Roller Derby: Pleasing the People

Hiawatha L. Harvell, black, 25, and like 12 million other Americans a fulltilt Roller Derby fanatic, prides himself on being the Bay area’s foremost hater of the San Francisco Bay Bombers.

“If you follow the Bombers out of town,” he says, “you’d see how dirty Charlie O’Connell and the others really are. You wouldn't root for them no how."

Hiawatha should know. When he's employed, he follows the Bay Bombers on every stop of their April to Sep temberhome tour, a circuit that in cludes Oakland, Stockton, Sacramento, San Jose, and goes as far as Reno. The economy being the way it is, Hiawatha is unemployed and can only afford the Sunday afternoon contests at Kezar Pavillion in Golden Gate Park. All seats, two bucks. They're all filled.

The evidence this Sunday doesn't yet confirm what Hiawatha says about Charlie-o. The 6'2", 190 lb. O'Connell is clearly leader of the pack, weaving, feinting, gracefully elbowing, pushing but checking clean, loving the contact and looking (at 35) the unparalleled skating star of Roller Derby he is.

A short time later one of the Red Devils is sprawled out of the floor. Charlie glides over to investigate, puts a chummy hand on thy ref's shoulder. Then the other hand on the other shoulder, for extra leverage as he leaps up and stomps down, the sound of hard steel skates turning bones to sawdust.

Hiawatha freaks, unleashing a scurrilous scream of verbal abuse that can’t be effectively captured in print. Down the row from us, a Crowd of older blacks who’ve been polishing off a case of Coors threaten to do the same to him if he doesn’t shut up. The scene is not unlike the reaction you used to get in the bleachers of the Polo Grounds if you were foolish enough to bad-mouth Willie Mays.

Next to Hiawatha, a white woman, scrawny with spaced crooked teeth, faded stretch pants and creased Woolworth white blouse, nods with washerwoman ^brown eyes behind a bottle of gin. At half-time, a pre-teen black girl with pigtails walks past us, a button on her coat proclaiming I’VE GOT GUTS, and there is no reason to doubt her. Santana’s first album blasts from the sound system.

The game’s almost over, and Hiawatha is jubilant. Red Devils 38, Bombers 31. Finally, the enormous black woman in front of us, who’s been restraining her five-year-old boy from assaulting the traitorous Hiawatha, can take it no longer.

*They don’t have to worry! As long as they whip the hell out of ’em, it doesn’t matter how many points they get.”

The woman is right. To most Roller Derby fans, a good game is when the ferocity of the fights makes you forget the score. It almost always does. Sometimes, simply being at the game is almost better than even watching the fights. In San Jose, a Roller Derby town if there ever was one, advance tickets to the next game go on sale minutes after each game starts. And every time, the crowd gets noticeable thinner, as people who paid to get in spend the entire game in the lobby on the ticket line.

There is more to Roller Derby than throwing Christians to the lions, even though no one denies that violence and the lure of watching maniacal personalities destroy each other on the banked track is an essential ingredient. Unlike its spiritual cousin, pro wrestling, no one knows beforehand how each game will turii out, and this year, the Bay Bombers, who once had a reputation like the Harlem Globetrotters — always smashing inferior teams — aren’t even the world champs.

Once you get used to it, Roller Derby becomes sport as well as spectacle. It’s not a difficult game to follow. Each team has a squad of five men and five women, with men skating against men, and women against women in eight alternating 12 minute periods. Sometimes, the skaters forget, like the time Bombers tigress Carole “Peanuts” Meyer, 4’ 11” and 95 lbs., kicked the shit out of monstrous Red Devil Bob Dansel for getting too rough with her husband, Bomber hero Tony Roman.

When the ref blows his whistle, the two teams start skating together in what’s known as The Pack. On each team are two blockers, wearing white helmets, two jammers in striped helmets, and a pivot man (that’s what O’Connell does), who wears a black helmet.

The jammers try to break out of the pack, and as soon as one of them does, then a jam is in effect. The jammers have 60 seconds to lap the track, and they get a point for each member of the opposition they pass.

Allegedly, there are limits to the violence skaters are allowed to perpetrate on one another. Penalties can be called “at the discretion of the referree,” for things like holding, illegal blocking, tripping and other sorts of minor mayhem. Major penalties can get you two minutes in the can, for things like “fighting, intentional roughness, deliberate and excessive insubordination, gross unsportsmanlike conduct, and railing.” The catch is that the ref has to see it happen, and in Derby, every possible fantasy about official incompetence (“The ump is blind!”) seems to be true.

Sometimes things get out of hand. There are real personal animosities and rivalries on the track that carry on through an entire season. They sometimes turn matches into near-murderous bloodbaths.

The Bombers and the Northeast Braves often seem to be more interested in breaking bones than scoring points, thanks mainly (but not entirely) to a feud between O’Connell and Braves Ronnie Robinson and Bob Woodbury. Sometimes O’Connell will go mad dog, like he did when he was a teenager as a member of the Ravens gang on New York’s nasty lower west side. He grabs Woodbury, kicking, stomping, knocking down a referee* choking Woodbury for ten or fifteen seconds before unleashing a killer right that puts the Braves’ star out cold — for about five seconds. A minute later, Woodbury goes berserk, mauling every Bomber he sees, until his teammates gang up to slow down the carnage.

The women on the two teams are anything but gentle. In one game, Bomber Dolores Tucker and the Braves’ Rosetta Sanders did nothing but kick the shit out of each other, serve a minute penalty time, and immediately come out swinging.

Later in the same game, O’Connell fakes a block in the middle of the pack, turns around, and the game stops while he and Woodbury go punch-for-punch, accompanied by a great blow by blow description by the usually reserved telecaster Walt Harris.

Roller Derby also has its heroes and villains. Chief woman villain is Ann Calvello, a 41-year-old Leo born in the Haight-Ashbury, who gets pissed at kids who “don’t want to fight for their country.” After each game, Ann is escorted by police to her $9,000 Lincoln Continental. A few years ago, Ann was attacked by an infuriated fan, who ripped off her blouse and bra. Ann Calvello is easy to spot when she takes her helmet off. Before most games, she likes to dye her hair — purple, green, blue, and once, polka dot.

The heroine of Roller Derby is Joan Weston, the “Golden Girl” of the Bombers. In high school, Joan and a friend used to sneak down to the Rose Bowl, where the L.A. team skated, to practice from 6:30 to 9 a.m., when the team would show up. Joan and friend then hid in the stands until noon, when they’d go back down and skate until almost dinner time.

After her second year at Mount St. Mary’s College, Joan quit to join the Roller Derby. It was a good move. Considered by some to be America’s “most popular female athlete,” Joan makes over $30,000 a year, and has been selected Roller Derby Queen four times since 1958.

Joan speaks frankly and articulately about the game, and what it’s like to be a woman in the Derby. But, say Joan, what about the popular notion that women in Roller Derby are . . . lesbians?

“The girls are people who love skating, travel, and independence,” she told Herb Michelson, author of A Very Simple Game, the official Roller Derby history.

“Sure, there are a few girl-girl things here,” continues Joan, “but they’re really none of my business. The only time I’ll interfere is if it happens on the track, in the arena 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 skaters) stick to themselves. The only thing I’ll tell a girl now is how to dress on the road.”

Roller Derby, like many of its fans, is a product of the Depression. Leo Seltzer was looking for a new twist for the sports shows, dance marathons, and six-day bike races he used to put on in the Chicago Colisseum when he read in the Literary Digest that not only would Landon beat Roosevelt, but that roller skating was the most popular participation sport in the country. One day in 1935, 20,000 escape-hungry fans jammed the Colisseum for the premier of Leo Seltzer’s Transcontinental Roller Derby, which combined different aspects of Seltzer’s other entertainments. One of the game’s first stars, Billy Bogash (“the fastest human on wheels”), describes what it was like:

“We skated for twelve 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; it was just a case of speed, endurance, and general savvy to stay in there for forty odd days,” says Bogash.

Skaters would to up to 150 miles a night. After a typical forty 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.

Roller Derby boomed, especially in the midwest, but in 1937 tragedy struck. A bus carrying 47 skaters, trainers and aides blew a tire and went off a bridge near Salem, Illinois. 44 of the 47 died, including most of the game’s most promising skaters.

It wasn’t until 1939 that Derby started to develop the rules that are the foundation of today’s game. With the help of legendary sportswriter Damon Runyon, Seltzer developed a league with teams, points, and a few regulations. Even so, says Buddy Atkinson, now Roller Derby’s head trainer, many of the players made up rules as they went along.

“Roller Derby is a sport that wants to please the fans, and that’s why they did it,” says Atkinson. “We have 75% bloodthirsty, chilling people for fans.” Because of that, says Buddy, the game is more violent now than it was in the old days.

During World War II, Roller Derby cut down to two teams, but by the time the war was over, Seltzer was ready to roll for the big time. In 1949, he booked the Derby into New York’s 69th Regiment Armory for 17 nights. The first night, 150 people showed up.

The next night Roller Derby was to make its television debut, so Seltzer and his staff went out on the street and paid people to come to the game. Only 400 showed; Seltzer packed them in one section where the cameras could make it look like the arena was packed. The next fifteen days were sold-out, and for the next two years three games a week were televised from the armory, featuring charismatic stars like Toughie Brasuhn and her husband, the still-active Ken Monte.

All the TV was a bit much, and by 1953 Roller Derby was nearly dead from over-exposure. Part of the problem was scheduling — there was no offseason. After a world championship game in New York, says original Derby telecaster Ken Nydell, “the new season would start in New Jersey the very next night.”

After struggling through the late fifties, Derby got on its feet again when Jerry Seltzer, Leo’s son, took over the promotion and made some changes. The banked track was adjusted for faster skating and easier mobility: now, in a few hours, a track could be installed in any auditorium in the country. Jerry lowered ticket prices, and took Roller Derby to towns like Stockton and San Jose, bringing in new fans while letting the tube cool. Soon he discovered he had a game that plain, ordinary people not only liked, but identified with.

“Some say we’re catering to the silent majority. But they’re actually the vocal majority. I don’t like to generalize: 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,” says Seltzer.

Quite a crowd it is. Three million people went to see live Roller Derby games last year, and an estimated 12 million watch it every week on a network of over 120 TV stations. In the Bay Area, Roller Derby attracted 750,000 fans last year, outdrawing every other sport except major league baseball.

“In many ways Roller Derby is a sport bigger than life,” says Seltzer, “it’s louder than life. On TV it’s more colorful than life. The fans get to know the people. It’s a simple game .. . the people’s sport.”

Only recently has Roller Derby come to the attention of strangers outside the magic circle. A recent entry in the San Francisco Film Festival, directed by Robert Kay lor and produced by Seltzer, won extravagant praise from Vincent Canby, Andrew Sarris, and almost every other film critic in the country. Derby starred Mike Snell, a 24-year-old Elvison-roller skates who became the sport’s first sex symbol-media superstar.

Snell was great PR for the literate masses as the film became this year’s They Shoot Horses... , but most Roller Derby fans didn’t like it. With rare exceptions, Derby bombed at the box office everywhere.

Snell made it for awhile, skating as a jammer for the Midwest Pioneers. He’s living proof that the fights you see on TVaren’t all rigged — he was in the hospital 7 times in the less than ten months he skated.

Described as “an adequate skater who might have become good if he wanted to work,” Snell has taken off for Hollywood. “Once he had a taste of the alleged glamor of movie life,” says Herb Michelson, “he couldn’t let that go.”

There’s no lack of potential skaters to take Snell’s place. There are over 100 kids and older people at Buddy Atkinson’s Alameda training school, and when a branch opened in Chicago, 300 hopefuls showed up the first day. About 10% make it. Says Michelson “Learning to fall is as essential as learning to skate. Agility’s an important part of it.” That becomes obvious when you see 5’1” Tony Roman topple some goliath twice his size, and skate under a blocker’s legs for a point.

Roller Derby is going through a change. After the Bombers sold out Madison Square Garden three times last winter (with scalpers hawking tickets at the last game), Seltzer decided it was time for a New York franchise, as well as regional ones in the Midwest, Southeast, and West Coast. No longer will the Bombers be the only home team. It will also mark the end of the grueling, destructo four month series of coast to coast one-nighters. Teams will still travel, but within a smaller area.

Hollywood is also getting into the act. Two films are being made in tinsel city now, Full-Tilt Fever, produced by A1 Ruddy, who also did The Godfather, and starring Michelle Phillips of the Mamas and Papas and Elena Katzakis, who played the garbage freak in Five Easy Pieces. A suit by Seltzer’s Bay Promotions, which owns the entire league and everything about Roller Derby (they made $5,000,000 last year) is holding up production on Kansas City Bomber, which stars — get this — Raquel Welch, because the makers of the film don’t acknowledge that it’s about Roller Derby.

In spite of its new found fame, Roller Derby shows no signs of scratching the violence, hysteria, flash and fury that have made it the sustenance of an entire subculture on the fringes of middle America. For leatherclad black teenagers, cracker grandmas, aging matrons on maids’ day off, and just plain working and not-working people, Roller Derby is a way of life. They love it to death.