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Alan Ebert Memories
My memory fails as to when I first saw Loretta "Little Iodine" Behrens skate. I know it was in the early 50's and she was a sketch. Falling all over herself, bringing down the pack, she was the clumsiest skater to ever risk everyone else's life. I still remember the line she threw at me when I first interviewed her for Roller Derby News in 1958. "I'm so ugly I'm cute!" she declared. Ya gotta love a gal like that.
On the track, Loretta was an incendiary bomb. You never knew what might set her off or when. And she was a mean and vicious skater who often hurt skaters intentionally. Off the track, beneath the bravado and the lisp that makes her a comic figure is a funny, honest, no BS gal who has been a trusted friend for all these years. But damn if that woman couldn't trip all over herself on the track and create chaos. Even with her own teammates.
Once, when skating with Toughie Brasuhn on the Brooklyn Red Devils, Loretta got angry at her captain and was ordered off the track by Brasuhn. And how did Loretta cope with her dressing down? By taking off her skates, taking aim, and throwing them straight at Brasuhn's head. I still laugh thinking about it. But Loretta had something Brasuhn didn't...a centeredness, a strength that only once since I've known her was momentarily lost, and self esteem.
Midge was good people. I truly liked her. One of my favorite Midge Brasuhn stories revolves around former skater, Darlene Anderson, more like my sister than the best friend she is. When Darlene was in high school, running track and showing some promise in that sport, she was also at the Roller Derby training school several afternoons a week. As Dar tells it, she never thought to be chosen, never thought about leaving home for a life on the road. But her talent was obvious to those running the training school and she was offered a job on the Red Devils. Of course Darlene could do and would do nothing without her parents' consent. And her parents were conservative, churchgoing folks who had raised Darlene to be decent, loving and God fearing. All of which Darlene was. To obtain parental permission, Roller Derby sent Midge and husband, Ken Monte to the Andersons to explain how they would personally take care of Darlene, parent her in their absence. And I am sure both Midge and Ken were sincere, although deluded. Midge, as an example of stability? Conventionality? Of motherliness? But Midge and Kenny prevailed -- in truth, Midge, was a lady -- and the Andersons agreed to let their daughter take to the road to become a Roller Derby skater. Not that they had any real idea of what a Roller Derby skater was. And so 17 year old Darlene Anderson became the first African American girl to skate in the Derby. And Midge did indeed as best she could look out for and protect her. As did all of Roller Derby. Even the least well mannered, the least sensitive, looked upon Darlene as though she was a little sister, their little sister. The men cleaned up their language around her as did many of the women.
One year later, Darlene came to skate under the tutelage and care of Gerry Murray on the Chiefs. It was then her further education began. I say "further" because under Midge, Darlene won Rookie of the Year honors but Murray really liked Darlene and took her under wing. Dar grew as a skater and she also grew...and grew...and grew. Homesick, Darlene ate herself out of one size uniform and into another. A ref then, Irwin Sacks, took a look at her one day and said.."What the hell you carrying back there, Anderson, Fort Knox"? It could not have been easy for Darlene then. The year was 1958 and she was the sole black in Roller Derby. Although Murph and Gene Gammon and the spectacular rookie, Judy McGuire, tried to protect Darlene, as did many others, there was nonetheless heartache, but none ever caused by other skaters. If racism existed in Roller Derby, I never heard it or saw it. It was as if skaters were colorblind. Over the years, Dar became a great skater and had she not embarked on another, more rewarding career, and had skating not changed to the point where she was ashamed to be associated it, she would have achieved Murray/Jensen/Brasuhn status. She was that good. She was also beautiful.
At a party Dyan Cannon gave for me in 1970, Darlene was actively wooed by Rod Steiger and the late Godfrey Cambridge, both of whom got nowhere with this Nubian beauty in a simple little black dress and hair pulled severely back in a bun at the back of her head. Overwhelmed by the attention, Darlene played the sophisticate only to admit later, "I was scared to death." And again, when a screenplay I had written loosely based on the life of Midge Brasuhn had been optioned, Darlene, George Copeland and Ruberta Mitchell came to a "Hollywood party" as my guest where studio head and former husband of Ali McGraw, Bob Evans, kept trying to persuade Darlene to let her hair down...figuratively and literally. Darlene refused. Good OLE Copeland kiddingly said later..."Dar, he wanted to make you a star." Ruberta added...."Nah., he just wanted to make you." Ruberta Mitchell walked through the door Darlene Anderson opened and became the second African American woman in Derby. A total professional, she was a fine journeyman skater who never gave less than her all on the track. More importantly, my buddy, Ruberta, is a fine person and a beautiful woman. I am honored that she is my friend.
An Interview by Alan Ebert On Memories of the Past
What most fans and even some young skaters don't know today is that the game was very different then. The banks were steeper (45 degree angles). When you went over a rail, you might have fallen 15 or more feet to the ground. The tracks were longer then. Men did the five stride, women the seven, to master the turns. There were no designated pivot skaters, jammers or blockers. Skaters just broke from the pack and went for it. Jams were two minutes long. The scoring was different also. There was a point awarded for the first skater you passed, two for three skaters when passed, and five -- also known as a grand slam -- when you passed all five. Although there were fights, they were minimal, particularly among the men. In fact, among the men fights were initially a rarity. The women usually saved their tempers until their final skating period. The fans loved the fighting; sportswriters hated it. And it was the fighting that increased over the years that alienated the press and caused them to treat skating like wrestling. All the reasoning in the world couldn't convince the Seltzers or the skaters to enforce greater rules to clamp down on the fighting that detracted from the game. It was as if no one believed the game was good enough to stand on its own.
In those years, the star attraction of the league was the New York Chiefs who were not unlike baseball's New York Yankees. They were the powerhouse of the league, the team for which everyone wanted to skate. The success of Roller Derby, and that it exists today, is due less to their founders, Leo and Oscar Seltzer, about whom an argument could be made that they actually raped their game of legitimacy in their greed, but to the Chiefs who boasted a stellar lineup that included the still legendary among skaters, Billy Bogash and Gerry Murray. But Roller Derby's phenomenal success way back then was primarily due to television and the fact that along with Uncle Miltie (Milton Berle), Howdy Doody and wrestling, it was television's star attraction. ABC took the Seltzer giveaway (Give us TV time and we will give you the game free of charge) and put Roller Derby on the map. It telecast the game live every Thursday and Friday nights at 10 and Saturdays from 9 until completion (Blatz Beer was the main sponsor and the theme song of the telecasts was..."They Go Round and Around and Around at the Roller Derby"). It was an instant success, a phenomenon actually. There was actually a media craze -- in print and on TV -- as to who could first feature these strange "creatures" with breasts and biceps who beat up on another. Roller Derby became a craze, and mainly because it was in the right place at the right time in TV history.
There was yet another element to that stardom -- two women, without whom we probably would not be writing or reading about any kind of Roller Derby. They were Midge "Toughie" Brasuhn and the already mentioned Gerry Murray. Most of us, skaters and fans and Derby personnel, who go back to those days, will tell you Murray, AKA, "Murph," was the greatest female skater of all time, a fact the younger generation would argue (and they would be wrong) by naming Joan Weston for that honor. Weston, who I knew well, and who I first saw skate in Los Angeles in 1957, and whose rise I documented when the features editor of the Roller Derby News, a job I held even before I became the game's Eastern publicity director and also its trackside announcer, was a brilliant blocker and jammer but limited by her size and talent. She was never in Murray's class. Not even close. Still, she was a star from the day she took to the track in Los Angeles. Joanie had that charisma that cannot be bought and all forms of Roller Derby today are indebted to her. She and her partner in "crime", Ann Calvello, became the modern day Brasuhn and Murray.
But when talking about charisma, no one quite had it like Gerry Murray. She was a curvy Irish beauty with the temperament to match. She was the original "diva" and could be demanding and annoying as befits a diva. But she had a grace and a style unmatched before or since. There were a few who had a similar beauty skating the banked oval --Jean Porter comes to mind -- but none had the charisma, the undefinable something that makes a star. She was the fastest woman on skates and fans everywhere loved her. But "Murph" would have been half the fan favorite without Midge Brasuhn, a pint size (4'11") bundle of brazen energy who made Ann Calvello seem saint like in comparison. She was mean on the track. She was viscous. But she could skate. Fans came out to hate her. She was the greatest villain in Roller Derby history. She could hurt you when out of control.
Gerry and Midge battled constantly. Beauty and the Beast. But Midge had a beauty on the track that was unmistakable. It is hard to express in words just how good she was. The minute she stepped on the track, there was electricity in the arenas/stadiums where Roller Derby skated. Her brilliance in the World Series at Madison Square Garden in those early years was remarkable. No one could contain her, not even Murray most times. She and Murray made fighting in the women's field legendary. Even such then famous gossip columnists as Earl Wilson wrote of Midge and Gerry.
This Will Make Them Want To Read The TV Guide
When Midge was off the track she was a warm, friendly woman, very likable. And like Murph, she could be funny (was downright hilarious). If I wrote good things about her, I was treated warmly but on those infrequent times when I criticized her in print, she would freeze me out. To this day she remains angry about something I wrote about her in an article I did for TV Guide. And all I did was equate her to Raquel Welch.
But my love affair with Murph was the first of my celebrity "crushes." As my most recently published book, Intimacies, reveals, Gerry was replaced by Patti Page and then Ann-Margret, both of whom I knew well.
Murph...I still love ya.