Lipstick & Dynamite
– The First Ladies Of Wrestling
(Documentary)
Picture: C+
Sound: C+ Extras: B- Documentary: B
When the idea of a documentary about female wrestlers,
everyone I spoke with about this cringed as if they thought it would be awful
and uninteresting. The impression was
that it would either be flashy and gaudy like such wrestlers are now in the big
money version of the sport (anything that takes this much energy and has this
much physicality is sport enough for anyone) or that it would be drab and old
beginnings that would be too rough to want to watch. There is even some homophobia and challenge to gender still to
this day about such explicitly empowered women. Instead, Ruth Leitman’s Lipstick & Dynamite – The First
Ladies Of Wrestling (2004) is a very interesting slice of life tale about
women in the mid-20th Century trying to find alternatives.
Hardly any of them made any serious money like the big
contracts today, so between the abuses they had from men, society & even
dysfunctional families (or adoptive families) to the abuses of the ring and
their exploitation throughout life, it paints a stark portrait of women who
never become economically empowered enough to find the independence that would
lead to real happiness. The ironic
thing is their obvious able-bodied capacities.
They built the business and it left them behind.
Included is The Fabulous Moolah, who became a big
moneymaking promoter herself, The Great Mae Young, Penny Banner, Ida May
Martinez, Gladys “Killem” Gillem, Ella Waldek and the other early stars who
made an entire industry possible. They
picked up the slack when the men fell short and even have fans to this
day. We also see how The McMahon Family
took over & corporatized the sport as early as the mid 1960s and how that
transformed the business for better and definitely worse. If wrestling is going to be a banal money
machine, this is the kind of document that deserves to be made because these
women deserve to be heard. Leitman made
this program well and it is more informative, intelligent and entertaining than
those colleagues of mine expected.
The anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image is a mix of
film, videotape, kinescopes and stills.
It looks good enough for the type of production it is. The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo has limited
surrounds if that, with the combination more than able to handle the
material. Extras include two radio
segments, five featurettes, six extra on-camera interview segments, stills gallery,
eight deleted scenes, the trailer and director’s audio commentary. The only problem is the overlap, but they
are usually good additions if you land up enjoying the program as much as I
did.
- Nicholas Sheffo
