Blondes vs. Brunettes #10 - You Probably Want to Turn Down the Volume

While blondes and brunettes can compete in different ways, the bell ringer is a physical contest. Maybe a test of strength, maybe a football game, better yet a fight of some sort. A good, clean wrestling match works for me, maybe with some hair pulling allowed.  Clothing is OK, but since we’re on the topic of hair color, a completely nude match pitting blonde hair against dark hair is a special treat and one might say that it doesn’t get any better than that: two ladies on their feet, grappling with each other, hands in each other’s hair and then you glance down below and there’s a blonde bush and dark haired bush struggling against each other. Raw power … physical strength: which girl has more of it, the pretty blonde with the clear blue eyes or the brunette with her olive skin and dark brown eyes?


You don't suppose this was staged
for the photographer, do you?

An entire industry has developed to satisfy the males’ (and some females) desire to watch women battle each other.  And it’s no accident that many of the contests feature blondes fighting brunettes.  The noted feminist and social critic Susan J. Douglas discussed this phenomenon in her book Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media where she cites the famous Dynasty battles between Alexis and Krystle. 

Others, writing in scholarly journals, have sounded a similar theme.  In a Chrestomathy article titled “Catfight: A Feminist Analysis”, researcher Rachel Reinke used as an example, “…a highly sexual catfight [that] took center stage during the 2003 NFL Playoffs when a Miller Lite advertisement featuring a catfight aired. The ad opens with two women—notably, as Douglas predicts, a blond and a brunette—arguing over the best reason to drink Miller Lite beer. This already asinine argument then escalates into a full-fledged catfight as the women get up from the table and slap and claw at each other while grunting and moaning suggestively.”

Again, this is scholarly stuff, experts speaking about the subject, and not just some pervert blogging away in his basement.

So there.

Big industry, large audience, a tendency to feature blondes and brunettes battling each other, seems like we're in heaven, no? Yes, actually, we are in heaven but even heaven has its glitches, namely that so much of what we see on video is of questionable legitimacy. We want to see an authentic battle, but we all to often end up with some degree of nonsense. 

Here’s the hierarchy:

Movie & TV Catfight. These are, by definition, always scripted and staged. But often there's nothing more satisfying than a great movie catfight like Total Recall.

Streetfight.  These are, by definition, always real.  Quite popular, they’re found all over the intent and typically feature drunk chicks in a nightclub, or schoolgirls in the playground.  Some are really good, but 9 out of 10 times, fucked up camerawork and/or poor lighting conditions ruin the video.

The strong brunette put the slim blonde
in headlock to win round 1

Real.  This category features two gals catfighting, wrestling or boxing where they are actually trying to defeat their opponent.  Seems like a simple enough concept, but these videos are quite rare because almost all catfights, wrestling, or boxing matches are

Fake.  More than 90% of the stuff out there is fake, phony, staged, and/or scripted.  The interesting thing is some of these events have real parts to them, often the opening few minutes.  But the problem with these products is that they are created by producers who need to fill time.  I imagine the conversation with the girls goes something like this “I’m paying you to wrestle for 15 minutes so even if one of you pins the other you need to keep wrestling each other.”  From there you can see the problem: one girl pins the other three minutes into the match and the loser, knowing that they need to wrestle for another 12 minutes says “OK, you pinned me now it’s my turn to pin you” and we end up with another 12 minutes of two girls playing grab ass with each other instead of fighting for Real.
 

But then she allowed herself to get into a
head scissors a bit too easily.
mmmmm, interesting

 Which brings us to our video.  Is it real, fake, or a combination of both? Judging by Ron Dvorkin's introduction, it appears to be a product of "California Supreme" and probably dates back to the early 70s. Like many of Dvorkin's efforts, it is filmed outdoors on a mat and features a lot of rolling around and pins, typical of the "you pinned me and now it's my turn to pin you" strategy employed by the industry. I don't mean that as a hit on Dvorkin who produced better products than many of his competitors did, but it's simply a matter of business when you have to fill a few minutes of time on a video. This particular match features a tough, strong looking brunette wrestling a slim blonde, and the first round not surprisingly ends with the blonde being pinned. The next round shows the black haired gal having her way with the blonde once again but then the blonde suddenly turns the table, gets the brunette in a head scissors and forces her to submit. Subsequent rounds are tit for tat and just a little too balanced for my tastes given that the brunette looks like she could easily out muscle the blonde.  So is it real or fake?  Was Dvorkin giving them instructions to keep it competitive?  We don't know because the footage is from a silent 8mm tape.  All we get to hear is the extremely annoying classical music playing during the match.

Which is why you may want to hit the mute button while you watch. 

Watch the video

 

 

Blondes vs. Brunettes #9 - Sports Review wrestling #1

Boom.  There it was, nestled in a rack of wrestling magazines, two women fighting each other and the screaming headline: “Apartment House Wrestling Shocker! Champion Dethroned In No Holds Barred Brawl!!”  

Bam. INSTANT HARD ON.  This can’t be, I thought as I flipped open to the story, but there it was, a gorgeous bikini-clad brunette with a headlock on a bikini-clad blonde.  Are you kidding me? What a photo



Salome wraps up the great Cynara

Bing. And all I was looking for that day was some juicy women wrestling advertisements that were normally found in the back pages of your typical wrestling magazine. Instead, I found a whole new world of wrestling called “Apartment House Wrestling” that featured barefoot, bikini-wearing beauties, fighting each other in front of a room full of rich dudes, a delightful fantasy orgainzed by a mysterious fellow “Dave Moll” for the entrtainment of his wealthy pals. 

I’m sure my face was flush as I devoured this story at the newsstand, scanning left and right, hoping nobody I knew came strolling into the place and discovered me.   Nervously, I paid for the mag and escaped the scene with my lode inside my coat, thank the Lord it was winter so I could hide the goods.

Knowing that nobody was home yet, I hustled back to my bedroom and read through the story, thrilled that the black haired Salome defeated the blonde beauty Cynara.

Now, you didn’t have to be a genius to realize that the photos were all staged, this wasn’t a real fight after all.  But it was photographed well and certainly worked for me.  And it didn’t really didn’t bother me that Cynara, the shapely blonde, looked stronger and more athletic than Salome, what the hell she would probably kick Salome’s ass in a real fight, all that mattered to me was that a blonde and a brunette fought in bikinis and the brunette won the fight.  How delicious.

Starting with that 1975 issue, I became a big fan of Sports Review Wrestling over the years and as I got older became bolder in my actions until one day I bought one of SRW’s “Battling Girls” magazines, those being the periodic issues that dealt exclusively with apartment house wrestling matches, and as I was paying for it, the cigar smoking old fart at the cash register waved it around and yelled out “Well, this young man knows what he wants, doesn’t he?” 

The brunette smashes her blonde
opponent with her powerful legs

Thanks a lot asshole, I thought as I walked out with a beet red face.

Dark haired Salome quickly disappeared from the pages of SRW (Dave Moll said she got married), but blonde Cynara, with her marvelously toned body, hung around for a few more years beating up other women and became a real fan favorite.

Dr. Chin's website has captured all of the Apartment House history in its glorious black and white images from the 1970s and 19080s.

Like many of us, he's wondered exactly who Cynara was and whatever did happen to her.  No real answer, but given that she was probably in her 30s at the time (she did look a few years older than the other girls) she must be in her 70s by now, assuming she is still with us.  Since nobody could ever figure out her real name, tracking her whereabouts is next to impossible.  It might be that like Bettie Page, she’s unaware of her popularity and is living normal life.  But like Page, who discovered her newfound popularity in her later years, you might think that Cynara would type “Cynara wrestling” into a Google search box and discover how her popularity has endured over the years.  Ditto for Salome and others. Surely they could get a table at comic-con or some other doofy gathering and pull in big cash signing photos as Page did in her final years.      

Aside from Salome, other brunettes did not enjoy success against the tough blond Cynara.
This poor gal is getting, quite simply, punched out.

Blondes vs. Brunettes #8 - Catfights and Gunfights #2, Audrey Totter, RIP

Gosh, who could have predicted at the time I posted the blog on December 9th, that Ms. Totter would die on December 12th.  Gee, I hope making the world famous blonde vs. brunette blog didn't kill her. 

And I never got a chance to ask her who would have won the real fight between her and Joan Leslie.

Thanks for the entertaining movies, Audrey, and rest in peace.

Blondes vs. Brunettes #7 - Catfights and Gunfights #1

Two of the great resources out there are Ed Stips' Yahoo Group "MovieTVcatfightalert"

http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/movietvcatfightalert/info

and "Catfight Collectors" on runboard.com

http://bcatfightcollectors.runboard.com/

 

 

In the past couple of weeks both of them (they have an incestuous relationship that I'm jealous of) have discussed the 1954 western "Johnny Guitar" starring Joan Crawford and Mercedes McCambridge.  At the end of the movie, the two ladies had a nice little gunfight with each other that ended with Ms. McCambridge getting blasted by Joan.  There's no point in discussing any further since they were both brunettes.

But it did get me to thinking about a couple of westerns that did feature blonde vs. brunette gunfights that actually started as catfights before the ladies decided to take it outside.

WATCH: The Women They Almost Lynched - The Catfight

The first of these was the 1953 movie "The Woman They Almost Lynched" starring Audrey Totter as the blonde gunslinger and Joan Leslie as the brunette saloon owner.  As usual, let's just skip the inane plot and get to the good stuff, namely the two women getting into a knock down drag out bar room brawl with the brunette Leslie getting the best of blonde haired Totter.

 

Naturally, Totter decides to seek revenge against her brunette opponent and decides the best way to do it is in an old-fashioned shootout. Totter of course, is sure she will win as she fancies herself as a real tough cookie who can handle a gun.  And she thinks that Leslie is a wimp who is clueless with a gun. Now you might just think that Totter would Think twice about this since the wimp had just given her a first class ass whipping in a fight, but no point in trying to think logically.  Well, you can just see this coming:  Joan Leslie, the nice gal from back east turned out to be as handy with a gun as she was with her fists. In classically silly western style, she wings Totter in the gunfight, shooting the pistol from her hand. Totter who revealed herself as the real wimp, tells Leslie to finish the job which she declines and instead implores Totter to stop acting like a thug and start acting like a lady.

 

 

Watch: The Woman They Almost Lynched - The Gunfight

Yawn.

The best part of the post-fight reaction occurred when one of male onlookers said to Totter, “She fights better than you, she shoots better than you and she even talks better than you", and the other dude says, "Yeah, I bet she can even cook better than you."

Hahahaha!

I thought that was hilarious.

The second movie was the 1954 western, Jesse James Women. In this flick's somewhat odd casting, Don "Red" Barry, an actor well into his 40s, played the role of James who was gunned down while he was in his early 30s.

Blonde Peggie Castle and black haired Betty Brueck played the lead female roles as a saloon keeper and trail boss, respectively. The gals come to blows inside Castle's bar when they both were vying for the attention of James. Like Totter, Castle is another blonde brimming with confidence but this time it's justified as she really knocks the crap out of dark haired Brueck. Like The Woman They Almost Lynched, the loser, in this case the brunette, decides to strap on the guns and have a shootout with the winner which in this case was the blonde castle. It's a nice little showdown but it's ruined by Jesse James in another silly little western maneuver when he wings not one, but both of the women simultaneously with two guns, one in each of his hands.  YaRight.com

Watch: Jesse James Women - The Catfight

After their guns are shot out of their hands, the woman charge each other and can be seen in the background fighting but the scene shifts to another one of James' criminal plots and we never see the result.

 Not that I'm complaining, but both of these movies, along with Johnny Guitar, beg the question: What the hell were they all smoking in 1953-1954?

 

 Watch: Jesse James Women: The Gunfight