Buffalo,
New York’s Memorial Auditorium is filled with smoke from thousands of
cigarettes and cigars. A haze has risen over the room as spectators shifted in
their seats in anticipation of the coming match. It has been a rough night so
far for the competitors, but the crowd did not come here to see them, they were
here for one man. His opponent Donn Lewin stands in the ring readying himself
with stretches, testing the ropes making certain they are secure. The ring
announcer straightens as the spotlight hits him and the house lights go down.
He announces Dangerous Danny and the crowd explodes with boos and jeers. He
struts to the ring through the mob unaffected by their taunts and curses; his
full-length robe has his name stitched on both lapels. His cigar is tilted up
to the sky. He stands in the middle of the ring ignoring his opponent Donn, his
arms stretched out so all can see he is the king of the world.
In the
crowd sitting with her girlfriend is Sallee Lewin, Donn’s sister. They had
snuck off to the matches to see her brother wrestle. Donn makes a good showing
of himself against Dangerous Danny’s Double Foot Stomp his favorite move,
against forearm smashes, and wristlocks. Both men exchange hip tosses, and
headlocks, arm drags and body slams. Unfortunately, in the end, Donn Lewin
looses to Dangerous Danny and walks away with a broken nose. His sister in the
audience sits shocked and horrified at the brutality of the man who just
defeated her big brother.
Later that
week at the Lewin home, a maroon Town and Country Chrysler convertible with
wooden sides would pull to the curb across the street. A man Sid Lewin had met
earlier in the week at his Jewelry Store and had fixed a watch- band for was
invited to dinner at Sid’s home. Sid took a liking to the dapper man with a
pencil thin mustache. The owner of the car strutted to the front door wearing
green suede tasseled loafers and a cream colored Berman’s of California slack
suit. Sallee recognized him immediately through the window and announced to her
mother she would not be eating at home but would instead find a date and dine
out. No date was found and Sallee Lewin found herself at her father Sid’s table
eating with the man who broke her brother’s nose earlier in the week. A man she
would later marry.
In this modern day of big lights,
billion dollar promotions, global broadcasting, and manufactured personalities
few today recognize what a true superstar is made of, and one such superstar
shone from Arkansas. A man who at the height of his career in the 50’s was the
equivalent of Hulk Hogan in the 80’s. He
was a country boy from outside Parkdale, going toward De Bastrop in Ashley County, a place that was little
more than a spot in the road along highway 165 in 1912 when he was born, and he
went on to become one of the most famous Professional Wrestling villains of all
time. His name was Danny McShain.
His wife Sallee McShain said that
once while visiting Danny’s mother for the first time, Danny had told her not
to dress up, but it being her introduction to Mrs. McShain she wanted to make a
good impression. Dressed in her Sunday best, hat, gloves and high heels they
left Little Rock and drove down highway 165 to Parkdale on paved roads then
they turned down a gravel road and eventually stopped the car and walked down a
dirt road that was still soft after a recent rain. “I felt so foolish, walking
down this dirt road in high heels.” Sallie said in an interview. When they got
to the house Danny’s mother was smoking a corncob pipe. A pipe she smoked till
she was placed into a nursing home where they took it away from her with a
fight.
Standing at 5’11” and weighing in at
205 lbs Danny McShain, sometimes called Irish Danny McShain or Dangerous Danny
McShain was a stocky handsome man with Hollywood looks that had him often
compared to Clark Gable, or Leo Carrillo and placed him in several Hollywood
films.
Danny’s shining career started in Little Rock, Arkansas on October 30th,
1930 a match he promptly lost. McShain would then go into the Navy where he
held the Navy’s Light Heavy Weight Championship several times in boxing. But
wrestling was Danny’s Passion. Shortly after his first match in Little Rock,
his family moved to Glendale, California, which he called home for most of his
life, and where he started his climb to superstardom. Later in his life he and
his wife would move to Alvin, Texas where he would live the rest of his
life.
In the
early years of modern professional wrestling the country was split into
territories with each territory run by a promoter who had his own “Stable” of
local talent. Each territory had a local belt and the biggest star in the
territory held the belt or local championship title, eventually marking him as
the number one contender for the bigger champions such as the World Heavyweight
Champion or the Tag Team Champions who traveled from territory to territory.
The traveling champions’ main job was to come into a territory and make the
local population think that their local champion or hero had a shot at winning
the title and becoming the new World Heavy Weight Champion. Most of the time
the champion never lost to the local hero and if he did in the rematch he
always reclaimed his title the next week before moving on to the next
territory. There were also those rare individuals who may not have held a title
when they came into a territory but their job was very similar to the
champions. Their job was to make every one hate them and want nothing more than
to see the local hero beat the snot out of them. These men were the Heels and
Danny McShain was one of the best, so much so, they gave him the World Light
Heavyweight Championships eleven times to defend, as he traveled around the
country in a career that lasted almost 30 years in the ring.
Danny
walked with confidence, a strut that made him seem cocky, better than all
around him, and “A strut that made you want to kill him.” Said Donn Lewin,
Danny’s brother in law. “When you called Danny’s name and if you were to the
side of him he would turn his whole body to look at you with his chin held up a
little like he was saying ‘and who are you to talk to me?’ but the truth be
told he didn’t have any peripheral vision and his neck was kind of stiff so he
had to turn like that. But it still pissed you off to see him do it.” Said Ted
Lewin Danny’s other brother in law.
Over the course of Danny’s career
he managed to win several titles starting in 1937 Danny beats Wild Red Berry at Hollywood Legion Stadium
in California to win the NWA World Light Heavyweight title. He would go on to
hold the NWA Louisianan Light Heavyweight title, the Texas Light Heavyweight
title, the World Light Heavyweight Tag Team Titles and countless other titles
over and over again. His athletic skill and movie star good looks soon had
Hollywood calling.
“I don’t care what happens or who is Texas champion. All I
can see is that here is another Mexican with a mask and I challenge him to face
me and see if he can keep that mask on his grotesque head or not.” Danny
McShain.
In 1948 Hollywood called Danny McShain to appear in Danny
Kaye’s “The Inspector
General”. Kaye portrayed a wandering snake-oil salesman who is
miss-identified as an Inspector General come to examine a little corrupt town.
Zaniness ensues, focused on Kaye’s performing talents rather than the town's
corruption.
In one scene of the movie Kaye goes
into a gym and ends up wrestling Danny McShain and Joe Blanchard for some great
slapstick action. It would not be Danny McShain’s only venture into the movies.
The wrestler would appear in almost all of Danny Kaye’s movies and the two
would become close friends. McShain would also appear in other movies when the
studios needed someone to grapple with their stars.
Danny would also become great friends with Toshiyuki
“Harold” Sakato better known to the world as the James Bond Henchmen Oddjob
from the movie Goldfinger. Sakato a Japanese-American born in Holualoa, Hawaii
won a silver medal 1948 Summer Olympics in London and later went into Pro
Wrestling where he meet Danny and often wrestled him under the Name Tosh Togo.
In 1951 Danny and Sakato were both part of Tokyo’s Torii Oasis Shrine Club
charity event held in Japan for the purpose of raising money for crippled
children. The event featured American wrestlers, was one of the first of its
kind in the world, and managed to raise $50,000 for the kids.
In that same year at Ellis
auditorium in Memphis, Tennessee Danny McShain defeats Junior Heavyweight
Champion and future Hall of Fame inductee the legendary Verne Gagne. Making him
holder of both the NWA Junior and Light Heavyweight titles.
In 1950 Danny married Sallee Lewin
sister to Mark, Ted and Donn Lewin whose nose he had broken years earlier. As
Donn describes the announcement, Danny had talked him into driving out to
California to wrestle. Donn and his wife were in one car Danny and Sallee in
the Chrysler Town & Country. At one of the many stops along route 66, Danny
got out of the car and flatly announced, “We’re gettin’ married!” “At least
you’re not shackin’ up before hand.” Was all Donn could reply to the cocky
Danny.
Bill Mercer the former Dallas Cowboy play-by-play
broadcaster wrote in his book Play-by-Play: Tales from a Sports Casting
Insider that when he started his radio career in the early 1950’s he was
also assigned to cover pro wrestling as a commentator "I didn't plan on
being a wrestling announcer, but the radio station management at KMUS in
Muskogee, Oklahoma said it came with the sports broadcasting package. This was
my first big job as a sportscaster, so why not?”
Not knowing much about wrestling, he was given the chance to
learn about the business when the local Oklahoma promoter assigned “Wild” Red
Berry, Danny McShain, and the Fabulous Moolah, the Woman Wrestler Champion and
future Wrestling Hall of Famer to be Mercer’s teachers. They took Mercer into
the ring and placed hold after hold on him. “They demonstrated the hammerlock,
full and half Nelsons, head locks, plus a few of their own inventions.”
"They used me as a guinea pig, laughingly putting on enough pressure that
I understood the significance of each hold. I had no idea about the preplanning
of the evening's various matches. I wasn't aware that the winner and loser were
preplanned."
Preplanned indeed, as the saying goes in Professional
Wrestling, “The matches are fixed not fake.” Once Danny had a publicity photo
taken of him in his Wrestling gear. And around the photo there were listed all
of his injuries up till that time. It was intended to show the crowds that he
was a tough guy who was till standing strong and who ever he was facing didn’t
stand a chance. The list of injuries read as follow:
- Seventeen stitches head
and eyes
- two cauliflower ears
- nose broken six times
- jaw broken
- shoulder
dislocated twice
- broken chest bone
- broken arm twice
- twelve ribs broken
- both
hands broken
- torn cartilage both knees
- broken leg
- both ankles sprained
- broken toe
- and broken ankle
Over the
course of his career this list of injuries would grow but Danny would hardly
slow down. Danny was also what is called a Juicer in the business or a bleeder,
one who would cut them selves on the forehead to bleed during the matches
making them gory and bloody. Danny was one of the forefathers in this area of
the wrestling arts.
Pain and suffering is the way of a Pro Wrestlers life. In a
short interview with Red Bastein, a life long friend of Danny’s said he
has had so many concussions from the business that he no longer has a good
memory. Saying he has a woman who comes in to help him go about his daily life
and every day he recognizes her but he has to ask what her name is, every day.
Also he said he is perfectly healthy and goes to the gym every day, sees
friends, recognizes them but cannot recall their names. He knew who Danny
McShain was, but could not remember anything about him.
“I’ve heard these guys
talk before and I’ve shut them up before and I’ll shut this one up too.” Danny
McShain
Don Lewin Danny’s brother in law, Pro Wrestler, and a
Marine who was involved in the taking of Iwo Jima said, “ As a marine I hardly
got a scratch, as a Wrestler I got all busted up.” In an interview talking
about Danny, Donn said, “Danny
and I had maybe only two or three matches together, we never even wanted them.
The promoters were wanting it and wanting it, because we were brother in laws,
and we were both good.”
“We
never hung out together. It wasn’t because I didn’t like him I would just
rather hang out with girls, and there were a lot of girls.” Danny didn’t want
to hang out because he thought it looked bad, wrestling in a match then hanging
out together. Back then you just didn’t do that.”
Interviewer: Did Danny throw
a lot of potatoes? (real fist)
“He
sure as hell did, he didn’t give any quarter and he didn’t expect to take
any. He was an all out fighter. When you
got in the ring with him you had better be ready for a fight, cause he was
coming at you.”
Interviewer: Do you regret
your time in the ring?
"Hell
yes, in 32 years I have had 2 knee replacements, 2 hip replacements, a pin put
in my neck so my head don’t fall down and 3 back operations. Years ago a friend
of mine said, “Donn I’ll pay for law school, put you through it and in the end
put your name on my door, I said what are you crazy? I’m an athlete. I regret
those words every day since.”
Probably the most
devastating action that can happen in Pro Wrestling is the death of another
wrestler due to injuries caused in a match. Danny killed two people in his
career, Terry McGinnis, and Canadian wrestler Alex Kasaboky both after applying
the pile driver move in the match, two hours later after each match both men
died. After the second death Danny almost quit wrestling forever.
Arrested in Mexico after a match, mainly for his own
protection, Danny was locked up for a few hours till the crowds calmed down and
went home. “During a
riot that broke out after his match,” Said Ted Lewin wrestler and
brother-in-law, “probably in Cincinnati, people stormed the ring. Danny picked
one guy out and using his boxing background knocked the guy out. One punch to
the jaw, he later showed me the “Sweet spot” on the chin for knocking a man
out. It came in handy”
Danny was brought in front
of the Texas Gaming Commission for unsportsmanlike conduct when after a match
he had lost, covered in his own blood he slipped on his robe strutted around
the ring and spit tobacco juice onto his opponent from his cigar. The action so
enraged the crowd that they stormed the ring and Danny was arrested.
In 1953 Danny was in the first Brass-Knuckles match
against "Wild" Bill Curry. Held in Huston, Texas Danny lost to Bill
Curry. The match was so popular there that it came to be a Texas Brass Knuckles
Championship till 1968. The match is exactly as it sounds, both opponents
pummel each other for the opportunity to grab the brass knuckles and the man
who gets his hands on them gets to use them in the match. It was one of the
fore runner gimmick matches that are seen today in pro wrestling akin to the
tables, ladders and chairs matches.
In 1952 Danny became a part of a U.S. Department of Justice
Investigation into the National Wrestling Alliance. The details of the
investigation are a little confusing, but centered on a territorial dispute
between promoters Dory Detton
and Avery McGuirk. Detton had booked an event with several big name
stars Danny McShain, "Gorgeous"
George, Lou Thesz among others. The problem arose when in a match Danny had
against Henry Harrell the Chattanooga Southern Junior Heavy weight champion.
Danny was giving him a shot at his World Junior Championship. The two out of
three fall match was “scripted” for Harrell to win in an aggressive match meant
to boost Harrell’s credibility. The first fall Danny was a count out by the
referee. Harrell however was being uncooperative in the match and not following
the “script”. The second fall Danny was disqualified.
During he match Danny
realized that Harrell was not ready to wear the belt and carry the reputation
of the NWA on his shoulders and the referee agreed. Danny wasn’t about to give
the title to someone who wasn’t ready for it. Although several titles exchanged
ownership that night without sanction of the event by the National Wrestling
Alliance or by their authorization Danny kept his title refusing to “Drop the
Title”.
The question was how to have
Harrell win the match to keep one promotion happy and yet keep the belt with
Danny. During the match Danny and the Referee came up with a simple solution
the referee declared that the title could not change hands on a
disqualification. A ploy still used in matches today. By the time the
investigation was over and the matter laid to rest Danny was officially
recognized as World Junior Championship. It was the first time the “ruling”
that a championship cannot change hands due to a disqualification was ever
used. It didn’t become officially adopted by the NWA until April 1953 and has
been a part of wrestling story lines ever since. As for the U.S. Department of
Justice Investigation went they seemed satisfied with the referee decision and
felt that the match wasn’t “fixed”.
Probably the single greatest contribution that Danny
helped give to athletes from every sport came in 1952 when promoter Ed
McLemore's TV show "Texas Rasslin" from Dallas, Texas was, syndicated
nationally. The wrestlers were feeling that their appearance on television was
hurting the money made at the gate of the arena events and by extension their
paychecks. The promoter Ed McLemore refused to pay them any more money so the
wrestlers went on strike. Refusing to appear on the television show. In San
Antonio several wrestlers refused to go into the ring unless the cameras were
turned off. With the crowd growing impatient the promoter relented fearing a
riot. A few weeks later Danny McShain and 10 other wrestlers, among them Gory
Guerrero, and Wild Red Berry wrote to McLemore to say they would not appear in matches
that were televised or filmed unless they were compensated beyond their regular
payoffs. After the matter went in front of the State Labor Commission of Texas
in a public hearing the wrestlers won their argument and were given an extra $5
apiece for appearances that were televised or filmed. Say thanks to Danny for
those multi-million dollar athletic appearances the next time you watch a game.
Speaking about the career of Danny his
brother-in-law Don Lewin had this to say.
“The greatest Wrestler of my time was Buddy Rodgers, he had the east
coast territories. He was big, he was the man. He had a lot of color, very
different. He had a lot of color him and Lou Thez. But Buddy was the man to
beat. Danny was the same way, the difference is that Buddy worked mostly the
East coast Territories and Danny the West Coast Territories from California to
Texas, and Arkansas, the big name guys did that, they worked the territories
either East Coast or West Coast. And all the local guys had to beat them. Danny
was the same as Buddy on the West Coast, if you were going to be somebody you
had to beat Danny on the West Coast. Plain and simple. ”
But the professional man and the private man were
two different people, sort of. “I use to tell him, ‘there’s no door big enough
for you to fit through in this house.’ He would be so full of himself. He was
cocky all the time. But he was quiet too, a little bit of a loner. And he had a
bad habit of leaving his shoes in the middle of the floor where everybody would
trip over them. I use to yell ‘Pick up your damn shoes” Sallee Lewin goes on to
describe her husband as a gentleman who would always offer to do dishes after
dinner, feed and take care of the dogs, not a drinker but he loved his cigars.
A gentleman to women, he was never a womanizer and the women wrestlers loved
him. He always paid them attention in a business where for the most part they
were invisible. “He would remember their birthdays and bring them flowers, or
remember anniversaries. He was always polite.”
She said. “I was never impressed with his wrestling, it was just how we
made a living.”
Danny was known as the “Silver Fox”
in his later years when he refereed. He often got himself involved in the
matches physically never hesitating to place him self between two wrestlers who
were getting too aggressive with the rules. But it was not something he enjoyed
doing in his duties as a referee. “Hitting a man is not refereeing,” said
McShain, “the hallmark of a good referee is getting men to do what they should
without laying a hand on them. I try to do that, it’s the right way and the
hard way but no referee can enforce the law physically in every match. It’s
impossible.”
On July 14, 1992 Danny was taken out
of a nursing home and brought to his house for his birthday party. He had been
sleeping most of the day sitting there in his wheel chair among the crowd of
well wishers. One of the men their to celebrate Danny’s 79th
birthday was Tiger Conway Sr. a young wrestler Danny had taken under his wing
years earlier and taught the business. Danny woke up briefly saw his friend
Tiger and asked, “Where we working tonight, Tiger?” “We’re off tonight Danny.”
Said Tiger. “That’s good because I’m tired.” Danny lowered his head slowly and
he passed away.
Danny McShain a country boy from
Parkdale, Arkansas along highway 165 went on to become one of the worlds
biggest personalities and best villains. He traveled the world with a Hollywood
style he was born to and he walked with an attitude that made fans know where
ever he appeared wither it was Little Rock, Arkansas or the Olympic Arena in
Los Angeles, California Danny was going to give his best and he did for over 30
years.
