The real ’80s GLOW was dangerous and sexist
Still, some of the women say being part of a female wrestling league was the best job of their lives
Adapted from a story by The Washington Post’s Abby Gendy Alimurung.
The Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling have endured kicks to the head, knees to the groin, body-slams, insults, rivalries, ridicule and spangly neon unitards.
Their old TV show, “GLOW,” was huge in the 1980s. The women sang, danced, did sketch comedy and flung each other around a ring. And now, “Orange Is the New Black” creator Jenji Kohan is bringing it back as a half-hour scripted comedy called with the same name.
The new “GLOW” is a fictionalized version of how the old “GLOW” came to be. None of the original women are in it. Nor — with one exception — were they consulted — a fact that doesn’t exactly sit well.
When asked about it, former wrestler Tracee Meltzer — whose character on the old show was Park Avenue princess Roxy Astor — rolls her eyes.
“Some are happy. Some are sad. Some girls you can’t even bring it up to,” she says.
If the women feel proprietary about “GLOW,” it’s only because they gave so much of themselves to it. It was brutal work. The pay was measly, the material was campy and racist. For many, however, it was the best job they ever had.
No pain, no gain
The joke, of course, is that professional wrestling is fake. But the pain was real. Virtually none of them started out as trained wrestlers. They were actors, dancers and models who answered casting calls for “a new sports entertainment show.”
- Angelina Altishin, who played Little Egypt, tore her anterior cruciate ligament.
- Laurie Thompson, a.k.a. Susie Spirit, knocked her elbow out.
- Patricia Summerland, a.k.a. Sunny the California Girl, cracked a wrist, broke two knuckles, ripped muscles and ligaments in her waist, and blacked out from being hung upside down and dropped on her head — a piledriver.
“[Piledrivers] are the deadliest maneuver in wrestling,” she explains. “They no longer do them.”
She did them every night. Once, after a piledriver, paramedics carried her out on a stretcher.
“I hope you’re getting paid enough for this,” she recalls one of the medics telling her.
She wasn’t.
The good, the bad and the ugly
The show was shot in Las Vegas, so each eight-month season, 30-plus “GLOW” girls bunked up at the Riviera Hotel (then in later seasons at a dumpy apartment building off the strip).
The women made between $300 and $700 a week. No dental. No medical.
Then there was the emotional pain.
Matt Cimber, the creative engine behind the show, was a veteran director of Broadway and blaxploitation films. He excelled at the art of casting aspersion.
“Your butt looks like mashed potatoes!” he’d yell. Or, “You’re no good. That’s why she’s making $200 more than you!” Or, “You are more boring than a Sicilian funeral!”
Cimber dreamed up their characters, heightened stereotypes all — housewives wielding brooms and plungers, New Orleans voodoo queens, slutty cheerleaders, sexpot Russian communists. But most of the women embraced these personas as if they were being granted superhero identities.
Still, the girls stayed.
Besides, you got to be famous. “People would stand in line all day to watch us film,” Dee Booher recalls. The girls made appearances on sitcoms and game shows and late-night talk shows. When they performed in Panama, thousands of fans mobbed their van. Each time she used the restroom there, Jeanne Basone, who played bad-girl street-urchin Hollywood, had to be escorted by armed military guard. “It was insane,” she recalls.
Back to reality
Then, in 1990, “GLOW” was abruptly canceled. The show’s main financial backer, Israeli billionaire and Riviera Hotel owner Meshulam Riklis, withdrew his support.
The women dropped back into their ordinary lives. Of the hundred or so girls who churned through the system, zero went on to full-time acting careers.
The women are in their 50s and 60s now. They are accountants, real estate agents, sales associates, tech support workers and pet groomers.
4 became full-time wrestlers.
Some became drug addicts and alcoholics.
At least two wound up homeless.
Some wanted to be rid of GLOW.
Others wanted to milk it for all it was worth. Ursula Hayden, a.k.a. Babe the Farmer’s Daughter, purchased the trademark in 2001 from Riklis. For years afterward, she eked out a living selling videos of the old episodes.
The new Netflix “GLOW”
“Do you want to make a show about women’s wrestling in the ’80s?” showrunner Carly Mesch wrote to Kohan.
“Yes,” Kohan wrote back.
“Not that she would have said yes to any piece of crap idea we sent her,” Mensch clarifies. Rather, Kohan is “always looking for opportunities to support her writers and nurture their new wacky ideas.”
Mensch and co-showrunner Liz Flahive were drawn to the connections among the women.
“There was something amazing about learning that wrestling isn’t really about fighting your partner,” Flahive says. “It’s about trusting your partner.”
“We found that so beautiful,” Mensch adds, “and so exactly opposite of what our assumptions were.”
They spoke with only one of the original wrestlers: Hayden, who owns the trademark.
“When we thought about building characters, we really wanted to do it however we wanted to and not feel tied to any real-life stories,” Flahive says.
Will they watch it?
Asked whether he misses the old show, director Cimber scowls. “No,” he grouses. “Because it was driving me nuts.” All those women. All that drama.
Netflix didn’t contact Cimber, either. It wasn’t until a big announcement appeared in the trades that he even heard they were making a show.
“And then our phones rang off the hook,” says Cimber’s wife, Lynn.
Some of the women plan to binge-watch the new “GLOW” when it debuts. Summerland will be there with popcorn.
“Whether we’re going to eat it or throw it at the screen,” she says, “remains to be seen.”
