She's a Knockout!

by L. A. Jennings

  The newspaper indicates that La Marr’s boxing career was a hoax, but a story in the Evening Independent claims that while her title of countess was fake, her boxing was real, although not necessarily in the ring. La Marr certainly knew how to defend herself: She once knocked out a bandit who tried to hold her up and scared off his cronies.[30]

  La Marr asserted her own skill in the ring in 1925, when she declared to a judge (she was being arraigned for failing to keep a muzzle on her terrier) that she “knocked out twenty-five women and five men in Europe,” but that no one would fight her in the United States.[31] She challenged Babe Didrikson to a match in 1933.[32] Didrikson, considered the greatest female athlete in the United States at the time, was training to fight the other famous Babe, the great Bambino, Babe Ruth himself.[33] She trained at Artie McGovern’s famous gymnasium in January 1933, where she did an extensive and exhaustive workout, including a turn on the rowing machine, a routine on an exercise bike, and a few rounds on the heavy bag. Nineteen-year-old Didrikson excelled at numerous sports, although the press accused her of being naïve because she said whatever she thought. She expressed a desire to box with the other Babe, whom she had never met, but Mr. Ruth never showed up to the gym during her visit. The female Babe boxed another man instead, but she never entered the ring with the demanding Jeanne La Marr. It seemed that La Marr would never find the championship bout she desired.

  Surprisingly, La Marr’s fighting career was not the most scandalous part of her life. In 1938, a skeleton was found in a gully near her ranch home in San Bernardino, California, belonging to her nephew, Gustave van Herren.[34] Young Gustave had gone missing a year earlier, shortly after being released from the state hospital. The skeleton, with a rifle by its side, was found by one of La Marr’s employees on a Thursday, although the young man did not report the bizarre finding until the next day. Van Herren’s death was ruled a suicide, but that did not stop La Marr’s name from being smeared during the investigation.

  Papers often pointed out that the title of countess was probably false and constantly reiterated that fact by referring to her as “countess,” with quotation marks.[35] Her recent legal trouble was also revealed; she was arrested for drunk driving the day her nephew’s body was found. But most damningly, although La Marr denied that her nephew was dead, she had long been receiving mail addressed to him, some of which contained money. Several papers claimed that she was already under investigation by the district attorney for having some type of relationship with the young men working at a nearby Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camp. The CCC was a public relief camp, so the insinuation was that the thirty-eight-year-old La Marr had some inappropriate contact with the young men, most of them between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five. La Marr’s name does not appear in any public record after this time, and, sadly, her legacy is one of sensationalism and scandal.

  The Bennett Sisters. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

  Wrestling

  While boxing dominated as the most popular fighting sport in the United States and Europe in the nineteenth century, wrestling had its own period of prominence. It remained a popular, albeit agrarian, sport in Britain and on the European continent in the following centuries and took many forms. With no set rules like the Queensbury style, various types of wrestling emerged in different areas throughout time.

  In almost any culture, there exists a type of wrestling specific to that group of people. There are a number of texts that investigate the various types of folk wrestling, which are often organized around the landscape (whether wrestlers wrestle standing up to avoid mud or on the ground in grassy areas) and social structure (which determines whom can wrestle whom). While wrestling has been practiced in cities and courts, the practitioners of wrestling, despite its royal antecedents, primarily lived in rural areas. The country often provided spaces for women to participate in activities that would have been frowned upon in a more cosmopolitan setting. But in England at the turn of the century, as women pushed for equal civil rights, another form of grappling, Japanese jiu-jitsu, helped them join the fray.

  Japanese Jiu-Jitsu Enters the West

  In the early twentieth century, Japanese jiu-jitsu became the rage for men and women in England and the United States. Prompted by the publication of H. Irving Hancock’s Japanese Physical Training, Japanese culture was praised for the overall health and physicality of its populace, as well as the discipline and strength of its women. Hancock proposed to publish a subsequent text, Physical Training of Women by Japanese Methods, but there is no evidence that such a book ever made it into production. Instead, in 1906, Mrs. Emily Diana Watts published The Fine Art of Jujutsu, which extols the close-quarter fighting style as being ideal for both men and women.[36] The book is filled with fantastic action photography featuring the author and her female training partner demonstrating various throws. The purpose of the volume is not to convince the reader to practice jiu-jitsu; rather, it is intended for someone already practicing the art. In other words, Watts wrote the book for an already indoctrinated audience that believed in jiu-jitsu as much as she did. Her quest was not to convince, but to inform. The work is fantastically detailed, with step-by-step instructions for numerous types of throws and maneuvers. A female expert in jiu-jitsu, let alone one who published an authoritative text on the martial art, was a rare find in the early 1900s. The most famous female practitioner of the art was not only a jiu-jitsu teacher, but also an activist, feminist, and fighter.

  The craze for Japanese jiu-jitsu flourished, primarily due to its most famous female practitioner in Britain, Mrs. Edith Garrud. Garrud taught jiu-jitsu to the suffragettes in London who were fighting for women’s rights. She demonstrated her skill in front of a large crowd by throwing a 220-pound London policeman. The policeman was apparently delighted by Garrud’s ability to toss him, as were the many newspapers who covered the demonstration, but the purpose of Garrud’s jiu-jitsu practice was to help protect the female suffragettes, some of whom had been bothered by “male rowdies.”[37] Garrud also published several articles in Health and Strength that explain how women can use the art of jiu-jitsu to protect themselves and performed a series of maneuvers in a play entitled Ju-Jutsu as a Husband-Tamer. The story revolves around Liz, played by Garrud, who uses the techniques she learned from Garrud herself to beat her husband into submission.[38]

  Garrud remains a legend in self-defense history, but jiu-jitsu did not function as a fighting sport at the time. It was, instead, a physical embodiment of the cause of women’s rights. In the early twentieth century, women in England fought for the vote and equal rights, but in a time of strike-breakers and aggressive male opponents, they also had to fight physically for their well-being.

  Circus Life and the Spectacle of Wrestling

  There are numerous examples of women who wrestled hundreds of years ago. In 1799, a Welshwoman named Margaret Evans was such a terrific wrestler that “few young men dared to try a fall with her,” even at the ripe age of seventy.[39] Wrestling was typically practiced in rural environments, but by the twentieth century, it had become part of traveling circuses and other types of sensationalized venues. The history of wrestling is interesting, because in the twentieth century, the sport became bifurcated into “professional” wrestling, exemplified today by the WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) enterprise, and the actual sport of wrestling, primarily seen in the Olympics and in high school and collegiate sports programs. During the early part of the twentieth century, these two typologies, entertainment and sport, were indistinguishable, because the sport was presented as a spectacle amongst other forms of popular entertainment. Wrestling, as explained in the introduction of this book, is a grappling art. Other grappling arts, for instance, Japanese jiu-jitsu, judo, and Brazilian jiu-jitsu, would also emerge in the twentieth century in Japan and Brazil, but this section on the formation of wrestling as a sport of spectacle and skill focuses on the United States and Britain.

  As traveling circuses and carnivals b
ecame popular in the early twentieth century, fights often took place alongside the strongman, bearded lady, and Siamese twins. In 1895, the Salt Lake Herald recounted the delightful affair of the Wallace circus, which featured exotic animals, contortionists, jugglers, and aerial performances. Moreover, there was a woman who performed as a boxer, although it is difficult to tell from the language of the article whether it was a theatrical performance or a legitimate fight.[40] But this was not unusual for boxing or wrestling at the time. There was no compulsion for promoters to reveal to the audience whether a fight was choreographed. The claims from actors and actresses performing as fighters were almost exactly the same as the claims of legitimate prizefighters. By the middle of the twentieth century, both boxing and wrestling had been institutionalized by governing bodies that regulated matches, which, for the most part, put an end to speculation as to whether a fight was real or a performance. But in the early days of the carnival and dance hall wrestling matches, the line between performance and sport was sometimes unclear.

  The early twentieth century marked the shift into the two distinct camps of “professional” wrestling and sport wrestling, exemplified by wrestling reentering the Olympic Games after a 1,500-year hiatus. Freestyle wrestling became an Olympic sport in 1904, with Greco-Roman following in 1912. Wrestling continued to be part of the touring entertainment culture in the twentieth century. Wrestlers, boxers, strongmen, and women toured with troupes throughout the United States and England, performing their athletic feats alongside jugglers and acrobats. Traveling athletes were part of the cultural climate, and certain styles, for example, catch-as-catch-can wrestling, flourished. Before the ubiquity of the television in the home, and even before the cinema, circuses and traveling shows were primary forms of entertainment.

  Not all wrestling events occurred through the moderately regulated form of the traveling show match. In 1900, in Cumberland, Maryland, a wrestling match occurred between Miss Ada Taylor and a Miss Grass at the hotel where Taylor worked.[41] Taylor boasted that she was the strongest woman in the room, which was immediately denied by other women at the hotel. She challenged all of them to a wrestling match, and Grass took up the charge. Rather graciously, the many spectators in the hotel prepared the room, pushing back the furniture and setting up an appropriate arena for the bout. The women were evenly matched and fought vigorously for some time before Taylor slipped and hit her head on the edge of a large table. She was unconscious for several hours, but despite her injury, the fight was considered a draw. The women tenderly cared for Taylor and resumed being friends again in the aftermath of the fight.

  In the United States, the beginning of the twentieth century saw increased interest in the “new girl,” a flapper prototype who boxed or wrestled as part of a physical fitness program; however, the sport of wrestling became increasingly popular, in part due to the prominence of the traveling circus, but also because of the rise of a few exciting female wrestlers.

  Cora Livingstone: Wrestling Championess

  Cora Livingstone is considered America’s first great female wrestler. She had an extensive career and, in the early twentieth century, was recognized as the world champion female wrestler. Numerous women took up the challenge to face Livingstone in battle, some of whom simply fought to withstand her throws, while others competed with her in the typical Greco-Roman style.

  At the time that Livingstone earned the right to declare herself the female champion wrestler of the world, the American press was displeased with female wrestlers because, up until the early 1900s, there had never been a particularly skilled one. This was perhaps because most of the women billed as wrestlers were either actresses pretending to be competent fighters or untrained women looking to fill a particular niche. Livingstone may have been one of the first well-trained wrestlers of the day, which undoubtedly stemmed from her marriage, although it remains unclear to whom she was married. Several sources claim that she was married to lightweight wrestler Carl Livingstone; however, she is also listed as the wife of Mr. Paul Bowser, another wrestler who became a promoter.[42] Most likely, Cora was married to Carl Livingstone, and either by death or divorce, later married the prominent Paul Bowser. The Livingstones were often listed as performers in the same event, so their relationship was unquestionably grounded in the sport of wrestling.

  In 1908, Cora shared the headlines with male wrestling champion Ernest Fenby when she entered a week-long engagement at the Avenue Theater in Detroit.[43] Livingstone was billed as the championess wrestler of the world, willing to take on all female comers. Somewhat surprisingly in 1908, young women lined up to meet the champion. The previous week, Livingstone had issued a similar challenge in Cleveland and managed to defeat her opponents.

  After the first two nights, the Detroit Free Press published an article praising the skill of both Livingstone and Fenby. Livingstone’s easy defeat of Florence Hilton was approached with the same simple reverence as her male counterpart. This was a clear departure, as we have seen, from many of the previous approaches the media took with regard to female wrestlers. Livingstone was respected as a fighter and woman. The Free Press wrote an extensive article on the lady, complete with a photo of her in a dashing, if rather massive, hat. Livingstone anticipated all critiques of her sport as unwomanly, arguing that plenty of women in 1908 played basketball or bowled, but that wrestling was the best exercise of all. She insisted that she would “keep on wrestling,” adding, “I won’t be satisfied until I have beaten everybody who has a chance to dispute my title.” Much like Elizabeth Wilkinson Stokes, Livingstone’s fame grew from her self-aggrandizing challenges in the media, along with regular demonstrations of her skill and prowess on the mat.

  Two days before, during the event at which she coheadlined with Fenby, Livingstone had wrestled two women. The rules dictated that she needed to “dispose of them in the allotted time or forfeit $25.”[44] It is uncertain whether her opponents were fighting under the same conditions; if not, the agreement obviously recognized Livingstone’s superior skill. Her first bout against Bertha Stark was over in a mere three minutes. The Free Press suggests that Livingstone went easy on Stark and laid her down gently on the mat rather than the usual hard toss or throw. The fight against Florence Hilton was supposedly more difficult, since Hilton was somewhat knowledgeable about wrestling; however, Livingstone managed to defeat her adversary in a swift five minutes.

  The paper also announced that Livingstone was to go up against an unknown lady who had previously managed to avoid her takedowns in the allotted time and thus won the $25 forfeit. The format of these bouts demonstrates that Livingstone was the true athlete. Even though the “unknown lady” managed to avoid her throws in three fifteen-minute matches, the woman never threw Livingstone herself. A wrestler is more vulnerable when she attempts a takedown. Thus, if the “unknown lady” tried a takedown, Livingstone may have been able to achieve a throw.

  The purpose of these fights, then, was not to pit two equally skilled fighters against one another, but, rather, to test the effectiveness of Livingstone’s offense. Later that same year, however, Livingstone fought a real wrestling match against Miss A. Smith. After fourteen minutes of a reportedly brutal battle, Livingstone was disqualified due to “foul tactics.”[45] The Cincinnati Enquirer writes that Livingstone was “cautioned by the referee for using ‘Maud’ tactics and lost through using the strangle hold after being warned.”[46] Although it is unclear what the paper means by “Maud tactics,” this was Livingstone’s first defeat in a legitimate wrestling engagement.

  In an article entitled “Cora Livingstone Is Deep in Love with Wrestling Game,” the female wrestling champion explains how she became involved in wrestling and why she chose it over other types of sports.[47] A native of Montreal, she is described as a “woman of remarkable beauty, both of face and physique, added to which she takes herself and her work with a quiet seriousness and dignity.”[48] Livingstone explains that she always enjoyed exercise like gymnastics. At the age of sixteen,
she joined the circus and began her career as a wrestler. She worked diligently for the first three years to learn the art of wrestling and continued to carefully train her body. She claims that “bathing is weakening” to the body, so she turned to Turkish baths instead, although she only relied on this method once a week. Livingstone also followed a strict diet, eating light meals and consuming meat only at noon. While she may have been a little on the smelly side, athletic clubs throughout the country appealed to her to teach athletics at their facilities, but she was not ready to quit wrestling at that point. Instead, she traveled the United States, challenging any woman to take her on in wrestling, whether as an equal opponent or a mere defendant.

  In 1910, Livingstone and her opponent, Miss Lou Harris, were fighting at the Empire Theater in Chicago in front of at least 1,200 spectators when they were interrupted by the police.[49] Harris was in the process of trying to gouge out Livingstone’s left eye when the champion administered her “famous strangle hold.” The crowd, which consisted of more than a dozen women and one thousand men, cheered excitedly, while the referee urged the women to abandon the illegal maneuvers and be “more ladylike.” At this point, according to the newspaper report, three detectives were viewing the fight from a theater box, and when Detective Charles O’Donnell, who was acting as official censor for the police department, decided the bout had reached his threshold of decency, the two women were arrested. Livingstone, Harris, and another female wrestler, Miss Daisy Johnston, were charged with disorderly conduct.