cover image Gorgeous George: The Outrageous Bad-Boy Wrestler Who Created American Pop Culture

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

John Capouya, . . Harper Entertainment, $25.95 (282pp) ISBN 978-0-06-117303-5

Capouya (Real Men Do Yoga ) affectionately chronicles the life of the infamous “Gorgeous George” Wagoner. Born in 1915, Wagoner learns the ropes as a grappling carny at Sylvan Beach Amusement Park near Houston. During a stint on the “grunt-and-groan” circuit in Oregon, the wrestler meets his future wife Betty Hanson, whose handiness with textiles and hair dye transforms the likable “babyface” into a gender-bending aristocrat of the ring, a “heel” whom crowds love to hate. His antics off the mat (Wagoner holds all his press conferences in local beauty shops where he has his tresses “marcelled” before matches) and on (George takes 10 minutes to fold and refold his robe between perfumings) whips jeering crowds into frenzies. The histrionic, inexpensively staged sport proved, between 1948 and 1955, to be a perfect fit for the new medium of television. Although some of his psychoanalysis feels gratuitous, Capouya vividly portrays the ins and outs of wrestling and his own struggle to maintain the “Gorgeousness” of a public life in his private life as well. (Sept.)