Show Biz

Posted on March 7, 2017 by Fred Stiening

Trump kept his beautiful hair

Remember that Linda McMahon, Vince’s wife now runs the Small Business Administration for Trump.

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7 Responses to Show Biz

  1. briand75 says:
    March 7, 2017 at 3:01 pm

    I love it! Raised on World Wrestling Federation – the real WWF.

  2. countess robini says:
    March 8, 2017 at 12:51 am

    in 1978, i was assigned to write a story on an evening of wrestling at the spectrum in philly. i interviewed bob backlund (then the wwwf heavyweight champ and being managed by arnold skaaland.) also appearing that night was george “the animal” steele.

    at some point in the evening i left the press box and went down into a circular subterranean corridor and wandered around, as i passed a doorway and looked in, i saw mr. skaaland and a few other men seated at a table with enormous stacks of cash piled up in front of them. unlike in the ring, no drama here. just a bunch of guys dividing up that night’s take.

    as i continued on my way, i caught sight of “the animal” heading for an exit. earlier in the evening, when i interviewed him, he stayed in character — rolling eyes, lolling green tongue (the result of “glandular secretions,” his manager had explained to me) and slobbering. now he was dressed in a well-cut sports jacket, nice slacks and loafers. looked like a college prof.

    recently a friend sent me a video of an interview with steele. turns out the vibe i caught was correct — he had been a high school teacher in michigan before he embarked on his wrestling career.

    • Fred Stiening says:
      March 8, 2017 at 9:28 am

      Wrestling was big in Pittsburgh on WIIC Channel 11 in my youth. George Steele was a protege of Bruno Samartino. This was pre WWF days – just a tiny studio. The Monster died last month, reportedly of cloret mint poisoning.

      Bowling for Dollars was another big thing. WIIC also played movies by using a device that pointed light through the film at a TV camera. Sometimes the projector would break on live TV, and they had to switch reels like the projectors in theaters. Remember the flashing dots in the upper right corner? They were to ring a bell and warn the projectionist to turn on the light in the other projector to have a smooth handoff between reels. Later on, the films were sent as one big spool, sort of like an 8 track tape, allowing one projectionist to run 14 films at once in the multiplex. The single screen theater where I “worked” in the 1960s was torn down about 2 years ago to build a CVS. You can never have too many drive through pharmaceutical dispensaries for America’s opiate addicts.

      Movies on TV was problematic because of the frame rate for movies. 35mm films were standardized at 24 frames per second, but the scan rate for TV is 30 interlaced fps. If you played the film at 30 fps, the pitch of the sound would be too high and things would move unrealistically fast

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/24p

      See the section about 24p to NTSC conversion

      Another problem was the aspect ratios were very different. When movies were remastered for analog NTSC TV, typically they would pan the camera to follow the most essential thing on the screen, or create the horrible scrunched up screen where seeing the entire frame was essential, or you used letterboxing with a band of black added above and below to retain the full film aspect ratio, but degrading the image quality substantially.

      With wide screen digital TVs, that all has gone away. It took a lot of kicking and screaming, but I don’t think many people want to go back to the good old days.

    • briand75 says:
      March 9, 2017 at 8:32 am

      Okay – very nice! George “the Animal” Steele. My brush with fame was bumping into Andre the Giant in Dayton, OH. He truly was a giant. I found him extremely down to earth and decent. I never asked anyone the “is that stuff real?” question, so my face remains intact and I did not ask that of Andre.

      My memories: Classy Freddy Blassie, Chief Jay Strong Bow, Dynamite Dominic Danucci, Haystack Calhoun, and later years – Randy Savage.

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