing peoples minds back into the
culture of the thirties and early forties.
So rolling is back with a whirl right
now. Some three million people across
the US go to the five month Roller
Derby season. Over 25 million home
viewers in 116 cities tune in for the
action each week. A 120 game league
schedule plus a 170-game exhibition
tour takes teams to 100 roller tracks in
different cities throughout the States.
There are even 77 TV stations in Japan
which run video-tapes of American
games.
Skating has got itself another Seltzer,
too. Son of Leo, Jerry Seltzer is
currently Mr. Big roller impresario, and
Rollers after a spell in the Roller Derby
he has linked up with Michael
Hamilburg
to
make
the
film
presentation, “Roller Derby” .
Seltzer jnr. comments, “Little by
little we are by-passing other sports.
Since Roller Derby has outdrawn every
other sport attraction at the Colisseum
for the past two years, the sports world
is beginning to realise that skating is
back as a favourite spectator sport for
good” .
The fans want violence and escapism,
and they get it. Buddy Atkinson, a
former Seltzer snr. star, is now the top
roller
trainer.
“We
have
75%
bloodthirsty, chilling people for fans” ,
he says, “Because of that the game is
more violent than it was in the old
days”.
Jerry is more revealing, “Some say
we’re catering to the silent majority.
But they’re actually the vocal majority.
I don’t like to generalise, but our
crowds are mostly blue collar, men and
women. Yet you get a lot of people that
aren’t. It’s mainly a crowd the elite
can’t identify with.”
It is also a body contact sport, which
counts a lot: “Yeah” , Seltzer jnr. adds,
“I think it’s popular because of the
body contact —and the fact that there
is more continuous action than in
almost any other sport. Also, the Derby
is the only sport where men and women
compete together equally in the same
game” .
It’s the stars at the top who keep the
masses coming back for more. Perhaps
the most famous is Polka-Dot Annie
Calvello, the woman they all love to
hate. “I decided a few years ago that
there were too many blondes on the
team so I dyed my hair green, just to be
different. Now they all want different
colours every game and I have to keep
changing to please them” , she says. She
got dubbed Polka-Dot after she played
before a sell-out audience in Madison
Square Garden with a hair-do of pink,
purple and yellow.
Polka-Dot Annie drives a $9,000
Lincoln Continental. She is hated,
hopefully, because of her politics. “I get
pissed at kids who won’t fight for their
country” , she says. Once a fan lept into
the track and ripped off her blouse and
bra. “Another time this little 90
year-old woman came charging at me
with her umbrella. In Los Angeles, last
season, a woman lost her mind so badly
on one decision that she threw her baby
at the referee. Luckily the ref caught
the kid” , Ann confides.
Joan Weston, one of the San
Francisco Bay Bomber players, is the
acknowledged Roller Golden Girl. She
reckons to make $30,000 plus a year.
Like Polka-Dot Ann, she’s featured in
the film. She comments on the fact that
55% of the audience for the roller
marathons are always women.
“I guess Derby is one sport where
you don’t have different rules because
you’re a girl. In a sense the only really
equal and liberated women in sports are
the rollers” , she says. That’s because in
the rules of the game half of the players
are women who switch round equally
with male team mates. The final score is
compiled from both teams’ efforts.
In the official history of Roller
Derby, Herb Michelson’s, “A Very
Simple Game” , Joan Weston is quoted
as commenting on lesbianism among the
girls on the tracks, which is extensive,
“Sure there are a few girl-girl things
here, but they’re really none of my
business. The only time I’ll interfere is if
it happens on the track in front of the
fans. But you have to stand discreetly
back and not take sides, otherwise. I’ve
tried several times to talk to the young
kids. I’ll say, ‘Look, you know what’s
happening’. And their first reaction is
total shock. But I’ve found that they,
the gay ones, stick to themselves. The
only thing I’ll tell a girl now is how to
dress on the road.”
Also featured in the film are Charlie
O’Connell, “Mickey Mantle of Roller
Derby” , and a die-hard veteran, plus
newcomers like Ronnie Robinson, son
of former boxing champion, Sugar Ray
Robinson.
“In many ways” says Seltzer jnr.,
“Roller Derby is a sport bigger than life;
it’s louder than life. On TV it’s more
colourful than life. The fans get to
know the people. It’s a simple game . . .
the people’s sport.”
Well, that’s one way of putting it. But
roller Derby with its brute physical
competitiveness, the blinding prejudice
of its stars, and the spectacular
exploitation of the masses who watch
and the lower echelons of those who
skate, is also a bloody and degrading
form of escapism. Don’t forget, when
you watch Roller Derby, that like his
dad before him Seltzer jnr. is a
millionaire, whereas poor Mick Snell,
the real-life figure who is frying to make
good in the film, and the hysterical
masses who watch him — ain’t got
nothing. Snell, actor turned roller pro,
says he took up the sport because he
didn t want to make tyres for a pittance
all his life — “I prefered to revolve
round tracks” . But then, there’s
revolutions and revolution.
23
7 Days
23 February 1972
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